Make Yourself at Home in a Georgian Town House

by Maria Grace
 

Terrace Homes facing the street in Ashbourn

Terrace houses dominated the London landscape during the Regency. Almost the entire London population, rich and poor alike, lived in a version of the terrace house. The term terrace was borrowed from garden terraces and described streets of houses with uniform fronts  that present a single elevation to the street.

The design of these houses varied little regardless of their location. Though the exterior facades might feature local stone or brick, stucco or fancy ornamentation, the essential structures remained uniform. 

Although primarily designed as residences, Georgian terraces built along main urban thoroughfares often incorporated ground-floor shops with residences in the upper stories.    

History of Terrace Houses

Historic Town home

The Great Fire of London in 1666 brought about the first of a series of Building Acts (1667, 1707, 1709 and 1774). These acts established building requirements intended to reduce the risk of fire spreading. Although they pertained to London architecture specifically, they  influenced building style in many other cities.

The initial 1667 Act required brick or stone to be used for all external and party walls, eliminating the typical timber fronts of the Tudor and early Stuart houses. The 1707 Act eliminated thick timber cornices. The 1709 Act required window frames be set back behind the building line. The 1774 Act required the use of stone or brick, specified street width, the size and layout of the houses, floor to ceiling heights and controlled decoration on facades even more rigidly. It also divided terrace houses into four classes. 

At the bottom of the scale, fourth rate houses, were those built in large numbers by speculative developers from the late eighteenth century in response to industrial development in towns like Liverpool and Manchester. These houses were often built back-to-back in tiny yards pressed behind street frontages, standing in yards and courts, apart from easy street access. They  were worth less than £150 per year in rent and occupied less than 350 square feet of land, often standing only three stories instead of four.

First, Second and Fourth rate Town Homes

In stark contrast, some of the wealthiest people in the country occupied palatial, first rate terraced houses in prestigious locales like Belgrave Square and Carlton House Terrace.

First rate houses faced streets and lanes, were worth over £850 per year in ground rent and occupied over 900 square feet of ground space. Keep in mind, these houses usually had four stories, plus a basement so they were frequently more than 4500 square feet on the inside. 

Second rate houses faced streets, notable lanes, and the River Thames. They were worth between £350 and £850 in ground rent and had an exterior foot print of 500-900 square feet.

Third rate houses faced principal streets, rented for £150-£300 and occupied 350-500 square feet ground space.

Terrace House Design

 

Floor plan of very large Belgravian town home, from The Gentleman's House.

Whatever the size of the terrace house, the general floor plan was consistent. Each floor would have one room at the back and one at the front with a passage and staircase at one side. The rooms were sometimes divided into smaller units, in some cases separated by folding doors that could create a larger open space when the occasion called for it.This approach to creating larger rooms was shunned in the country where manor houses did not have the same building restrictions, but considered good planning in the city.

Basements

All except the poorest houses had basements where most of the service rooms would be located. Primary access to these rooms would be through an open area in front with steps leading down to it. The open area would give light to the kitchen windows and might open onto storage vaults under the pavement. Small wells around the house allowed for windows to light other subterranean rooms including back staircases and household offices.

A warren of offices might be housed in the basement. These rooms might include

•  the scullery-a small room for washing and storing dishes and kitchen equipment)
• pantry and larder for food storage
• butler's pantry and quarters
• safe, and cleaning-room for the silver
• housekeeper's-office;
• still-room for drying and preparing foods and herbs for storage, medicinal formulations, soap, ect
• servants'-hall where servants might eat and socialize
• a wine-cellar
• closet for beer; 
• laundry and housemaid's-closet for linen storage
• quarters for housekeeper, cook and possibly men-servants
• vaults for coals and dust

Even in the largest of houses not all these rooms might be present and if present, they could be very small, packed tightly into the limited basement space.

A lift, also called a dumbwaiter, might be employed to bring food and other items up from the basement to the principle floors of the house. The lift could be located in a back stair well rather than opening directly into a room of the house.

Ground Floor

The best rooms in a townhouse were on the ground and first floor and faced the back of the house, away from the dirt and noise of the street. These included drawing rooms, parlors and dining rooms.

Drawing rooms were a place near the front door for accessibility in greeting visitors. The women of the house and their female guests would also use the drawing room as a place to retreat after dinner, so they would be near the dining room as well. Drawing rooms were often the most elaborately decorated room in the house and usually very feminine in style. 

The more modestly appointed parlor was a private room for the family’s enjoyment.This room might be on either the ground or first floor.

In large houses, the ground floor might also house an entrance hall, cloak-room, storage closet, and library or office. These would be more likely to face the street side of the house since guests would not spend time in those rooms.

The First Floor

The first floor contained large rooms for entertaining. These rooms might be used for card playing, parlor games and dancing. Large or folding doors might connect smaller rooms so that they could be opened to create larger spaces.  Principle bedrooms might also occupy this floor, usually located in the front (street side) of the house. 

Furnishings and other decor on this floor would be the most elaborate and expensive in the house, positioned to impress visitors.

The Second Floor

The more modest second floor featured secondary bedrooms for children, or perhaps a lodgers or guests. The rooms on this floor would be more simply decorated than those on lower floors. Older and perhaps unwanted furniture would often find its way into the upper stories. Bathing rooms, closets and linen storage rooms for both cleaned and soiled lines might also be located on this floor.

The Attic

The rooms on the highest floor were reserved for servants, who often used beds that were let down from the wall like murphy beds. Nursery suites and storage rooms might also be located here. These rooms were cheaply painted and furnished with little or no decoration.

Outbuildings

Large town homes could also include outbuildings behind the house. Stables and carriage houses might also feature quarters for coachmen and grooms for the horses.Third and fourth rate terrace homes were unlike to have outbuildings.

Even though there was a great deal of similarity between the terraced homes, the differences were important reflections of the wealth and status of the occupants of these home.

References

Characteristics of the Georgian Town House
The Ideal House
Kerr, Robert. The Gentleman's House (1871, 3ed.)
Lane, Maggie. Jane Austen and Food. Hambledon (1995)
Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels. Harry N. Abrams (2002)
London Architecture
Parissien, Steven. Regency Style. Phaidon Press Limited (2000)
Sabor, Peter (editor). The Cambridge Edition of the Juvenilia. Cambridge University Press (2006)
Spencer-Churchill, Henrietta. Classic Georgian Style. Collins & Brown (1997)
Summerson, John. Georgian London. Yale University Press (2003) Town Houses
Yorke, Trevor. Georgian & Regency Houses Explained. Countryside Books (2007)
Yorke, Trevor. Regency House Styles. Countryside Books (2013)  

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 Maria Grace is the author of Darcy's Decision,  The Future Mrs. Darcy and All the Appearance of Goodness and Twelfth Night at Longbourn.  Click here to find her books on Amazon. For more on her writing and other Random Bits of Fascination, visit her website. You can also like her on Facebook, follow on Twitter or email her.

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Changing Attitudes to Warfare

by Fred Lilley

The profession of soldiering is necessary, not so much to make war, but in order to keep the peace. If there were no good men studying the science of warfare then the evil dictators that crop up from time to time would hold sway or in the words of Elgar “brutes and braggarts would have their little way”.

In the second half of the nineteenth century there was a rich variety of villains requiring some drastic up-rooting.

There was for example Hung Hsiu-Chuan who claimed to be no less than the half-brother of Jesus Christ and formed a league of Chinese worshippers of the Christian God. Then, when he had ten-thousand gullible followers, like any other worthwhile religious scam-monger, he made excessive demands on them. He started to prohibit things. Singing and all forms of merry-making were forbidden but surprisingly converts still continued to flock to his side. He announced the inauguration of Taiping Tien-Kwo or the “Heavenly Dynasty of Perfect Peace”. All private property was to be confiscated and the land was to be equally divided amongst the Chinese peasantry. This was the kind of policy that appealed to people who owned nothing and followers of the “Heavenly Half-brother of Jesus Christ” grew into millions. Daily edicts were then announced prohibiting more and more normal daily activities, with the penalty of beheading for non-compliance. Throughout Taiping-held territory heads began to fall at a rate never seen in China before.

The task of nipping the activities of this madman in the bud fell to a humourless young British officer called Charles George Gordon (later to be known as “Chinese” Gordon and later still to die at the siege of Khartoum).

Other all-round demented scoundrels requiring British attention included the ruler of Abyssinia, Emperor Theodorus who laboured under the delusion that he was descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

At one point Emperor Theodorus boasted to Queen Victoria that he had slaughtered fifteen hundred men “to demonstrate his feelings” for her. He had the unpleasant habit of having any of his subjects who incurred his displeasure thrown over a cliff to their death. He also started to imprison many foreign hostages (including British) requiring the dispatch of a British Expeditionary Force under General Napier to secure the hostages release at vast expense (the expedition cost the British tax payer a staggering six million pounds, an unimaginable sum at that time).

Then there was Chief Cetshwayo of the Zulus who it has been fashionable to wrongly describe as a noble savage whom we misunderstood and ill-treated. Let us put this assessment right. Cetshwayo was actually a debased and tyrannical homicidal maniac who took pleasure in killing people including his own subjects.

Other nineteenth century tyrants included King Koffee of the Ashantees and the Mahdi of the Sudan. The world was a better place after these individuals had been despatched – a task that inevitably fell to the British.

But warfare in the nineteenth century was an altogether more civilized occupation than it has become. Generally speaking the civilian populations were not involved and the methods of killing one’s enemy was altogether more civilised. There was a sporting code to be followed between worthy foes.

The invention of the rapid-firing Gatling gun was the turning point. This was the forerunner of the machine gun and enabled the mass slaughter of one’s enemies with a deadly spray of bullets.

By the time the Boer War broke out things had changed drastically. War was no fun anymore.

General Sir Redvers Buller, commander of the British Field Force, bless him, was from the old school. He had known happier times and really had no place in a modern war such as the South African one.

Buller was a veteran of the war in the Sudan where he had done well. Those brave “Fuzzie-Wuzzies”, as he used to refer to the Mahdi’s troops, were not scared of being shot at. They didn’t cower away, he reminisced, like the Boers do, but charged in full view like men.

He had once said “I do believe that warfare is wicked and brutal, but I cannot help it; there is nothing in this world that stirs me up quite as much as a good fight”.

To his mind the war in South Africa was not a good fight. Things were not normal and the Boers did not understand the rules of the game. “The blasted Boers never stand up to you like gentlemen but are always running away on their little ponies”.

And another thing that annoyed him was all the bobbing up and down the Boers did. In his opinion a real soldier would do the decent thing, stand his ground in the face of the enemy fire and take his chances not lie down, stand up to fire and then lie down again. There were certain civilized standards that had to be maintained in battle and in his humble view the Boers were not playing to the rules.

One can only sympathise with General Buller; he was a refugee from a gentler world. Some of his views were so bizarre that they beggar belief in this modern world of weapons of mass destruction. He insisted, for example, that no trenches should be dug for fear of disfiguring the countryside. He also forbade soldiers from taking cover by lying on the ground for fear of getting their uniforms dirty.

His high standards called for a British officer to always be imperturbable. He should never duck or wince under fire but react with no more than the casual adjustment of his monocle. That way he would set a good example to his men.

But his most ridiculous contention of all was his insistence that in an ideal world hostile activities be confined between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. so as not to interfere with the social life of his officers.

Perhaps it was little wonder that we were doing so badly in the early stages of the Boer War.

The British had suffered setbacks at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso before Buller was finally replaced by Lord Roberts and the tide turned.

After the Battle of Magersfontein General Buller was heard to remark in disgust “beaten by a bunch of scruffy men who don’t wash very often!”.

It was during the Boer War that the British finally abandoned their highly visible bright red tunics in favour of a less obtrusive khaki uniform and warfare was never to be the same again. The twentieth century was still in its infancy when we became involved in the horrors of the First World War with its dastardly weaponry such as Mustard Gas and as the century progressed terrible new methods of killing our fellow humans by nuclear and biological means were discovered.

More about the nature of Britain’s nineteen century wars in my book Beyond the Call of Duty.

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

In his early twenties, the author went to work as a "mercantile assistant" in Malaya which at the time was torn by a vicious guerrilla war euphemistically called the "Emergency". Following eleven happy years as a civilian in this war zone, he accepted a commercial post based in yet another of the world's trouble-spots - Beirut. This was followed by eleven years island-hopping in the Caribbean and finally ten years in the Arabian Gulf. Now, after 40 expatriate years, he has retired to West Sussex to write, study history and rediscover his roots. His publications include Red-Haired Devil, the experiences of a civilian living in Malaya during the "Emergency", West Sussex in Character, a glimpse at some of the county's more colourful personalities and Sussex Celebrities, a gallery of icons, eccentrics and one or two rogues.

Richard I’s Greatest Conquest

by Helena P. Schrader

Tomb of Richard I in Fontevrault

Richard I has gone down in history as the “Lionhearted” because of his military prowess, but most of his victories were ephemeral. The bulk of the Angevin Empire was lost in the reign of his brother and successor John, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem that Richard salvaged from obliteration in 1191-1192 was wiped off the map roughly a century after his death. But one conquest, an almost incidental conquest, proved enduring:  it was the conquest of Cyprus in 1191. In just four weeks, Richard I seized control of the entire island, and within a year he had established a Latin kingdom that endured almost four hundred years until the second half of the 16^th century.  

As so often with the Angevins, fact is far more dramatic than I would dare to make my fiction! Here is the story of how Richard came to conquer Cyprus.

In 1191, after a tempestuous winter on Sicily, Richard I of England and his assembled crusader army of vassals and mercenaries set sail for the Holy Land.  Philip II, also on crusade, had quarreled with Richard on Sicily and proceeded with his contingent of crusaders without the English/Angevin forces. Richard’s fleet set sail on April 1, but encountered a storm that blew the vessels off course and scattered the fleet.  

Richard’s galley eventually made safe harbor on the island of Rhodes on April 22, but the ship carrying his betrothed, Princess Berengaria of Navarre, and his sister Joanna, the widowed Queen of Sicily, was missing.  When Richard was well enough (he fell ill at Rhodes) and his ships were again seaworthy, he set out once more for the Holy Land collecting his fleet as he went.  He sailed deliberately for Cyprus, the largest of the islands in the eastern Mediterranean in the hope that many of his missing ships, including the one with his bride and sister, might have found refuge there.

And indeed they had, but their reception had been far from welcoming. The survivors of two large ships wrecked on Cyprus, far from receiving the charity expected of a Christian monarch (Cyprus was ruled at this time by a self-styled Byzantine “Emperor”) were – in Richard’s own words – “robbed and despoiled.”  

The ship carrying the royal ladies had avoided shipwreck, but in distress had taken refuge in the harbor of Limassol.  The knights aboard this vessel somehow received word of what had happened to their comrades, and Joanna of Plantagenet (a woman who deserves a novel of her own!) was clearly not buying the assurances offered by “Emperor” Isaac Comnenus about her safety.  She smelt a rat and stayed aboard her damaged vessel.

Thus when Richard sailed into Limassol harbor on the evening of May 5, he found his bride-to-be and sister in a precarious situation aboard an unseaworthy vessel running out of water but afraid of being held for ransom or worse if they went ashore.  Richard responded as could only be expected of the proud Plantagenet: he attacked.

The exact sequence of events varies according to which chronicle one follows.  One version has Richard order his galleys to break through a blockade of ships at the mouth of Limassol harbor and then storm ashore on foot, without waiting for horses to be off-loaded.  Another version claims he landed on a beach beyond Limassol harbor against opposition, and then took Limassol from landward, again without horses. 

In either case,  Isaac Comnenus was not captured with the city, and so the English King and the Byzantine “Emperor” faced off in battle at a location sometimes identified as Kolossi, the later site of a lovely Hospitaller commandery.

 The Hospitaller Commandery at Kolossi

Where ever the battle was, Richard put the forces of Isaac Comnenus to flight with no casualties of his own because, as at the earlier engagements, the self-styled “Emperor” enjoyed little support among the population.  He had been appointed (if at all) by a Byzantine Emperor, who had himself since been deposed.  Furthermore, his despotic rule had earned him only the hatred of the native population. In short, Richard the Lionheart did not need much of his vaunted military skill to win a victory here. 

After Isaac had surrendered to him, Richard returned to Limassol and on May 12 married Berengaria and had her crowned Queen of England. The exact location is unknown, and several churches in Limassol claim the honor.

This Templar Church in Famagusta is of a later date, but incorporated some architectural features typical of the Byzantine churches on the island.

Since Richard was in a hurry to get to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, where only the city of Tyre remained in Christian hands although a Christian siege of Muslim held Acre was underway, he probably would have sailed shortly after this happy event if Isaac Comnenus had not made the mistake of breaking his promise to sail with Richard on crusade. In fact, Isaac fled to the mountains in a transparent attempt to re-establish his rule of the island, and Richard responded by an all-out campaign of conquest – which again took little time or effort because of the hostility of the population to Isaac Comnenus. 

After landing at Famagusta, Richard marched on Nicosia, handily defeated Isaac’s mercenaries in the field and continued on to the capital where he also took custody of Isaac’s only child, a girl, who has remained nameless in history.  By the end of May, Isaac Commenus had surrendered to Richard a second time – despite having three unassailable castles in which he might have sought refuge.  Apparently, he could not trust the garrisons of these castle or muster enough loyal men to replace the existing garrisons.

The still dramatic ruins of the Castle of St. Hilarion, one of the three castles built by the Byzantines.

Isaac set only one condition to his surrender: that he not be placed in irons.  Richard therefore had shackles made of silver especially for him.  He was to die three years later in Syria trying to incite the Sultan of Konya to attack the Byzantine Empire. 

Richard was still in a hurry to get to the Holy Land (and join the siege at Acre before his rival King Philip II of France could claim credit for victory), but he also saw the strategic importance of Cyprus to the crusader kingdoms.  The port of Famagusta is only 118 miles from Tripoli, the closest of the crusader cities, and just 165 miles from Acre, the economic heart of the Kingdom.  Furthermore, Cyprus was (and is) a fertile island capable of producing grain, sugar, olives, wine and citrus fruits in abundance.  

Although Richard recognized that he could not possibly rule Cyprus himself, he wanted to secure it as resource for the crusader states and a base for operations against the Saracens.  So, although he left Cyprus on June 4, 1191, exactly a month after he arrived, shortly afterwards Richard sold the island to the Knights Templar for 100,000 pieces of gold.

Unlike Richard, who had come to an agreement with the Greek nobility on the island to let them retain their laws and customs, the Templars allegedly sought to impose Latin rites and tax the population at excessive rates. Within six months the island was in rebellion against them, and the Templars were forced to face the fact that they did not have the manpower to quell this rebellion and fight for the Holy Land at the same time; they returned the Island to Richard.

Richard promptly sold it a second time, this time to his vassal and former King of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan.  Guy de Lusignan had a long and colorful past -- which included seducing a Princess (Sibylla of Jerusalem) and losing a Kingdom (on the Horns of Hattin above the Sea of Galilee), but he was now a landless widower.  Guy came to Cyprus in the spring of 1192, probably accompanied by other knights and barons from the once proud Kingdom of Jerusalem who had lost their lands to Salah ad-Din.  Two years later he was dead, and Cyprus passed to his elder brother, Aimery de Lusignan, who founded a stable, Latin dynasty that lasted three hundred years.

The Latin Castle at St. Hilarion and the Premonstratensian Monastery of Bellapais founded by the Lusignans.

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

Helena Schrader is writing a series of ten novels set in the Age of Chivalry. For more information visit her website: http://tales-of-chivalry.com or watch the video teaser Tales of Chivlary. Helena also has a blog about the crusader kingdoms: Defending the Crusader Kingdoms.

Four of these are set in part in the Kingdom of Cyprus, including St. Louis' Knight :

A crusader in search of faith --

A lame lady in search of revenge --

And a king who would be saint.

St. Louis' Knight takes you to the Holy Land in the 13th century, and a world filled with knights, nobles, prophets -- and assassins.

 Buy now on amazon.com!

Giveaway! Mesmerised by Michelle Shine

Michelle is giving away two print copies of Mesmerised within the UK and two Kindle copies internationally. You can read about the book HERE. Please return to this post to enter the drawing by commenting below. Be sure to leave your contact information.

Prinny's Taylor – Louis Bazalgette (1750-1830)

by Charles Bazalgette

Louis Bazelgette

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a rather interesting family.  The Bazalgettes all originate, it is said, from a small hamlet of that name which lies in the Cévennes in what is now called the Department of Lozère in the south of France.  The subject of my biography is my four times great grandfather Jean Louis Bazalgette, born into a family of tailors, who set out from his birthplace, Ispagnac, in about 1770 and headed north.  Within five years he had established himself in London as a successful society tailor and habit-maker.  According to the following anecdote, recorded in Chambers’ Journal, he then by 1780 had come to the notice of young George, Prince of Wales:-

Prince of Wales 1795

A FORTUNE MADE BY A WAISTCOAT.  Some people have a fancy for fine waistcoats.  This taste was more common in my young days than it is now.  Stirring public events were apt to be celebrated by patterns on waistcoats to meet the popular fancy.  I remember that the capture of Mauritius, at the close of 1810, was followed by a fashion for wearing waistcoats speckled over with small figures shaped like that island, and called Isle of France waistcoats. It was a galling thing for the French prisoners of war on parole to be confronted with these demonstrations.  At court highly ornamented waistcoats have been the fashion for generations.  George, Prince of Wales, while Regent, was noted for his affection for this rich variety of waistcoats, and thereby hangs a tale.  His Royal Highness had an immense desire for a waistcoat of a particular kind, for which he could discover only a small piece of stuff insufficient in dimensions.  It was a French material, and could not be matched in England.  The war was raging, and to procure the requisite quantity of stuff from Paris was declared to be impracticable. 

At this juncture one of the Prince’s attendants interposed.  He said he knew a Frenchman, M. Bazalgette, carrying on business in one of the obscure streets of London, who, he was certain, would undertake to proceed to Paris and bring away what was wanted.  This obliging tailor was forthwith commissioned to do his best to procure the requisite material.  Finding that a chance had occurred for distinguishing himself and laying the foundation of his fortune, the Frenchman resolved to make the attempt.  It was a hazardous affair, for there was no regular communication with the coast of France, unless for letters under a cartel.  Yet, Bazalgette was not daunted.  If only he could land safely in a boat, all would be right.  This, with some difficulty and manoeuvring, he effected.  As a pretended refugee back to his own country, he was allowed to land and proceed to Paris.  Joyfully he was able to procure the quantity of material required for the Prince Regent’s waistcoat; and not less joyfully did he manage to return to London with the precious piece of stuff wrapped round his person.  The waistcoat was made, and so was the tailor’s fortune and that of his family.  [Chambers’ Journal, Volume 51; Robert & William Chambers - 1874]

This story is so extraordinary, despite inaccuracies in date, that it must be true in essence, and I would love to know where the Chambers brothers got it from.  This source has so far eluded me.

From this point, Bazalgette’s career  took off to dizzy heights and he served the Prince for the next thirty-two years.  What is so strange about the story is that the man was virtually unknown for so long.  I cannot imagine that anyone else, without the family history connection, would have ever started such a project.   Louis Bazalgette grew very wealthy as can be expected.  His elder son Joseph joined the navy and saw some action in the war against Napoleon, retiring with the rank of commander.  His eldest grandson, my great-great-grandfather, also Joseph, became a civil engineer and was responsible for designing London’s main drainage system.

I have a pet theory about Louis Bazalgette, which I did not expound in my book, since I could not support it with enough facts.  Maybe someone will put it into a novel sometime.  These are the facts I am sure of.  Louis was importing cloth and embroidered shapes to London from France from the 1770’s right through to 1802 and beyond.  He kept an agent in Paris, and possibly also one in Lyon, throughout the war years.  He later used shipping brokers extensively, so it is pretty certain that he was always chartering ships to convey his merchandise, smuggled or otherwise.  He helped émigrés and others who had been persecuted during the revolutionary years.  He received the Decoration du Lys from the Bourbons during the 100 days.  He of course had the highest connections to British royalty and government.  He was a very discreet and resourceful man.  From all this it is possible to infer that these contacts and activities would have ideally fitted him to be a sort of Pimpernel, a spy or all manner of other novel-worthy things.  I’m just an old romantic, after all, but it is an irresistible notion, you must agree!

I welcome this opportunity to provide an introduction to my project.  I am grateful to Debbie Brown for inviting me to guest blog here.   Please visit my blog site (there are 81 blogs there) and see what takes your fancy.  You may not find that much about everyday life in Georgian times, but with a royal connection like that you wouldn’t expect it really.  There is a lot of stuff there you probably didn’t know about Prinny and gentlemen’s tailoring, plus some unexpected items – enough surely for a whole warren of plot-bunnies.

My blog site is at prinnystaylor.wordpress.com and I post links to my blogs already on the EHFA Facebook page.   I do not write fiction, although I enjoy doing the occasional semi-fictional passages, such as my blogs ‘A Morning at Carlton House’ and ‘Put To The Needle’.  Fiction is an alluring genre but I find the truth is what fascinates me.  I share with historical fiction authors a thirst for research, but having done it I feel it is more meaningful for me to put down a detailed factual account.  This of course allows creative writers to use their imaginations to draw upon what I write and weave it into whatever stories they like.

So after about twenty years’ research I ended up with a weighty biography, pretty well complete, but waiting for that special moment when it seems right to publish it.  A complex house move and radical change of lifestyle I am currently in the middle of is my latest excuse.  A delay of a few more months isn’t going to make much difference.

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

Watch for Prinny's Taylor by Charles Bazalgette. Read Charles' blog HERE.

“At all Events, he must not be permitted to publish”: The Attempted Blackmail of William Wilberforce

by Stephenie Woolterton

William Wilberforce by Charles Hodges
after John Rising (c. 1792)

Public figures in every historical era have been subjected to the abuses of strangers. Whether from motives of jealousy, vanity, envy, or maliciousness, unscrupulous individuals have resorted to using defamatory language and threats against a well-known personage. It is a horrible experience, and unfortunately it is one that resonates throughout history.

One such victim of attempted blackmail was the late 18th century British politician and philanthropist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). He is best remembered as the tireless campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade, and the man who struggled against almost overwhelming opposition in the House of Commons from the late 1780s until the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Wilberforce was joined in his efforts to put a stop to the trade by his great friend, the then Prime Minister William Pitt (1759-1806), amongst others.

In 1787, just as Wilberforce was gathering evidence against the inhumane trade with the intention to bring forward his first motion for its abolition, he was confronted with attempted defamation of character. The man threatening to publish a serious libel against Wilberforce was Anthony Fearon. He was a former neighbor of Wilberforce during his time at Lauriston House in Wimbledon, Surrey. At that time, Wimbledon was still a rural, country village several miles on the outskirts of London.

Lauriston House on Southside Common
Wimbledon (early 20th c.)

Fearon began his verbal assaults against Wilberforce in the early part of 1787, however the exact date when these threats began is unknown. Certainly by the end of July 1787, Wilberforce was feeling distressed by Fearon. Not knowing where else to turn, Wilberforce confided in a fellow Member of Parliament, and mutual friend of William Pitt, Henry Addington (1757-1844).

In 1787, Wilberforce sold his residence at Lauriston House, and was staying for part of the summer at Bath. It seems he tried to meet with Addington in person on his way from London, but was unsuccessful. Although it cannot be determined precisely how long these threats were going on, on July 23, 1787, Wilberforce wrote to Addington, adding

“…a Word or two about F.[earon]. I have heard nothing of late from him [Fearon], nor indeed of him except that he is still at Wimbledon, where I fear he lives on his little Capital, & will do so till it is entirely expended; if his Reason had really been affected I think some Marks of Insanity must have appear’d & it would have been known in the Village. His violent Language & Letters therefore I impute to artifice; however it is very painful to me.” [1]

It is clear that by this point Addington knew of Fearon, as Wilberforce only uses his first initial in the letter. Wilberforce also alludes to Fearon’s family, and their pecuniary situation, asking Addington to indirectly intercede on his behalf:

“Is there no Person whom you could employ to visit them [the Fearon family] & report to you the State in which they are & their future prospects & designs.[?] I dare not advise you to write; it would be impossible to exert yourself so unguardedly as not to leave an Opening for some misinterpretation: I must not be known by F.[earon] to take any part in his Relief, because he has laid me under the necessity of conducting myself so as that if the whole affairs be ever made public, I may not seem to have entertain’d the least Suspicion of his Representations being true, or the smallest fears of his divulging the Story.” [2]

Effectively, Wilberforce wanted the matter dealt with quickly, quietly, and with the utmost discretion. He did not want Fearon to know that he was involved in essentially spying on him and paying him off. Wilberforce believed Addington could find a way to handle the situation through an intermediary:

“But I shall be very glad thro’ you to assist him in a moderate Way, tho’ even here great Caution is necessary lest the Circumstances above mentioned it might seem as if you had regarded him as an injured Man, & had therefore taken him under your Patronage.” [3]

John Cary’s 1786 map of ‘Wimbleton’ [sic]

Unfortunately, if Wilberforce believed he could end the matter so soon, he was very much mistaken. We do not have Addington’s responses, although some inferences regarding his views can be made through closely examining Wilberforce’s letters.

It appears that Addington replied to Wilberforce’s letter of July 23, 1787, as Wilberforce wrote again from Bath the following week. Addington must have suggested the name of ‘Richards’ as the person best suited to spy on Fearon.

Wilberforce wrote to Addington on July 30, 1787, informing him that,

“I approve of your Suggestion of Richards, apprehending him to be the person who took in [oe]’s little Girl when he himself first came under my Roof…Be that as it may your conceiving Richards an Agent as proper as any we can find for the Business in question makes me readily acquiesce in the Nomination. I think my name should either not be mention’d to him at all, or the true Reason why I must keep altogether behind the Curtain. It should be communicated to him [Richards], in order to keep him the more on his guard…” [4]

Wilberforce was adamant that his personal involvement was not known. Sadly, this was not enough.

On August 23, 1787, Wilberforce wrote again to Addington, as it does not appear that Addington responded to his previous letter:

“Hearing nothing from you, I am induced by the Solicitude I feel respecting F.[earon]’s Publication to trouble you with an additional Word or two on that Subject. It is desirable, were it practicable, that one should set a watch over him [Fearon] & that when he actually prepares to execute his threat & not till then, he should be prevented, for every fresh Consideration I bestow on the matter confirms & strengthens my Opinion that at all Events, he must not be permitted to publish, & yet to shew any Anxiety, before it be actually impossible to Avoid it, is the Way to subject myself to the perpetual Imposition of an unprincipled & artful Man; But I despair of finding anyone to keep guard over him on whom I may rely, & therefore perhaps the only Expedient is for me to work by some friend [Henry Addington] in whom I can repose perfect Confidence, & who from other Circumstances is suited to the Office…The Matter really interests me extremely, & I condemn myself for not having attended sufficiently to it. I ought to have reflected that from the Situation in which I now am, my appearing other[wise] would in the light of a man over-religious be prejudicial to Interests of the Chief Importance [in other words, the abolition of the slave trade].”[5]

Wilberforce recognized that whatever it was that Fearon had against him, it could be damaging to his political career. Thus, by August 1787 Wilberforce was beginning to take the matter very seriously, and to regret not doing so earlier. Several biographers of Wilberforce have mentioned this episode in passing, and have only cited the 1787 letters from Wilberforce to Addington as if there the matter drops. [6]

Nevertheless, this was certainly not the case as the threats to publish this unknown libel continued for the next few years. During a visit to Cambridge, Wilberforce wrote to Addington on May 13, 1788, indicating that the situation with Fearon, and the man hired to spy on him, was far from over:

“I am not sorry in writing to you to take up my pen when a Recollection of the approaching departure of the Post relieves me from the apprehension of finding myself seduced unravels into a long Letter; not that I have anything to say that may not be express’d in three Words, so it shall be in two: Richards. Fearon…” [7].

In this particular letter, Wilberforce directly names Fearon without the use of initials. No other information is given in the letter apart from the obvious fact that Fearon was still being closely watched, and Richards seems to have been the man hired to spy on him.

Henry Addington as Speaker of the
House of Commons by J.S. Copley

Crucially, there is one final letter from Wilberforce to Addington on the subject of Anthony Fearon dated from Bath on August 14, 1789. By that point, the threats had been going on for well over two years. Addington had recently lost one of his children, and was in a state of bereavement. Wilberforce wrote his condolences to Addington, adding

“…It may require less apology for me to trouble you again on the old Subject [Fearon] when anything will be welcomed which may divert your mind for a moment from its own melancholy Reflections. Fearon has continued to intimate to me his Design of publishing, thro’ a new Channel, & I honestly own to you that I am not a little distress’d by the Apprehension of his being wild enough to execute his Threat. My chief grounds of Concern on this Head need not to have been hinted to you in London, & in addition to it I am now extremely hurt under the fear of its operating in some Way to the Prejudice of the Scheme you know of [abolition], for the Success of which I am deeply & justly interested. Am I too vain or presumptuous when I persuade myself that it will not be in this Man’s power, artful as he is beyond all I ever met with, & I fear I must add unprincipled & desperate, to impress the World with the Belief of any thing to the disparagement of my Moral Character [?]…Now can you contrive any way of diverting this Mischievous Man from his purpose [?] It is evident that I must not shew [sic] any Symptoms of fear, but I conceive it may be possible for you to manage him by the double method of conciliation & threatening without my being suspected to be in any degree concerned…In this he [Fearon] affords a fatal Lesson to us to avoid the Beginnings of Evil…” [8]

The last line in particular sounds rather ominous. Wilberforce was clearly at the end of his tether. His entreaty to Addington, now Speaker of the House of Commons, to arrange for someone to use the tactics of bribery and threats to get Fearon to back down highlights what must have been a very desperate situation.

Fortunately for Wilberforce, Fearon never did manage to publish the unknown salacious libel. Perhaps Addington’s intermediary – the man named ‘Richards’ – succeeded in his attempts to quell Fearon. It has never come to light what information Fearon had against Wilberforce, although the threats came just prior to Wilberforce taking up the cause for the abolition of the slave trade.

Throughout the two years of documented correspondence, Wilberforce was adamant that he did not want his name associated with the efforts to spy on his former neighbor. Of interest, Lord Mornington wrote to Grenville in 1787, saying that he heard a “strange story”, a rumor “…that Wilberforce had married his sister’s maid. Can it possibly be true?” [9]. To my knowledge, there is no mention of this in any other manuscripts.

Fearon used abusive language, and wrote innumerable letters intimating that he would publish a libel. If he succeeded, it could have seriously undermined Wilberforce’s character and parliamentary career. The story could have placed all of Wilberforce’s burgeoning abolitionist efforts in jeopardy.

Whatever the nature of the libel, Wilberforce seems to have been genuinely anxious and distressed by Fearon’s repeated threats. He does not mention the names of anyone else as being in connection with the situation, although he does mention ‘Richards’ as taking in someone’s “little Girl when he himself first came under my Roof.” [11]

The letters and violent threats seem to have begun in the summer of 1787, previous to the month of July, and they continued until at least August 1789, if not later. The story ends the following year as Fearon died at Wimbledon, and was buried on August 21, 1790 at St. Mary’s parish church [10]. His age and cause of death are unknown. At this distance of time, it is highly doubtful whether we shall ever know the truth, one way or the other.

References:

1. William Wilberforce to Henry Addington. 23 July 1787. Devon Heritage Centre, Sidmouth MSS: 152M/C/1787/OZ2.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. William Wilberforce to Henry Addington. 30 July [1787]. Devon Heritage Centre, Sidmouth MSS: 152M/C/1787/OZ4.
5. William Wilberforce to Henry Addington. 23 August 1787. Devon Heritage Centre, Sidmouth MSS: 152M/C/1787/OZ3.
6. Hague, W. (2008) William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner. London: Harper Press, p. 211; Pollock, J. (1977) Wilberforce. Tring, Herts.: Lion Publishing, p. 71.
7. William Wilberforce to Henry Addington. 13 May 1788. Devon Heritage Centre, Sidmouth MSS: 152M/C/1788/F23.
8. William Wilberforce to Henry Addington. 14 August 1789. Devon Heritage Centre, Sidmouth MSS: 152M/C/1789/OZ6.
9. HMC, Fortescue I, p. 280; Pollock, J. (1977) Wilberforce. Tring, Herts, England: Lion Publishing, pg. 71.
10. West Surrey Family History Society. Burial record for Anthony Fearon on 21 August 1790 at St. Mary’s parish church, Wimbledon, Surrey, UK. Accessed in April 2014 via the online database: www.findmypast.co.uk.
11. William Wilberforce to Henry Addington. 30 July 1787. Devon Heritage Centre, Sidmouth MSS: 152M/C/1787/OZ4.

Image Credits:

Figure 1: William Wilberforce by Charles H. Hodges, after John Rising, c. 1792. ID Number: 2006.44/37. Accessed on 21 April 2014 via: http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/Online/object.aspx?objectID=object-752027&start=6&rows=1.

Figure 2: An early 20th century photograph of William Wilberforce’s former residence Lauriston House on Southside Common, Wimbledon. Accessed on 21 April 2014 via: http://news.merton.gov.uk/2013/09/18/explore-black-history-month/.

Figure 3: Screenshot of ‘Wimbleton’ from John Cary’s 1786 London map.

Figure 4: Henry Addington as Speaker of the House of Commons by John Singleton Copley (c. 1797-1798). Accessed on 21 April 2014 via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Singleton_Copley_-_Henry_Addington,_First_Viscount_Sidmouth.jpg.

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Stephenie Woolterton has an MSc in Social Research, and a background in Psychology. She is currently researching and writing her first book on the private life of William Pitt the Younger. She is also working on a historical novel about Pitt’s ‘one love story’ with Eleanor Eden. She blogs at: www.theprivatelifeofpitt.com and can be contacted via Twitter at: www.twitter.com/anoondayeclipse.

Caffeine, Sex and Cross-Dressing: Women in 1688

by Piers Alexander with Dr Matthew Green

“I wish to speak with Monsieur Jean Ollow,” I said in a French accent. A wiry-haired old woman of perhaps fifty years sat at her book of accounts, clutching a quill awkwardly between swollen ink-stained fingers. Her eyeglasses were swallowed up in the wrinkly lumps of her cheeks. She warmed a steel pot at a fire.

“What business with him?” she rattled, still scratching at her ledger.

I took a small twist of paper from my pocket, pulling open my coat a hand’s breadth so that the pistol bared its teeth at the starchy old woman.

She was no coward, the dame. For sure she had seen my gun, but she did not blink as she reached over for the twist of paper.

“Strange to see a Frenchman with the red hair,” she murmured, opening up the little package.

I blurted out, “It is from my father’s side, he is...”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Norweyan you might be, or Yorkshireman, it’s all one to me. Now what is this?”

The woman fumbled the twist of paper open and ran her little finger through the small pile of fresh ground coffee. Its rich ripe scent filled the room, making spit pour out under my greedy tongue.

“There is no John Hollow, Monsieur Frenchy. Or at least, I am he. For what is a woman but a hollow man, a man without all the guts and bile and sentiment?”

While writing The Bitter Trade, my novel set in England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into the stories of women in the seventeenth century. We all know a little about the witchhunts and duckings, but I had no idea how fluid the roles and rights of women were in the late seventeenth century; nor how many big female characters are lurking just below the official historical record.

In the countryside, life was undeniably harsh on women. An opinion, a vocation or a sexual appetite was enough to get you a scolding: to be shamed, beaten and run out of your village by your neighbours, screeching and banging pots and pans. (There’s a particularly horrible scene in The Bitter Trade inspired by this.)

Perhaps worse, wife sales were commonplace, and legal. Men wanting to lose a wife could shift her for £100, or a pint of ale.

Many women tried to join the army, dressed as men, in order to get away from their husbands and villages. It seems that most of them were inexpert at disguising their sex, and there are stories of recruiting sergeants laughing as they sent away the clearly female applicants. Though some got through, most notably Hannah Snell, who successfully served as a male soldier for three years, and became a national celebrity. Interestingly, she had relationships with women as well as men, and in at least one case the man considered her a gay male partner!

Property was always the unspoken challenge for women. Were they allowed to own it, or were they property themselves? In a way the mid-seventeenth century was a high point of women’s rights in America. In the Dutch colonies, women were considered equal to men, but the British later revoked a widow’s right to own property, and in my story it’s quite clear that women were mainly considered their husband’s or father’s property.

Coffeehouses were at the heart of London’s intrigues and commerce: letter drops and meeting places for spies, breeding grounds for conspiracy and dealmaking, private places where men could flee women.

The Women’s Petition Against Coffee, 1674

The more assertive, educated women of London chose to picket some coffeehouses, disgusted at the trivial conversations and depleting effects of coffee. I was lucky enough to meet Dr Matthew Green, a high-energy coffeehouse historian who leads fascinating tours of the old City sites (www.unrealcityaudio.co.uk). Here’s his take on the muddy mix of sex and caffeine:

No respectable women would have been seen dead in a coffeehouse. It wasn’t long before wives became frustrated at the amount of time their husbands were idling away “deposing princes, settling the bounds of kingdoms, and balancing the power of Europe with great justice and impartiality”, as Richard Steele put it in the Tatler, all from the comfort of a fireside bench. In 1674, years of simmering resentment erupted into the volcano of fury that was the Women’s Petition Against Coffee. The fair sex lambasted the “Excessive use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE” which, as they saw it, had reduced their virile industrious men into effeminate, babbling, French layabouts. Retaliation was swift and acerbic in the form of the vulgar Men’s Answer to the Women’s Petition Against Coffee, which claimed it was “base adulterate wine” and “muddy ale” that made men impotent. Coffee, in fact, was the Viagra of the day, making “the erection more vigorous, the ejaculation more full, add[ing] a spiritual ascendency to the sperm”.

At Moll King’s brothel-coffeehouse, depicted by Hogarth, libertines could sober up and peruse a directory of harlots, before being led to the requisite brothel nearby. There was even a floating coffeehouse, the Folly of the Thames, moored outside Somerset House where fops and rakes danced the night away on her rain-spattered deck.

Hogarth’s depiction of Moll and Tom King’s coffee-shack from The Four Times of Day (1736). Though it is early morning, the night has only just begun for the drunken rakes and prostitutes spilling out of the coffeehouse.

England after the Restoration is painted as a liberal, sensual place, where women as well as men took their pleasures. But there’s a misogynistic menace below the surface of seventeenth century life: whilst glorying in Hannah Snell’s magnificent illusion, it’s hard to forget the dismal life of scoldings and wife sales that pushed women to take such a risky step.

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The Bitter Trade is Piers Alexander’s first novel. He is currently working on the sequel, Cimarron, set in Jamaica in 1692. Also a serial media entrepreneur, Piers lives in London with the singer-songwriter and author Rebecca Promitzer.
The Bitter Trade is now on sale on Amazon and all ebook stores.
www.piersalexander.com
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Dr Matthew Green has a PhD from Oxford University and works as a writer, broadcaster, freelance journalist, and lecturer. He is the co-founder of Unreal City Audio (www.unrealcityaudio.co.uk) and author of The Lost World of the London Coffeehouse. Matthew is currently writing The Time Traveller’s Guide to London, to be published by Penguin in March 2015.


Recommended reading: Lascivious Bodies – A History of Eighteenth Century Sexuality by Julie Peakman

The Birth of Heraldry in the Middle Ages

By Rosanne E. Lortz

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that average readers see the entire span of the Middle Ages as a homogeneous mass of history. They assume that everything from the fall of Rome up until the Battle of Bosworth is filled with highborn damsels in flowing dresses and armored knights with lions rampant on their shields.

"The Accolade" by Edmund Blair-Leighton

The King Arthur legend has not helped matters. Arthur supposedly lived in the sixth century—that beginning of the Middle Ages which is sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages—however, many of the legends and tales concerning him and his Round Table were invented during the High Middle Ages, six hundred years later.

Naturally, these tales took on the clothing and characteristics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, rather than the realities of the sixth, further muddling up our ideas of what part of the Middle Ages looks like what. The complex system of knightly tournaments and symbolic heraldry in the Arthur legends makes us assume that such was the case through the whole of the Middle Ages.

My first novel, I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, is set during the fourteenth century, in the chivalric world that many associate with the whole of the Middle Ages. But when I began researching my second novel, Road from the West, a tale of the First Crusade set at the end of the eleventh century, I found myself having to expunge many of my “stock” medieval notions in order to be more authentic to the time period.

Two hundred and fifty years can effect radical changes. The differences between the eleventh century knight and the fourteenth century knight might not be quite as dramatic as the differences between the Lexington militiaman and the modern day Navy Seal, but they are there nonetheless.

One example of the difference is in the use of heraldry. In the fourteenth century world of the Black Prince, every character had an emblem on his shield, specific colors in his banner, and a motto he had adopted—many of these devices having been passed down from father to son. In the eleventh century, these defining characteristics of knighthood had not yet developed.

Historian Elizabeth Hallam writes:

Heraldry—the systematic use of hereditary devices—attained its maturity under the later Plantagenet kings. Symbols like the Roman eagle, the dragon of Wessex and the Viking raven had been known for centuries, but these belonged to peoples, not particular people.

At the time of the Norman Conquest, a mere thirty years before my setting of the First Crusade, we begin to see knights taking up specific symbols for themselves, but, according to Hallam, these “seem to have been personal rather than inherited.” 

Francois Velde writes:

The Bayeux tapestry provides a terminus a quo: no heraldry there. Combatants have designs on their shields, but the same design is seen on different individuals' shields (even on opposite sides of the battle) and the same individual uses different designs at different times.

In other words, the symbols adopted by eleventh century knights seem rather random, and certainly not something passed from father to son. It is not until the twelfth century when we see the Plantagenets taking the golden lions for their coat-of-arms and passing them down from father to son.

The nondescript knights of the Bayeux Tapestry

So why the change? Why do my knights of the First Crusade have no family crest to deal with, whereas my knights of the Hundred Years’ War are awash in stripes, blocks, chevrons, lions, dragons, and other heraldic beasts?

Velde says the change was

 …due to the evolution of military equipment from the late 11th to the mid-12th c, with fighters unrecognizable under their helmets (there is a nice illustration from the 11th century Bayeux tapestry showing William lifting his helmet so as to be recognized by his troops in battle). This led fighters to paint emblems on their shields. The question is then to establish a proper chronology of this emergence and of the transformation of these emblems into armory, i.e., constant use of one design by the same person and application of strict rules in the design itself.

Hallam agrees with this assessment. “Protected by an enveloping helm instead of the old open-faced Norman helmet, knights were unrecognizable in battle or tournament except by the devices emblazoned on shield, surcoat (or ‘coat-of-arms’) and horse trappings.” 

The greater protection afforded by the new helmets also afforded a virtual anonymity. To be recognizable, a knight must adopt a consistent symbol which others would associate with his name.

Velde (summarizing the work of heraldry expert Pastoureau), says that we can distinguish two phases in the birth of heraldry: “the transformation of decorative motifs painted on shields into permanent and individual emblems (1100-1140) and the transformation of the latter into hereditary emblems subjected to precise rules (1140-80).”

So, that red flag that my eleventh century Duke Bohemond flies from the towers of Antioch? A mere whim. No connection to his family heritage. Probably only hung there because he liked the color red.

Those three golden lions on my fourteenth century Black Prince’s shield? The established coat-of-arms of the Plantagenets, seen in an early form on Geoffrey of Anjou’s shield, seen again as a pair of lions on Henry II’s shield, and formalized to three lions in 1198.

Just one of the many differences that two-and-a-half centuries make in the complex period known as the Middle Ages….

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

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

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

Velde, Francois. "Origins of Armory." Heraldica. http://www.heraldica.org/topics/origins.htm