Foods the Romans brought to Britain

by Cindy Tomamichel

The Roman Empire spanned a great deal of the known world in ancient times, acting as a conduit for the spread of Roman culture. After the invasion and occupation of AD 43-410, Britain would never be the same. For its people and the environment, the Romans brought new ideas and foods, many of which have become staples of culinary tradition.

There are a variety of information sources by which a picture of the foods of Roman Britain may be reconstructed. There is the actual foodstuff itself, where food such as grains, nuts and bones may be preserved by charring or carbonisation such as during a fire. Preservation by waterlogging occurs within peat bogs and estuaries. Fossilised remnants may also be found in latrines and rubbish heaps, where minerals such as calcium have replaced the structure. Food was also buried in containers in the burial sites of wealthier individuals. Shrine offerings are also another source of food evidence. Food containers may also carry the imprint of their contents.

Other sources include import and export evidence, such as amphorae for wine, oil or garum. Some written sources exist, even for such things as shopping lists, for instance the Vindolanda tablets “... bruised beans, two modii, twenty chickens, a hundred apples, if you can find nice ones, a hundred or two hundred eggs, if they are for sale there at a fair price. ... 8 sextarii of fish-sauce ... a modius of olives ... To ... slave of Verecundus.”

There is some evidence of Roman foods being imported to Britain well before the invasion. However, the invasion created multiple avenues of demand for Roman foods, which expanded the importation significantly. The Roman army was a major consumer, but also the desire to be seen as Roman saw a rise in demand for exotic imports. What in the late Iron Age was a trickle, soon turned to a flood of new foods available during the occupation.

Romans also brought food related ideas. Firstly there was a need to produce food in Britain on the scale required to supply the army. This need, coupled with the Roman habits of building roads and towns soon changed the face of agriculture. From small holdings growing mostly for personal consumption, it changed to larger farms specialising in growing enough of a product for market. The spread of new foods worked a gradual path out from the towns to the surrounding countryside.

In this way many new foods became established. New fruits and nuts included apple, cherry, plum, walnut, mulberries, medlars, and chestnuts. New vegetables were grown such as carrots, beets, garlic, onions, shallots, leeks, cabbages, peas, celery, turnips, radishes, and asparagus. Herbs were both medicinal and for cooking and teas, including poppy, black mustard, rosemary, thyme, garlic, bay, basil, borage and savoury mint. All these established and stayed popular even after the Romans left. Other foods were popular only during the occupation, or just didn’t establish well, such as grapes, figs, pine nuts and olives.

Another way in which plants may arrive is by stealth. The weed seeds are harvested and are within a bag of seed grain, or they are planted and the environment suits them too well and they escape and naturalise. Plants like this include ground elder, white mustard, alexanders, stinging nettles, greater celandine, and fennel.

Grains play a major part in diet and also part of the stability of society. A poor harvest would mean cultural unrest, particularly if the invaders were seen to be consuming large amounts. Grains already in Britain were various types of wheat, barley and oats. With the Romans came both an increased demand and new technology for ploughing and agricultural tools. They also introduced rye, millet and spelt. With the development of a closed field system, cattle could be alternated with crops such as grains, pulses and vegetables, increasing productivity.

Baking ovens are a common feature of Roman fortifications. This is a loaf of bread from a bakery in Pompeii. (source: http://www.pompeii.org.uk/m.php/museo-pistrinum-di-soterico-pompei-it-117-m.htm)

Part of many affluent Roman households was a garden, and perhaps this was the start of the English love of gardens which has spread with them all over the world. A typical house layout had a central courtyard garden, and here decorative plants such as box, foxgloves, mulberries, lilies, violets, pansies and roses would have been grown.

Part of a household might have included animal husbandry areas. For those longing for a taste of home, a snail farm or “cochlea”, would have been established, where imported Roman snails were raised and fattened. They were fed on milk and oats or spelt to purge and fatten them, then cooked in wine, with garum or garlic. Roman snails are still to be found in the UK. Hare gardens with semi domesticated rabbits also existed for fur, hides and supplies of meat. They also built enclosures to keep deer, as well as pigeon enclosures and kept chickens and guinea fowl.

Edible Snail - photo credit Fred Dawson via Visual Hunt /CC-BY-ND

Britain was already exporting beef before the invasion, and goats, sheep, chickens, pigs and deer were also being eaten. Pigeons, quail, geese, pheasant and guinea fowl were likely imported with the Romans. Ham in brine and bacon with their good keeping qualities were important for soldiers on the march.

Amongst the many cultural changes the Romans brought was the change in eating habits. While in the more remote rural areas people probably continued eating stews, roast meat and porridges, in the towns more people adopted Roman dining habits. These are familiar to us today as the three meal arrangement, with breakfast being quite small, a moderate lunch and a larger dinner as evening was for entertaining. Fast food was also a Roman invention, with many small bakeries and food places available for those who could not cook at home, serving things like kebabs and burgers. Bath houses were also popular social hubs were snacks could be purchased.

However diet varied with social status, location and job. Many remote Britons would have continued eating their normal food, perhaps adding some new vegetables, herbs or grains to the mix. The elite would be the major consumers of the imported foods such as wines from Gaul (France), dried dates and olives.

The soldiers had to buy their own food, and had a routine for doing so. They often had their own bread ovens, herds of cows, pigs and managed their own purchase of grains and vegetables. A soldier’s diet was also often supplemented by food sent from home, or by hunting local animals such as boar and deer.

Imported food consisted of things that would not grow or was not available in sufficient quantities. This included dates, almonds, olives and olive oil, wine, pine cones and kernels, fermented fish sauce (liquamen or garum), pepper, ginger and cinnamon.

After the Romans left Britain in AD 410, many aspects of their culture vanished. However, the hardier or more popular of the introduced plants and animals survived, becoming an integral part of the landscape.

Recipes

The main reference for Roman food is the cookbook of Apicius, a Roman epicure of around AD 100. The book is full of recipes for main meals, and often has several variations on a dish or ingredient. While many of the ingredients are probably not to today’s tastes, many of the casserole and vegetable dishes sound interesting. Unfortunately none of the bread recipes he probably had are included.

Milk Fed Snails (Cochleas lacte pastas)–Apicius

After being purged and cleaned, the snails can be fried in oil and served with a wine sauce. Or they could be fried, then made into a soup with broth, adding pepper and cumin.

Vegetable and Brain Pudding (Patina frisilis)- Apicius

Take cooked and mashed vegetables and brains and mash to a fine paste. Add eggs, broth, and wine and place in an oiled baking dish. Bake and sprinkle with pepper when done. 

Libum - Serves 2 (A type of cheesecake) 

10 oz ricotta cheese.
1 egg.
2½ oz plain flour.
Runny honey.

Beat the cheese with the egg and add the sieved flour very slowly and gently. Flour your hands and pat mixture into a ball and place it on a bay leaf on a baking tray. Place in moderate oven (180C/400ºF) until set and slightly risen. Place cake on serving plate and score the top with a cross. Pour plenty of warmed runny honey over the cross and serve immediately. This is similar to a Greek cheesecake, which uses cottage cheese instead of ricotta. (Source: Sally Grainger The Classical Cookbook, published by British Museum Press.)

(Note: a variety of academic and website reference sources were used for this article, please contact the author if details are required.)

~~~~~~~~~~

Cindy Tomamichel is a writer of action adventure romance novels, spanning time travel, sci fi, fantasy, paranormal, and sword and sorcery genres. They all have something in common – swordfights! The heroines don’t wait to be rescued, and the heroes earn that title the hard way. 

Her first book, Druid’s Portal: The First Journey will be out with Soul Mate Publishing in 2017. On Amazon May 17th. An action adventure time travel with a touch of romance set in Roman Britain around Hadrian’s Wall.

A portal closed for 2,000 years.

An ancient religion twisted by modern greed.

A love that crosses the centuries.

Contact Cindy on
Website: www.cindytomamichel.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CindyTomamichelAuthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CindyTomamichel
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16194822.Cindy_Tomamichel
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+CindyTomamichel

Lordship in the Tenth-century – What was its Political and Social Function?

by Annie Whitehead

“No man can make himself king, but the people have the choice to select as king whom they please, but after he is consecrated as king, he then has dominion over the people and they cannot shake his yoke from their neck.”

So said Aelfric of Eynsham, (c955-c1010), and he tells us here of the absolute nature of kingship. The king is the lord of all the English, so if we are to discover the function of lordship, we should begin by examining the role of the king.

King Edgar

By the tenth-century ideas  about the spiritual role of kingship had developed along Carolingian lines. A well-documented example of this is Edgar’s coronation at Bath in 973. One school of thought is that Edgar delayed his coronation until he had reached the canonical age of thirty, but it is unlikely that he could have reigned successfully for so long (he succeeded his brother Eadwig in 959) without having been consecrated earlier in his reign, particularly in view of what Aelfric has to say about consecration. [1]

It is more probable that this coronation was based on the Frankish notion of ‘imperium’, stressing the king’s duty before God. Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, expanded this idea in his Institutes of Polity. His view was that a Christian king should be a just shepherd to his Christian flock, he was to help the righteous and to afflict the evil-doers, especially thieves and robbers. His true function was to purify his people before God and the world. [2]

The mutual obligation between the king and his subjects is illustrated by an incident in Aethelred the Unready’s reign. With the death of Swein Forkbeard, Aethelred was asked to return from exile in Normandy by the Witan (council), who declared that “no lord was dearer to them than their rightful lord, if only he would govern his kingdom more justly than he had done in the past."[3] The king was king, but his subjects would not allow him to neglect his duty to them.

Yet neither would they neglect to exalt a praise-worthy monarch. Florence of Worcester* summed up the virtues of King Edgar thus:-

“In the winter and spring, he used to make progress through all the provinces of England and enquire diligently whether the laws of the land and his own ordinances were obeyed, so that the poor might not suffer wrong and be oppressed by the powerful…Thus his enemies on every side were filled with awe, and the love of those who owed him allegiance was secured.”

There were, of course, more personal relationships, not only between the king and his subjects, but between the lord and his man. The argument continues among historians as to whether pre-conquest England was feudal; suffice to say that there was an English equivalent to the Frankish oath of vassalage, this being the Hold-Oath. The oath was essentially negative, a promise to do nothing to harm the lord. It included a gesture of bowing to the lord. The lord in his turn had certain obligations to his man.

“By the Lord, before whom this hallowed thing is holy, I will be steadfast and true to X, to love all he loves and shun all that he shuns, and never, by will or by thought or by deed do aught of what is loathsome to him, as long as he upholds me as I am willing to earn and fulfil all that our understanding was, when I bowed to him and took his will.” 

Naturally, the king could not rule without counsel. The witenagemot, or witan, was the royal council, and had the right, rather than the privilege, to advise the king. The king’s thegns owed their status and position to the king and were rewarded for their service (the word thegn originally meant servant.) It was usually the king’s thegns who were appointed as reeves, responsible for administration in the localities as a check on the powerful ealdormen.

The king with his witan

The most usual form of reward was that of a land grant. Many charters confirming these land grants still exist, such as King Edgar’s grant of land at Kineton to his thegn Aelfwold in 969. These grants, known as bookland, were not the same as the fief of feudal Frankia. They were granted by the king in the form of a book (charter) for services rendered. Aelfwold was granted the land at Kineton for all his life and could leave it to whomever he chose. The estate was free from all service except “fixed military service and the restoration of bridges and fortresses.”

Many grants were made to the Church, who in turn leased out land in return for service. A good example of this comes from Oswald of Worcester, who lists the service required of the beneficiaries of the land. They should fulfil the law of riding as riding men should, they should pay dues to the Church, swear to be humbly subject to the bishop and lend horses, build bridges, and send hunting spears.

Initially these endowments were made to the Church from the king, and only he could turn folkland into bookland. It soon became, however, the most common way for a lord to reward his man.

A grant by Aethelred the Unready shows how far he was prepared to support his men. His thegn, Aethelwig, gave Christian burial to men killed fighting in defence of a thief. Rather than censure Aethelwig, as Ealdorman Leofsige advised, Aethelred granted his thegn the forfeited land of the brothers who had been killed. [3]

Not all thegns were king’s thegns; many of them had another lord to whom they owed their allegiance. When these thegns died, the heriot (war gear) was surrendered to their lord and not to the king.

Aethelred the Unready

There was another aspect to lordship, an extension of the personal bond into the field of law. In the reign of Edward the Elder (899-924) a letter was written to the king explaining the history of an estate at Fonthill, Wiltshire. It describes how a thief, Helmstan, was required to give an oath to clear himself of the charges brought against him. He asked his lord Ordlaf to intercede for him, which Ordlaf did, even though his man was guilty. [4] This illustrates how a lord was bound to protect his man, whether innocent or guilty. Though the law codes might have forbidden the lord from doing this, often it was more beneficial for a man to appeal to his lord in this way than to appeal in the hundred courts.

By the middle of the tenth-century it was becoming customary for lords, ecclesiastical or lay, to receive grants of jurisdiction from the king. Usually these grants were laid down in the charters as ‘sake and soke’. The term implied jurisdiction and control of a court. It was not granted lightly, and these delegated rights were intended to emphasise rather than undermine royal authority. While the landowner enjoyed immunity from public courts, the court over which he presided was not held for his men, but was attended by men drawn from the neighbourhood.

There was also a much more specific form of private jurisdiction. All lords, be they bishops, earls, thegns or abbots, were held responsible for the behaviour of their men. “Such a responsibility involved an exercise in judgement, which would easily be formalised into the giving of judgement.” (HR Loyn) Fortunately, the monarchy was strong enough to ensure that the worst abuses were avoided.

Along with sake and soke, other judicial rights were specified. ‘Toll’ gave the lord the right to take toll on goods sold within the estate, and ‘team’ gave the right to supervise the presentation of convincing evidence that goods for sale actually belonged to the person selling them. ‘Infangenetheof’ gave the lord the right to hang a thief if he had been caught on the estate with the stolen goods still in his possession. By the end of the period, large numbers of hundred courts were in private hands.

A charter of King Aethelred's to his 'faithful man' 

Lords, of course, had always been involved with the public courts. Earls and bishops presided over the shire courts. It was here that arrangements were made for the collection of taxes. It was in the interests of landowners to be represented, as the king always was by his servant the shire-reeve. It was also important for lords to establish a presence at the hundred court, where much money could be lost and won. They were also commanded to give full support to the hundredsmen, whose job it was to supervise legal trading and to discourage cattle theft. King Edgar specifically ordered ealdormen Oslac, Aelfhere, and Aethelwine to give such support. “And they are to send them in all directions, that this measure may be known to both the poor and the rich.” [5]

Military duties were linked with the social function of lordship. From the time of King Ine (688-725) forfeiture of land and a heavy fine of 120 schillings was the penalty for a lord neglecting military service. After 899, as well as national obligations to fyrd service, and building bridges and fortifications, men were now to group themselves into tithings and hundreds to protect themselves. Ealdormen and thegns not only formed the select body of the king’s household retainers, but were, as landlords, responsible for the organisation, the summons and the assembling of the fighting forces. They were also involved in the financial and personal organisation which was essential to ensure that competent levies turned out to perform military duties on behalf of their estate. Lords, then, led their men and were responsible for them in times of peace and war and were at both times high up on the social scale, just beneath the king.

Although it was not necessarily a feudal society, a constant theme runs throughout tenth-century English society, that of mutual obligation. At the highest level, the king could demand loyalty and service from his subjects, but in return must rule them justly and protect them. The thegns, earls, and other landowners owed service to the king in judicial, military and personal capacities, for which they were rewarded. They in turn could expect loyalty and service from their men, but they were responsible for them and must protect them. Running though society in this way, the organised system which developed from the simple notion of personal loyalty was an integral part of all areas of central and local administration.


[1] DJV Fisher – The Anglo-Saxon Age Ch 12
[2] HR Loyn – The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England Ch4
[3] EHD – i 117
[4] EHD- i 102
[5] IV Edgar ‘Wihtbordesstan’ Code EHD i 41

* The authorship of the work of Florence is considered to owe more to a fellow monk, John of Worcester

~~~~~~~~~~

Annie Whitehead is an historian and novelist who writes about the Anglo-Saxon era. The author of two award-winning novels set in Anglo-Saxon Mercia, she was also a contributor to 1066 Turned Upside Down, a re-imagining of the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings. She is a member of the Royal Historical Society and an editor of the EHFA blog. Currently she is working on a contribution to a non-fiction book to be published by Pen & Sword Books in the summer of 2017. Her novel Alvar the Kingmaker is set in the tenth-century during the reigns of Eadwig, Edgar and Aethelred the Unready and contains many scenes where the above-mentioned laws and charters were put into effect.

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Editors Weekly Round-Up, May 14, 2017

by the EHFA Editors

Enjoy these articles from the blog this week.

The Golden Age of the Canal in England and Northern Wales

by Jude Knight

What makes a Gentleman?

by Maria Grace

From the archives:

Beds and Bugs Through the Centuries

by Debra Brown 

Authors and researchers - Write for us! If you are a fiction or non-fiction author, don't be shy - we like articles about British history, any aspect, any period. Articles can be 1,000-2,000 words. Contact us ehfablog@yahoo.com for guidelines.

What makes a Gentleman?

by Maria Grace

The nuances of social class and what made a gentleman a gentleman remains a perennial source of confusion for Regency readers. The pages of Georgian and Regency era fiction are littered with gentlemen, but offer absolutely no explanation of what that title actually meant.

How did one get to be a gentleman—were they born or ‘made’? How did these men provide a livelihood for themselves and their families particularly since it appears that some gentlemen had a profession while others did not. Were all gentlemen equal or did they have differing ranks? Were gentlemen universally wealthy? Were gentlemen common in the population, or really rare birds?

What made a Gentleman a Gentleman?

Gentlemen were, in general, members of the upper classes. But beyond that, how did one recognize this elusive species?

Although many would site land-ownership as their defining feature, this was not fully the case. Not all landowners were gentlemen and not all gentlemen were land owners. The primary quality of a gentleman was that he did not sully his hands with work. His income came from other, more noble sources: passive income from rent and investments and honorariums offered by grateful recipients of their services. Note this was critically different than being paid for one's services. If one was paid for their work, his standing as a gentleman would fall into question. An army officer received an honorarium for his service whilst a common soldier was paid (and not very well at that, but that is another issue altogether.)

A large number of gentlemen were born to the designation. The eldest son of a gentlemen had the potential to inherit the means that made his father a gentleman and that would make him a gentleman as well—a landed estate. The all-important estate was more than a simple farm. It was a tract of land large enough to provide the potential for rental incomes and income from agricultural and land based products like wood or coal, thus funding a gentleman’s life.

So, how much land did it take to get one’s head above the gentlemanly line? In general, a yeoman farmer owned from one to three hundred acres of property that produced £40-50 a year. Over three hundred acres, and a man had a shot at being a gentleman.

What about the younger sons born to gentlemen? If the estate only went to the eldest, could the younger ones manage to be gentlemen, too?

The answer is yes. That is where the ‘honorariums offered by grateful recipients’ clause comes in. There were certain professions for which the practitioner was not directly paid for their services, making them 'gentlemanly professions.' These professions were: the church, the law (as a barrister, not solicitor), medicine(as a physician, not a surgeon) and service as a military officer. All required a significant investment in the way of education or purchase of a commission, and provided an income disconnected from sullying one’s hands with work.

Gentlemanly Ranks

Not surprisingly in a rank obsessed society, there were gradations and ranks among the gentlemen. It goes without saying that titled peers in all their various forms occupied the top of society and were classed at the top of the gentlemanly ladder.

Immediately below the titled peers were the landed gentry. Though definitely part of the upper class, they were lower ranked than the peers. Interestingly, their income might exceed that of peers who might be saddled with debt or other financial difficulties.

Like the peers, the landed gentry were not created equal with some positioned some firmly above others. Within the landed gentry were:
1.  Baronet. A position created by King James in 1611, giving the person a hereditary knighthood that passed to the eldest son, and the right to be addressed as "Sir." These title holders were not considered part of the aristocracy and did not sit in the House of Lords.

2. Knight. Originally a military honor, but came to be used as a reward for service to the Crown. This was not a hereditary title. The number of knights increased dramatically during the regency years, with a particular surge from 1811-1815, when one's service to the crown could have been simply making a pleasing speech.

Neither the title of baronet nor knight conveyed any land or wealth to the title holder, nor any privilege beyond being addressed as ‘sir.’(and his wife as Lady His Last Name—can’t forget that one, right?)

3. Esquire/squire. Originally a title related to a knight’s attendant, it was an honor that could be conferred by the Crown. The title included certain offices such as Justice of the Peace and was used informally, unlike the prior two official titles. A squire was often the principal landowner in a district.

4. Gentlemen. This started as a separate title with the Statute of Additions of 1413. It became used to signify a man who did not have to work for a living. It was not a title and men would not be introduces as Mr. Smith, gentleman.

How many were in the Gentry

So just how many of these gentlemanly types were there?

At the start of the 19th century the landed gentry made up only a small part of the population. Whereas the peerage included about 300 families, the landed gentry encompassed closer to 25,000 or 26,000: 540 baronets, 350 knights, 6,000 landed squires and 20,000 just plain gentlemen. This group totaled about 1.5% of the national population and possessed about 16% of the national income. (Interestingly this is not out of line with the statistics in the US for 2010.) (Keymer, 2005) Said another way, 98.5% of the population were not of the gentlemanly class. So by that standard, gentlemen were rare birds indeed.

References

Kelly, Pauline E. (2009) Jane Austen Dictionary. Ink Well Publishing

Keymer, Thomas in Janet Todd (ed.) (2005) Jane Austen in Context. Cambridge University Press

Shapard, David M. (editor) - The Annotated Persuasion Anchor Books (2010)

Gornall, J. F.G. - Marriage and Property in Jane Austen's Novels The Jane Austen Hampshire Group

Austen, Jane, and David M. Shapard. The Annotated Pride and Prejudice. New York: Anchor Books, 2003.

Austen, Jane, and David M. Shapard. The Annotated Sense and Sensibility. New York: Anchor Books, 2011.

Lane, Maggie. Jane Austen's World: The Life and times of England's Most Popular Novelist. 2nd ed. London: Carlton Books, 2005.

Laudermilk, Sharon H., and Teresa L. Hamlin. The Regency Companion. New York: Garland, 1989.

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Though Maria Grace has been writing fiction since she was ten years old, those early efforts happily reside in a file drawer and are unlikely to see the light of day again, for which many are grateful.

After penning five file-drawer novels in high school, she took a break from writing to pursue college and earn her doctorate. After 16 years of university teaching, she returned to her first love, fiction writing.

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, or follow on Twitter.

Editors' Weekly Round-Up, May 7, 2017

by the EHFA Editors

This week, EHFA featured a trio of excellent articles.

MayDay, MayDay, Mayday!

by Mike Rendell

(from the archives)

The Infamous Countess of Carlisle

by Cryssa Bazos

Who was Robert Catesby? 
A look at the real Man Behind the Mask
by Linda Root
(from the archives)

Who was Robert Catesby? A look at the real Man Behind the Mask

by Linda Root

Why May and not November?

One would expect a post about the mastermind behind the Gunpowder Treason to appear on November 5 rather than in May, but like so much else about the plot, it had not been planned for November. The original plot was to be sprung in February and designed to reach fruition by the end of spring.

Had the conspiracy gone forward as originally projected, by the end of May  James I would be dead, the crown would be tottering on the head of his nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth, the Earl of Northumberland or some other peer sympathetic to the Catholic cause would be Protector of the Realm, and the man who is widely blamed for it all--Guy Fawkes-- would have been in the Spanish Netherlands explaining the necessity for the regicide to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella.

Then the king went and ruined it all by delaying the opening of parliament until autumn because he feared the lingering plague, unaware of greater dangers lurking.

In the months between the Spring of 1605 and infamous November 5, the original plan was refined and in a sense, improved, but it was also weakened as the circle of conspirators expanded. Then, on October 26, 1605, William Parker, Lord Monteagle, received an anonymous letter warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament. According to traditional histories, he passed the letter on to Robert Cecil, then known as Salisbury,  and consequently saved the day.

National Archives -{{US-Public domain - expired copyright.}}

Or did he?

There is an alternative history that propounds a different theory --one in which Cecil had been watching Guido (aka Guy) Fawkes for months based on warnings from English spies in the Netherlands who had documented his visits there. Fawkes had been placed on Cecil's watch list, and thus, Cecil had been aware of the plot all along. He simply had not acted  until he had  conceived of a way to net all of the culprits and designed a way to implicate the Jesuits in the evil deed.

According to that version, the Monteagle letter was a hoax concocted by Cecil and Lord Monteagle, taking advantage of one of the plotters who was Monteagle's relative, a cousin who had spilled the beans to Parker. The authorship of the letter was pinned on him and he mysteriously died of poison while languishing in the Tower, a very convenient act of damage control if Cecil actually was behind the ruse.

Lord Monteagle benefited from grants of interests in England's overseas enterprises at the cost of the life of a mere cousin. In the aftermath, Cecil got his vengeance against England's leading Jesuits, Catholics were again persecuted by a less tolerant King James than the one who had arrived from Holyrood two years earlier, and the false hero Monteagle got to keep the change.

So, how did Guy Fawkes figure in all of this?

The statement that Guy Fawkes almost blew up Parliament is about as accurate as when those of us who are Americans call George Washington the father of our country or claim that Abraham Lincoln fought the Civil War to free the slaves. There is much more to the Gun Powder Treason than a conspiracy to bring down the government, and it involves issues that plague us today. To put the caper at the feet of Guy Fawkes is about as complete an analysis as blaming 9/11 on Abdulaziz-a-Omari. How many readers recognize the name well enough to identify what part Omari played in it? Likewise, Fawkes was not the instigator of the Gunpowder Plot--he was the bloke who got caught.

Public Domain -Anonymous, from work already in the public domain.

Fawkes had two specific roles to play, both of them suited to his talents. His experience as a soldier made him the ideal choice when it came to spreading the explosives and lighting the fuse. But he also was a veteran of the wars waged against the rebellious Dutch, and in the Spanish Netherlands he was regarded as a loyal Catholic soldier whose interests aligned with those of Spain.

His projected duties went well beyond the event planned at Westminster. In modern terms, he was the conspirators' public relations man. His role was to plant the seed before the explosion and after the deed was done, market it to the crowned heads of Europe in the least offensive terms imaginable.

He was suited to the task because during the time he had spent in Flanders he had established many friendships among the Catholic English exiles and had performed well in services of the Spanish in their war against the Dutch. He had comported himself with honor and bravery exceptional in a mercenary,  and thus would be a persuasive apologist  in defense of what would otherwise appear a heartless regicide.

His was an important mission, designed to combat two features of the Gunpowder Plot that made it particularly odious.

 First, it threatened the concept of Divine Right of Monarchy, a fact certain to offend Philip III and Henry IV as well as the Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara Eugenia, co-rulers of the Spanish Netherlands. Killing kings was the job of other kings and to be done with honor, not by knaves hunkering in dark basements stockpiled with explosives.

The other troublesome feature of the Gunpowder Treason is what we call collateral damage, and collateral damage of the worst kind, because among the intended victims would be women and children and many souls sympathetic to the conspirators. It was the aspect of the plot that even the most radical among the group found difficult to accept and for which they sought counsel from representatives of the Pope.  It was Fawkes' assigned duty to minimize the stigma by spreading the doctrine that had evolved as the plot progressed--the concept of necessary evil.

In spreading the propaganda, Fawkes was not the orchestrator but the messenger. Blaming him is like blaming a guy named Bernard Barker for Watergate.

Exclusive image: ID 16858073 © Steve Allen | Dreamstime.com 

Who was Robert Catesby?

Fawkes was a principal in the commission of the crime, but he was not the mastermind. That dishonor falls on the head of a man named Robert Catesby. He doesn't have a day named for him. No one goes running about on November 5 in a Robert Catesby Mask. No one stages public protests in his name, and to my knowledge, no one burns him in effigy. He was never tried of convicted or racked or disemboweled. He was fortunate to get himself killed while trying to escape arrest.

He was the ringleader, a member of the landed gentry, as were most of the others. And while he was firm in his Catholic faith, there was nothing that pointed him out as a man who would kill a king. He was known to be one of many recusants but he was not considered instrumental in any current Papist plot.

Catesby was an Oxford man who left before graduation, apparently to avoid having to take the Oath of Supremacy that would have forced him to betray his faith. He had taken part in the Essex Rebellion of 1601, and escaped Elizabeth's wrath by paying a substantial fine  that caused him to divest himself of his estate. By the time of Elizabeth Tudor's death, he had become radicalized. When hopes that James would lift restrictions on the mass when he ascended to the English throne in 1603 were dashed, Catesby decided it was time to act.

Ashby-Saint -Ledgers, home of Anne Catesby - Wikimedia Commons, P.D.

Parts of his early planning occurred at the family estate at Ashby-Saint Ledgers, Catesby's mother's home. It was centrally located to the residences of  the others he had drawn into the plot.

Among his earliest recruits were men he knew from the Essex Rebellion. Clearly it was Catesby and never Fawkes who was the principal in the evolving plot. And as other men were brought into it, it was Catesby who had the final word as to their suitability to join. Fawkes was accepted into the group  by virtue of his devout Catholicism, his contacts in Europe and his military expertise. When the Parliament set for February 1605 was cancelled due to the king's fear of plague in London, the plot had expanded from the original five--Catesby, Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy and Guy Fawkes-- into one involving a group of thirteen men, many of whom were aristocrats.

The thirteen Gunpowder Plot conspirators- Wikimedia Commons-P.D.

The plan called for most of the participants to be far away in the Midlands when the Houses of Parliament exploded,which of course resulted in Fawkes being caught with the power keg. Part of the gang was posing as a hunting party near the manor house where the Princess Elisabeth resided. Their objective was to take possession of the princess and make her titular queen, possibly under a regency with the Earl of Northumberland as Protector.

News of Fawkes' arrest sent them into flight. When news of Fawkes's capture and the discovery of the explosives reached Catesby, he lied about it to his followers and those he hoped to recruit to his cause, declaring that the king was dead. When that deception failed, he changed his tactics and sought to build his own revolt. When he declared that his rebel group stood for God and Country, a resident of the village he tried to bring into his ranks replied, "We stand for King, God and Country." That indeed was the prevalent sentiment.

 It was not the first time that radical Catholic dissidents misjudged the sentiments of England's moderate Catholics. From the time when Catholic dissidents colluded with the King of Spain to place imprisoned Marie Stuart on the English throne, the loyalty of most English to their sovereign was underestimated.

Sadly, it was not the first time that moderates became the scapegoat of the royal wrath. After all, many English peers, protestant and Catholic, some with their wives and families in attendance,  were scheduled to attend the opening day of Parliament, including not just the king, but Queen Anne, the formidable and much admired Prince of Wales Henry Frederick and possibly the frail five year old Charles, Duke of York, who at last had learned to walk.  It is the strike against their own coreligionists and the entire royal household that so inflamed not just James but the common English.

In judging the heat of their passion, one recalls that the concept of a royal family was a new thing in the life experience of English men and women of the time. Elizabeth had been an independent childless woman. Her closest relatives were cousins, nephews and nieces. The Stuarts were still a romantic phenomena to the average English man and woman.  The plotters had attacked a popular new institution - that of the Royal Family.

While James opened the following year's Parliament with conciliatory words and assured the Catholic kings of Europe that he bore no ill will to his common Catholics, his policy of looking through his fingers at the activities of recusants ended. Thus, the plotters were defeated  in principal as well as in design.

One died and another was blinded in an accidental fire when gunpowder moved from other locations to Holbeche House in Staffordshire caught fire. Others, including Catesby, died the following day when the Sheriff of Worchester arrived with 200 armed men with no intention of extending leniency. Many depictions show Catesby being injured in close combat, but most historians report that he was shot.

Public Doman Art ((US)) -
Anonymous drawing of the death of Robert Catesby,
Wikimedea Commons 

Some say he died clutching a small statue of the virgin or at a larger statute of the virgin's feet. The men who died at Holbeche House were luckier than the survivors who suffered the indignities and horrors of a traitor's death. 

Fawkes did not give up his comrades until he was tortured by increasingly gruesome means. Others who were only peripheral to the plot also suffered. The mighty Earl of Northumberland was imprisoned in the Latham Tower for his association with his cousin Thomas Percy, one of the original five, with whom he had lunched on November 4th. Thomas Percy had died along with Catesby, some say from the same bullet, leaving no one to condemn or exonerate the earl, who eventually was released upon levy of a substantial fine but who never  regained his former prominence.

A second version shows Caesby in close combat over the death of his comrade Percy. Public Domain from Wikimedia Commons {{US-Art}}Add caption

The Death of Guy Fawkes:

King James personally participated at the initial interrogations of Fawkes,who was arrested under an alias he commonly used--John Johnston. James approved the use of what was called 'the gentle tortures' at first, and eventually allowed the more severe. Fawkes held out until he had been racked repeatedly, and when he did confess, his former proud signature was barely legible.

He met his death as he had lived his life, in the manner of a soldier. When Guy Fawkes and the others who suffered with him were taken to their place of execution at a site within view of the Houses of Parliament, unlike the others, Fawkes died from a broken back during his hanging and was dead before they cut him down. Thus the man whose likeness is a symbol of anti-establishment protest met his end.

Just as it so often happens today,  as it happened then, few remember the man who had set the conspiracy in motion,. It is Fawkes who is burned in effigy. Even the art of the day, as shown below, misrepresents the truth. When Fawkes met his death, there is no way he would have been able to climb the ladder on his own.

 John Cruikshank,Wikimedea Public Domain Art

Was Robert Catesby a Terrorist?
Much has been written about the relationship of the Gunpowder conspirators to modern terrorists. Certainly the act meets most definitions, all but one. It has been said in different words and in different contexts that the goal of terrorism is terror, and that terrorist acts target civilian non-combatants.

That was not the objective of Robert Catesby and the others involved in the Gunpowder Treason. In modern terms, what they sought was regime change.Their ultimate goal was to affect a revival of Catholicism. Their target was the king. The result of their failed conspiracy was to make his personal agenda as a Peacemaker difficult to implement.

To that extent, I disagree with Antonia Fraser and others who have called the Gunpowder plotters terrorists. Perhaps fanatics is the better term.  Nevertheless, even this thumbnail analysis begs the question of whether they deserve to be remembered by some as patriots who dared to strike out against a despotic regime. New information about the goals of James VI and I counter most arguments as to  the proprietary  of their cause.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Faith and Treason ~the Story of the Gunpowder Plot, by Antonia Fraser, is a remarkable work that should be in the library of any scholar of English history and anyone who loves historical mystery. It is written with the same vitality and style as her seminal biography of the Queen of Scots, and is often lauded as a well crafted detective story. It is the foundation of this thumbnail sketch and the basis of research in my current work in progress In the Shadow of the Gallows, the fourth installment in my series The Legacy of the Queen of Scots.

This Editor's Choice was originally published May 23, 2014

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Linda Fetterly Root is a retired major crimes prosecutor and a historical novelist writing of events in 16th and 17th century Scotland, France and England. She lives in the Morongo Basin area of the California desert with two wooly malamutes, a flock of chickens and assorted wild things. Her books are on Amazon.

The Infamous Countess of Carlisle

by Cryssa Bazos

One of the most intriguing characters in historical fiction is Milady de Winter of the Three Musketeers. Alexandre Dumas depicted her as a lethal spy whose loyalties were sold to the highest bidder, notably the Cardinal Richelieu.

The inspiration for Milady was a socialite and renowned beauty of her day, Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle. Though Lucy was not an agent of Cardinal Richelieu, she held court at a time of social upheaval when men were drawing battle lines against King Charles I. The real woman was even more fascinating than the fictional one.

Lucy Percy, by Anthony van Dyck
[Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

Lucy Hay was born Lucy Percy in 1599 to Lady Dorothy Devereux and Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland. Lady Devereux was the daughter of the Earl of Essex and Lettice Knollys whose second husband, Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester, had once been a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, that is until he and Lettice married without the Queen’s permission. Through her maternal line, Lucy was the great, great granddaughter of Mary Boleyn, sister to Anne Boleyn.

On Lucy's father's side, the Percys were an old and respected bloodline having first arrived with William the Conqueror, and later, descendants of King Henry III. The family stood for centuries as the bulwark against Scottish and Welsh invasion of England. Given Lucy's stellar connections, she was well poised to be a courtly influence.

Unfortunately, her early years were marked by notoriety and not the favourable kind. When Lucy had been six years old, her father had been implicated in the Gunpowder Plot (to blow up Parliament and murder King James I) due to his kinship with one of the leading conspirators, Thomas Percy. For the next seventeen years, Lucy’s father was a prisoner of the Tower of London (along with famous prisoner Sir Walter Raleigh) and during this time Percy indulged his interest in alchemy and chemistry. He was committed to his experiments (even lost the hearing of one ear) and everyone called him the "Wizard Earl."  

While Henry languished in the Tower, Lucy’s mother tried to secure her husband’s release. She appealed to her friend Queen Anne, who put in a good word with her husband, King James I, but unfortunately the King levied a crippling fine that the Percys couldn’t afford and they found their estates seized. This was Lucy’s early introduction to the influence women could yield in politics as well as the fickleness of royal prerogative [1].

Sometime around 1617, Lucy Percy caught the eye of James Hay, who would become the 1st Earl of Carlisle. At the time he was a baron and a widower. Her father was furious. His imprisonment put him at a disadvantage to squelch his daughter's choice, particularly since his wife favoured the match. Henry Percy did not have a high opinion of the Scottish faction at court, the courtiers who had followed King James to England upon his ascension of the English throne, and James Hay was one of the King’s more extravagent favourites. Henry Percy had been reputed to say, “I am a Percy and I cannot endure that my daughter should dance any Scottish jig.”

James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, by Unknown
National Portrait Gallery: NPG 5210
[Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

James Hay was not considered a handsome man, but he was suave, charismatic and knew how to entertain in style. He introduced Lucy to a sophisticated set, lavished her with courtly masques, fine music and theatre. For an ambitious woman like Lucy, James Hay was irresistible. More importantly, he pulled her from the shadow of her father’s disgrace straight into the royal limelight.

In November 1617, Lucy became James Hay’s second wife. Her wedding was attended by the fashionable and the powerful, including Charles, Prince of Wales and George Villiers (later the Duke of Buckingham).

In the early days of Lucy’s marriage, her husband served as a Privy Councillor and a Groom of the Stool. Between 1618 and 1622, Hay travelled to foreign courts on behalf of the King, counselled the King on the growing troubles in Germany and recommended England’s support for the Protestants in Bohemia and the Palatinate. He was a voice for the Huguenots in France though not a successful one. In 1622, the King made him the 1st Earl of Carlisle and Lucy became a Countess.

Lucy flourished in the years to come, greatly celebrated for her  beauty and accomplishments. She had a gift for politics and intrigues, enjoyed poetry and theatre, and cultivated admirers by the score. In later years when she contracted small pox, the entire court feared that she would be disfigured. For a time, she wore masks to hide her healing face and managed to turn them into a fashion statement. Fortunately for Lucy, the disease did not leave lasting scars.

Men waxed poetic over Lucy’s charms. One admirer, John Suckling, wrote a risqué poem about the bewitching Countess of Carlisle in the form of a dialogue between himself and another admirer of hers, Thomas Carew. The poem was entitled, Upon My Lady Carlisle’s Walking in Hampton Court Gardens. Here is one of the stanzas:

“Twas well for thee she left the place;
There is great danger in that face.
But hadst thou viewed her leg and thigh,
And upon that discovery
Searched after parts that are more dear”

Lucy and James Hay’s star continued to rise after the ascension of the new king, Charles I, and the growing influence of his favourite, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. Lucy was rumoured to have been Buckingham’s mistress, and through Buckingham’s influence, she was appointed Lady of Queen Henrietta’s Bedchamber, while her husband received a similar honour for the King. 

It suited Buckingham to install Lucy as a companion to Queen Henrietta Maria, in order to be informed of the Queen’s visitors and activities. The Queen was passionately against Lucy's appointment. After all, Lucy was beautiful, witty and entirely Buckingham’s creature, and as her duties brought her in close contact with the King, Henrietta feared that Buckingham worked to install Lucy as the King's mistress. Charles was not so easily led astray and resisted Lucy’s charms; he even refused the Queen's petition to get rid of her. Over time, Lucy overcame the Henrietta's suspicions and became a close confident to her. Through her proximity to the Queen, Lucy became the centre of fashionable society, gathering poets and politicians within her circle. 

 

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
By Michiel van Mierevelt
[Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

It was around this time when the story of the French Queen’s diamonds surfaced, made famous by Alexandre Dumas in The Three Musketeers. A 17th century French diarist, Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (Prince de Marcillac) wrote in his memoirs that Lucy stole the diamond studs that Anne of Austria, Queen of France, had given to her admirer Buckingham. Lucy's motives were reputed to be revenge for having been jilted by Buckingham by his obsession with the Queen. Dumas borrowed heavily from Rochefoucauld’s memoirs and created the  character of Milady de Winter in Lucy's image. 

James Hay meanwhile continued his diplomatic service for Charles I, engaging in intrigues against Cardinal Richelieu of France and was even named Governor of the Caribbees. Eventually his health failed, and he died in 1636.

Now Lucy found herself a wealthy widow, and it gave her a degree of freedom that she had never previously enjoyed before. Though she would not be shy of male companionship, she never remarried and so maintained her independence. During this chapter of her life, she fell in love with Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford. Intense, serious and ambitious, Strafford was the exact opposite of Lucy’s late husband.

Strafford had at one point been a vocal supporter for the rights of Parliament against royal prerogative, but he eventually switched sides to become one of the King’s most ardent supporters. As discontent against the King grew and the country headed toward civil war, Strafford became a scapegoat for the country's ills, and Parliament called for his impeachment. The impeachment failed but a bill of attainder was passed against him, and Charles I had no choice than to sign the attainder and seal Strafford's death. To read more about Strafford’s trial, see Strafford Must Die by Annie Whitehead.

Politically astute, Lucy managed to distance herself from Strafford so she was not brought low by his ruin. Lucy Hay was a survivor, after all. She switched sides and started passing information to one of Parliament’s most ardent advocates, John Pym. Some even said she became his mistress. Perhaps one of the most important pieces of information that she passed to Pym, and which was credited with igniting the spark of civil war, was a warning that the King was planning to arrest Pym and four of his companions. Pym managed to escape, and a week later, he returned triumphant to Parliament to resume his crusade against the King.

When the English Civil War broke out in 1642, Lucy favoured Parliament, though she took care to not entirely burn her bridges on the other side. She had a growing aversion to royal prerogative. Lucy favoured moderation, where the nobility retained their privilege instead of being irrelevant by the whims of the king. By the end of the 1st civil war, when it became apparent that Parliament was being circumvented by a fanatic Puritan faction, moderate Lucy switched sides to help spy for the Royalists. 

During the second civil war (1647-1648), Lucy raised funds for the king and acted as a go-between the Royalists in the north and Queen Henrietta. In the end, all her efforts were for naught. The King was captured and in January 1649, executed.

Two months later, Parliament arrested Lucy and sent her to the Tower of London for questioning. They threatened her with torture but could not break her. Lucy remained in the Tower for eighteen months, ironically not far from where her father had been kept all those years. Eventually she was paroled and released.

In the final years of Cromwell’s Protectorate, Lucy became a Royalist agent, joining others who worked to restore Charles II to his father's throne. A few short months after the Restoration, on November 5, 1660, Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle quietly passed away. 

Femme fatale, informant, spy, Lucy Hay was a fascinating character. Alexandre Dumas obviously agreed.


Further reading:

Court Lady and Country Wife: Royal Privilege and Civil War (Two Noble Sisters in 17th century England), by Lita-Rose Betcherman.

[1] The English Civil War: A People’s History, by Diane Purkiss

Poem of the week: Upon My Lady Carlisle’s Walking in Hampton Court Gardens by John Suckling.

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Cryssa Bazos is historical fiction writer and 17th century enthusiast with a particular interest in the English Civil War. Her debut novel, Traitor's Knot, will be published by Endeavour Press and will be released in 2017. For more stories about the English Civil War and the 17th century, visit her blog cryssabazos.com. Follow Cryssa on Twitter (@CryssaBazos) and on Facebook. 

MayDay, MayDay, Mayday!

by Mike Rendell

And no, the internationally recognized distress signal has nothing whatsoever to do with  the first day of May: it is a deliberate corruption of the French expression venez m’aider, (‘come and help me’) having been chosen in 1923 by a senior radio officer by the name of Frederick Stanley Moxford. He wanted a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency at his local airport (Croydon). It was soon picked up and is now the accepted distress call for planes and ships alike. A less well-known call sign is ‘Pan-pan’ (from the French panne – meaning a breakdown) which is used in less serious incidents such as mechanical problems which are not life-threatening. As with ‘Mayday’ it is repeated three times to ensure clarity and to prevent confusion.

But I digress: what of May Day, the first day of May and the first day of summer? Traditionally this was always celebrated in Northern Europe as a chance to say farewell to winter, and an opportunity to have a celebratory bonfire (in some parts of Ireland it is still known as Bonfire Night, whereas the English save that expression for 5^th November, being Guy Fawkes Night).

 

It is also the subject of some lovely customs, many of which lasted longer where the Celtic traditions remained strong, rather than elsewhere. Take the charming custom of washing your face with May dew. The 1652 book by a Dr Gerard Boate entitled ‘Irelands Naturall History' says this of the custom:

“ The English women, and gentlewomen of Ireland… did use in the beginning of summer to gather good store of dew, to keep it by them al the year after for several good uses both of physick and otherwise, wherein by experience they have learnt it to be very available.”

The collecting of dew would take weeks of preparation. In April, May and into June the girls would get up before the dawn, go to the green fields (wheat was best) and harvest the dew – either with their bare hands, or more especially by spreading a sheet out over the moist grass, and then wringing it out and collecting it in a glass jar. This would be topped up every day, and for the whole year would sit in the sunlight by a suitable window. Every few days the concoction would be purified by carefully straining off the water so as to leave behind any sediment, dirt, or other impurities. And so, after nearly a year in which the freshest of fresh waters was imbued with sunbeams, it could be splashed on the face! Dr Boate’s book opined “The dew, thus thoroughly purified, looketh whitish, and keepeth good for a year or two after.”

The distillation was at its most powerful if applied before sunrise on 1^st May, and in an age when we consider it beneficial to rub avocado extract into our hair, or spread unmentionable products over our skin to prevent wrinkles, who is to say that a spot of early morning dew water is not just as magical in its properties?

The practice gave rise to the riddle:

   I washed my face in water

   That had neither rained nor run,

   And I dried it on a towel

   That was neither woven nor spun.

The answer lay in the fact that having washed your face in dew you always allowed it to dry in the fresh air – you would hardly go to all that trouble and then wipe it off afterwards!

This custom was by no means limited to the uneducated country poor – it was also favoured by ladies of fashion and has in some cases been transported, and lives on in at least one household in the United States. The blog at http://artbydot.com/?cat=4 recalls the fact that in one particular family the girls always set their alarms for six in the morning  on May 1^st so that they can run outside and rub their faces in the morning dew on the lawn!

Among the anticipated benefits of applying dew to the face (or even better, naked dew rolling!) was that it would prevent freckles, sunburn and wrinkles. It could prevent headaches, and even walking barefoot through the dew would ease bunions and callouses as well as preventing corns! For some reason it also enabled the person concerned to have greater dexterity in untangling nets, ropes, or freeing knots from string and thread. (Memo to self: get up early 1st May and roll around in the buff on the neighbour’s  lawn – I don’t have one, so his will have to do!)

Ireland in particular had many other May Day traditions, including cutting down a thorn- bush and putting it up outside your house and decorating it with ribbons. Another custom was to keep the brightly coloured egg-shells left over from Easter, and then string them together as a loop to hang around the tree. But tree-rustling was such a problem that a law was passed in the reign of George III (1775) stating that “every person who shall put up any Maybush opposite or near to his or her house or suffer any Maybush to be so put up or to remain for the space of three hours opposite or near to his or her own house…not being a person lawfully possessed of trees or woods or not having lawfully obtained the same … shall forfeit and pay such sum not exceeding forty shillings.” (Two pounds – the equivalent today of perhaps $220).

Another tradition was putting up a Maypole at a crossroads. The tallest was reputedly at the Strand in London, near the present St Mary-le-Strand Church. It was erected shortly after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 (all such practices having been banned under Cromwell’s Protectorate) and was over 130 feet tall. It stood there until a storm blew it down twelve years later. The tradition of putting up maypoles caused our legislators to impose controls (presumably because of the risk of serious injury to road users from collapsing poles): an Act of Parliament dated 1792  was passed to ‘Improve and keep in repair the Post roads of the Kingdom’. Amongst other things it stated that “If any person… shall erect any sign-post or maypole or maybush on any part of the said roads…every person so offending shall forfeit the sum of twenty shillings.”

The Irish had a similar tradition of putting up maypoles at cross-roads, but whereas the English seemed content to tie ribbons round the poles and dance around them, the Irish came up with some splendid alternatives. There were two famous crosses in Dublin at Harolds Cross and Finglas, and they would be smothered in soap until slippery. A succession of prizes having first been tied to the pole, the young men would then be challenged to climb the slippery pole and claim the prize – a hat, a pair of breeches or an old watch. It was also often an occasion for dancing and carousing, as well as traditional activities such as sack races, gurning (making contorted facial expressions through horse collars), wrestling, chase-the-pig and so on. In Tralee in 1785 an eccentric landowner called Miss Cameron introduced the custom of men racing each other with sacks of coal or flour draped around their necks – a spectacle giving rise to much rejoicing and revelry.

Some of the traditions date from the fact that May Day in Ireland was the traditional day for hiring agricultural labourers. It was also the day when rent was due. In some places such as Limerick it was customary for the farm workers to parade through the main streets of the town, complete with  ploughs, scythes and other agricultural implements.

In England many of the celebrations are limited to a specific town or village. Padstow in Cornwall has its hobby horse (or rather, ‘obby-oss’), while many places reckon that May Day is the start of the Morris Dancing season (cue much waving of hankies and banging together of stout poles). Across the country there may be people rushing into the North Sea, or attending festivals, or jumping off bridges! And that is quite apart from those who regard the day as International Workers Day …

An Editor's Choice, originally published May 1, 2012.

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Mike Rendell is the author of The Journal of a Georgian Gentleman based upon the diaries, written notes and accounts kept by his 4x Great Grandfather. He also writes a regular blog on aspects of life in the Eighteenth Century (it can be found here). In 2017, he published In Bed with the Georgians: Sex, Scandal and Satire in the 18th Century, available on Amazon UK.