Unlucky Usurpers and Proud Tyrants: The Leadership of Fifth Century Britain

by Chris Thorndycroft

Many books have been written on the chaotic period preceding and following the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410 A.D., and it is perhaps because we know so little about it that there is so much to discuss.

A rough idea of how the four provinces of
Britain (created by the Diocletian Reform)
looked in the fifth century. Their
arrangement is still a matter of debate.

It was a time of invasions and rebellions. The Picts, once held in check by Hadrian’s Wall, swarmed down from the north. The Irish raided and settled in the west. Saxon and Gaulish pirates roved the Channel. To add to this, Britain was a hotbed of rebellion with the legions stationed there choosing their own candidates for the position of emperor leading to the abandonment of posts and lengthy wars on the continent.

Rome responded as best it could. Some sort of reshuffling of the military organization in the mid fourth century is evident in the creation of three new military posts mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum (The List of Offices). The first is the Comes Britanniarum; commander of the mobile field army on the island. The other two are the Dux Britanniarum (commander of the northern frontier including Hadrian’s Wall) and the Comes littoris Saxonici (commander of the Saxon Shore).

This last one is of interest for it seems to coincide with the building of several shore forts along the south-east coast. These ‘Saxon Shore’ forts may have been so named for their function as a defense against Saxon raiders or they may have been operated by mercenary Saxon frontier troops (foederati).

These measures eventually proved futile for in 407 a soldier stationed in Britain was declared ‘Constantine III of the Western Roman Empire’ and took all his troops with him to prove his point in Gaul, effectively leaving Britain open to attack. He was defeated and executed and in 410, Rome officially washed its hands of the troublesome province when Emperor Honorius told its leaders to “look to their own defences”.

Coin of Constantine III, the Roman general who was declared Western Roman
Emperor and removed the last vestiges of Roman authority from Britain.

But who were these leaders? What sort of government was left in the wake of the Roman withdrawal? With no official bodies connected to the Empire and no promise of military intervention from the continent, surely the island reverted back to a climate of chaotic tribalism?

Perhaps or perhaps not.

Portchester Castle, the Saxon shore fort of Portus
Adurni which became the outer bailey wall of a
Norman castle. Credit: Rob Nunn.

A monk called Gildas wrote his scathing On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain sometime in the sixth century and described some sort of council ruling Britain in those days. He also mentions a ‘proud tyrant’ or ‘unlucky usurper’ who invited a group of Saxons to settle on the eastern shores of Britain in order to repel the Picts.

This mysterious tyrant of the Britons has become a figure of particular interest from the period, as much as Hengest and Horsa and even King Arthur. ‘Vortigern’ is the name often given to him but even that is a matter of debate with various spellings including ‘Gwrtheyrn’, ‘Wyrtgeorn’ and ‘Guothergirn’. We do not even know if this was a personal name or a title but Vortigern seems to have been a figure of considerable power in fifth century Britain.

Bede, who wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in the eighth century, first provides the name as ‘Vertigernus’. It was also Bede who first named the leaders of the Saxons as ‘Hengist and Horsa’. As king of the British people, Vertigernus invites the Saxons to settle in Britain for pay. A condition of this was presumably engagement with the enemy who were “come from the north to give battle” and are later revealed to be the Picts.

This story is elaborated by the Bangor-born monk Nennius in his History of the British People, written sometime in the ninth century. A mixture of history and colourful local legend, this work is to be treated with caution but it does present a fascinating story.

Receiving Hengist and Horsa as friends, Vortigern (named here as Guorthirgirn) hands over the isle of Thanet in exchange for their service as foederati against the Picts. Hengist later sends for more of his countrymen who bring with them his beautiful daughter. A feast is held and Vortigern, plied with drink, falls so in love with Hengest’s daughter that he demands her in exchange for the whole of Kent. This is without the knowledge of Kent’s king; Guoyrancgonus.

So who was Vortigern really? Nennius’s ‘king of the British people’ is unlikely as Britain would have been in the throes of chaos after Rome’s withdrawal and the idea of a single king ruling the entire island is implausible. Gildas’s mentioning of a council is perhaps more probable and something aping the old Roman administrative system is easy to imagine with governors and tribunes devolving over time, back into chieftains and eventually kings.

It is possible that Vortigern is a title rather than a personal name as a literal translation from the Brittonic word appears as ‘overlord’ (‘wor’ = over and ‘tigerno’ = lord). But many scholars insist that this doesn’t prove anything as ‘tigerno’ appears in several personal names like ‘Catigern’ and ‘Kentigern’.

Vortigern’s family is outlined by Nennius who states that he had four sons; Vortimer, Catigern, Pascent and Faustus (son of his incestuous affair with his unnamed daughter). More information might be gleaned from the Pillar of Eliseg; a ninth century monument erected in Denbighshire, Wales by Cyngen ap Cadell, king of Powys.

The Latin text on the Pillar of Eliseg is now illegible due to weathering, but a transcription was made by the antiquarian Edward Llwyd in 1696. It claims that Guarthi(gern) (Vortigern) was married to Severa, the daughter of Magnus Maximus; the usurper who famously rebelled against Emperor Gratian. The pillar names the sons of this union as; Britu and Pascen(t), the latter of which is the ancestor of the kings of Powys.

If Vortigern really did marry Severa, daughter of Magnus Maximus, it would most likely have been before 388, which was when Maximus was defeated and executed (politically speaking, a marriage after this date would have been worthless). Severa could scarcely have been younger than seventy by 447 – the date traditionally associated with the arrival of Hengest and Horsa, making the Guarthi(gern) of the pillar a little old to be the Vortigern mentioned by Bede and Nennius.

Unless it referred to his father.

If Vortigern was indeed a title, it may have passed from father to son, making the Vortigern of later texts the son of the union between Guarthi(gern) and Severa.

So what then, was Vortigern’s real name? The History of the Britons gives his genealogy and his grandfather and great grandfather were called Guitaul (Vital) and Guitolion (Vitalin) respectively. This hints at a common family name that may have been something like ‘Vitalinus’ or ‘Vitalis’. Interestingly, Nennius goes on to say that during the reign of Vortigern, there was a battle between Ambrosius and Guitolinus (Vitalinus). Was this a separate person, or the given name for Britain’s ‘overlord’.

We don’t know what the battle was about or who won, but Ambrosius is a name well attested elsewhere. Gildas first mentions an Ambrosius Aurelianus who “perhaps alone of the Romans, had survived the shock of this notable storm. Certainly his parents, who had worn the purple, were slain by it.”

‘Wearing the purple’ could refer to the imperial colour, or perhaps the purple band worn by Roman military tribunes, so it seems that we are dealing with a noble of imperial stock or a high-ranking military commander. Gildas makes it clear that Ambrosius was some sort of military figure to which the Britons flocked (perhaps the last Comes Britanniarum). His wars with the Saxons ultimately culminated in the siege of Badon Hill (later sources like the History of the Britons credit Arthur as the victor of this battle, not Ambroisus).

As well as the aforementioned war between Ambrosius and Vitalinus, Nennius states that Vortigern eventually handed over all his lands and fortresses to Ambrosius, who granted a large share of them to Vortigern’s son Pascent. It certainly looks like Ambrosius won a significant victory over Vortigern in addition to his success against the Saxons.

The tale of the destruction and eventual death of Vortigern is dominated by the figure of Bishop Germanus of Auxerre. The Life of Saint Germanus, written in about 480 A.D. by Constantius of Lyons, states that Bishop Germanus and his companion, Bishop Lupus of Troyes, originally voyaged to Britain in about 429 A.D. to combat the Pelagian Heresy. There, through debate and preaching, they won many back to the Augustinian teachings.

As with the lives of many saints, miracles were also performed including the healing of a blind girl by the holding of Germanus’s reliquary to her eyes. Germanus even leads a British army against a confederation of Picts and Saxons and, by chanting the “Alleluia”, manages to rout the enemy without even having to strike a blow.

A later chapter reveals that Germanus returned to Britain (possibly around 447 A.D.) as Pelagianism was once again on the rise. A healing miracle is performed once again, this time for the crippled son of Elafius, described as a leading man in the country.

The Life of Saint Germanus makes no mention of Vortigern but Nennius further elaborates on Germanus’s second visit to Britain beginning with his confrontation of a tyrannical king called Benlli. After Benlli’s city is obliterated by “fire from heaven” Germanus raises a peasant called Catel Drunlue (Cadell Derynllug in the Welsh genealogies) to the position of king.

Germanus then goes to the court of Vortigern who has, much to everyone’s outrage, married his daughter and sired a son on her to whom Nennius gives the name ‘Faustus’. Germanus gives the boy razor, scissors and comb and tells him to present them to his true father. The boy gives these items to Vortigern who “arose in great anger, and fled from the presence of St. Germanus, execrated and condemned by the whole synod.”

Vortigern’s son, Vortimer, rises to the position left vacant by his father and wages war on Hengist and Horsa, driving them back to the isle of Thanet. Three more battles take place, the first upon the River Darent, the second at ‘Epsford’ (possibly Aylesford as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the battle as taking place at ‘Agaelesthrep’) where both Horsa and Vortimer’s brother Catigern fall. The last battle was “near the stone on the shore of the Gallic sea, where the Saxons being defeated, fled to their ships.”

Vortimer then mysteriously dies and, in a forerunner to the Welsh tale of Bran the Blessed, commands that his body be buried upon the spot where the Saxons first landed so that they may never land there again. His commands are ignored of course, resulting in the eventual Saxon conquest of most of Britain.

Vortigern returns to power on the death of his son and is invited by Hengist, along with his nobles and military officers, to a feast where, in the original Night of the Long Knives, his men butcher them all. Vortigern alone is allowed to live whom Hengist hopes to ransom for his daughter’s return. More land is turned over to the Saxons including “the three provinces of East, South, and Middle Sex.”

On the run again from the fury of Germanus, Vortigern flees to “the kingdom of the Dimetae where, on the river Towy, he built a castle, which he named Cair Guothergirn” (literally ‘Castle Vortigern’). Fire once again falls from heaven and destroys this castle, killing Vortigern, Hengist’s daughter and all its other inhabitants.

With obscure mentions of leaders like Elafius, a king called Benlli, a council, and a ‘proud tyrant’ called Vortigern, it seems clear that Britain was in a transitional phase at this time and was anything but united. From later genealogies provided in medieval Welsh sources, we can see that the ex-Roman province fragmented into many small kingdoms, each ruled by separate dynasties who could trace their lineage back to the likes of Cadell, the peasant given King Benlli’s throne by Bishop Germanus.

Ambrosius and Vortigern, whoever they were, also figure in genealogies and place names, suggesting that, if some sort of council had tried to maintain control over the island in the wake of the Roman withdrawal, it most likely gave out to laws of blood succession. Personal interests most likely won out as Britain’s leaders began to hoard territory and carve out their own lands which they ruled as kings, much in the same way that their enemies, the Saxons, did in the east, eventually giving rise to what we now call Wales and England.

Sources

William Fairley, Notitia Dignitatum or Register of Dignitaries, in Translations and Reprints from Original Sources of European History, Vol. VI:4 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, n.d.)

Williams, Hugh ed. and trans.: Gildas, The Ruin of Britain &c. (1899), Cymmrodorion Record Series, No. 3

Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. Leo Shirley-Price, (St Ives 1990)

Nennius: The Historia Brittonum, trans. John Allan Giles, in: Six Old English Chronicles, of which two are now first translated from the monkish Latin originals (George Bell and Sons, London 1891)

Constantius of Lyon: The Life of St. Germanus of Auxerre, eds. Thomas Noble and Thomas Head, translators, in: Soldiers of Christ: Saints' Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 75-106

www.vortigernstudies.org

[This is an Editor's Choice archive post, originally published on EHFA on 20th Jan, 2016]

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Chris Thorndycroft is the author of the Hengest and Horsa Trilogy which is set in 5th century Britain and involves Vortigern, Ambrosius Aurelianus and a whole host of other real figures of the period. He has also written the ghost story The Visitor at Anningley Hall (a prequel to M. R. James’s ‘The Mezzotint’). Visit his blog here; https://christhorndycroft.wordpress.com/

John Wesley and the Methodist Movement

by Gwen Tuinman

John Wesley

Had you been strolling a country road, in the early 1740s near Bristol or London, you may have observed John Wesley approaching on horseback. He’d have been oblivious to your presence with his face pressed close to his bible and reins laying slack across the horse’s neck. It may have been difficult to see in him, the man who’d withstand persecution by the Church of England, argue passionately for prison reform, or urge William Wilberforce to continue in his struggle to end slavery. But he did these things and more.

John Wesley, father of the Methodist Movement, spurred the faith of people – across England, Ireland, America and the Caribbean – by teaching that religion was meant for everyone regardless of social class and wealth. His teaching methods shadowed the same disciplined approach he applied to his own spiritual life. He strove not to create a new religion, but rather a new way of being Anglican, the church of which he was an ordained minister.

Samuel Wesley and Susanna Wesley

Born July 1703, John was the fifteenth child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley. Through their example, he became a devout man and an independent thinker. In September 1684, John’s father registered as a “Pauper Scholar” at Exeter College in Oxford, tutoring fellow students and serving their evening meal in order to finance tuition fees. Even as a Church of England clergyman, financial woes plagued Samuel Wesley. His loyalist politics, controversial poetry publications and delivery of verbose academia from the pulpit failed to interest parishioners.

The relationship between John’s parents was often stormy. His mother stood her ground in the face of marital disagreement, stating that “since I’m willing to let him quietly enjoy his opinions he ought not to deprive me of my liberty and conscience.” John’s father often sought refuge by traveling to London.

During one of Samuel’s absences, Susannah took dissatisfaction in the curate’s performance. She took the spiritual well being of her ten children in hand by conducting Sunday evening prayers that quickly expanded into sessions of worship. The rectory floor was soon filled with 200 worshipers, far exceeding the attendance of Sunday morning services. Samuel wrote to Susanna and requested that she give up her activities. She promised to desist, as an obedient wife, but warned Samuel that he would be responsible for these souls in need of saving. 

The rescue of the young John Wesley from the burning
parsonage at Epworth, Lincolnshire. 

John was only six years old when he awoke one February evening in 1709 to discover himself surrounded by flames. His family had been fully evacuated from the Epworth rectory, but it was only after taking a headcount that his parents realized he was missing. The fire’s heat prevented rescuers from reentering the house. John climbed onto a desk and shouted through a window. Onlookers formed a human ladder and boosted Samuel close to the window and John leapt into his arms. Seconds later, flaming timbers crashed into the room.

Susanna henceforth claimed that her son been saved for a higher purpose, “a brand plucked from the fire”. John Wesley would spend his life trying to determine and fulfill that purpose.

In 1715, at the age of ten, John Wesley left the rigours of his mother’s home schooling program for enrolment in Charterhouse School where he would spend the next six years. He was nominated for pauper scholar status by the Duke of Buckingham, lord chamberlain to King George and the patron credited with sustaining the Wesley family at Epworth. Following Queen Anne’s death that same year, Britannia’s enemies plotted for the return of a Catholic King. A failed rebellion in the Highlands led by the Earl of Mar, paved the way for the Whigs to label every Tory a traitor. The church became a place not for prayer and ministerial duties, but rather an opportunity for patronage and self-promotion. In his adult years, John Wesley would observe this system with disdain.

Hall of Christ Church, Oxford

By 1720, John was studying at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he partook in tennis, billiards, dances, plays and the company of several young women. Upon being elected a fellow at Lincoln College in 1726, he reevaluated his immersion in such social circles. Driven by a need to discover God’s purpose in sparing him from the fire, he directed every waking moment toward the methodical pursuit of faith, free from the commission of sin.

In that same year, his brother Charles joined him at Oxford. Together they discussed ways of living, praying and thinking in order to develop strict practices for a more holy life. Charles formed a group of students whose focus was to pray and study scripture. Fellow students mocked them by dubbing them the Holy Club. After a stint of working at his father’s parish, John returned to at Oxford and took over the running of the club. He operated it in near monastic style, with members fasting and taking communion each week. The Wesley brothers involved the group in aiding the unfortunate through prison visits, giving alms to the poor, organizing education for young children and a loans system of that enabled local tradesmen to purchase necessary tools. 

King George II and the Moravian Church

John became an ordained priest of the Church of England in 1728. Seven years later, he and Charles set sail for Savannah, Georgia, in America, with plans of converting natives to Christianity.

On the crossing to America their ship, The Simmonds, encountered a violent storm during which John made an important self-discovery. He lacked faith. Below deck, a group of Moravians continued their quiet worship. When John enquired after the source of their calmness, they answered that they were unafraid of death because salvation through grace was for anyone who would chose to follow Christ. 

John Wesley preaching to Native American Indians

Nearly two years later, John returned to England, defeated by the failure of his mission and a botched relationship with Sophia Hopkey, the magistrate’s niece. He became overwrought at his deficient faith. Why had he not experienced a transformation, as the Moravians had? “I went to America to convert the Indians, but oh, who shall convert me?”

John traveled to Germany along with friend and Moravian, Peter Böhler, on a quest to understanding Moravian beliefs. Böhler observed that John was ruled not by his head, but his heart, owing to his focus on strict practices. He recommended that John preach faith until he had faith. During a Moravian bible study, John experienced the spread of a warming sensation through his heart and he was filled with faith. He felt compelled to share salvation through grace with others. While he preached that man determined his fate, the church protected its Calvinist view by turning him away from their pulpits.

He reunited with George Whitfield, a Holy Club friend, who invited him to preach in the open air. The idea repelled John. The Church of England frowned upon the conduct of services outside of church walls. In 1739, John arrived in Bristol to attend Whitfield’s sermon in a field. He moved to preach at his own open air meeting two days later with tremendous results. 

John Wesley preaching outside a church

The outdoor meeting sites were not the rolling grassy meadow of a romantic novel, but rather dangerous locations like mines and brickfields where people battled for their very survival. In the absence of social welfare, schooling, and healthcare, people were considered a resource to be used up and tossed aside. Children toiled underground. The average life expectancy was 30 years old.

Audiences flocked to hear this never before heard message – God’s love was inclusive and they had only to believe in him to access heaven. Religion had never been extended to their class. Pew rents and lack of appropriate raiment prohibited their church attendance.

John Wesley’s ability to organize and educate proved vital in perpetuating the revival’s momentum. He understood that without teachings to grow in their faith, peoples’ enthusiasm would wane. He also insisted that pride in one’s social standing be cast aside. Each man should serve his neighbour, thus addressing the physical needs of the expanding Methodist flock.

To that end, he sectioned his followers into societies. Inside the societies were classes which were further divided into bands. If people had confidence in the leaders of the small groups, they could grow in faith. Lives would be changed.

The Circuit Rider

In 1732, John wrote to his mother, Susanna, asking for the guidelines she employed in educating himself and his siblings. Her approach to educating children had been methodical, with set hours and strict curriculum. Every week, she’d designated an hour for one-to-one time with each of her ten surviving children. Similarly, John visited each society according to a schedule, but as the number of societies grew, the task proved impossible. In 1743, he drafted General Rules for the operation of each society. Circuit preachers were appointed to visit the societies located across England and Ireland, classes of approximately a dozen people studied with a teacher each week, and annual conferences were held for the purpose of coordinating doctrine.

The New Room

The New Room, constructed in Broadmead, Bristol (1739), was the first building officially licensed for Methodist worship. The site functioned as a residence for John and a place for his preachers to come for instruction, inspiration and support.

Life was not easy for Methodist preachers as many people questioned their motivations. Even John Wesley had suffered physical attacks. He was beset by paid mobs, a prizefighter and once, by a bull purposefully released into a meeting. Although John and Charles were ordained Anglican ministers, many thought they were intent on attacking the Church of England. A challenge against the church equaled a challenge to the state and king. Some people feared the Wesleys were Catholic sympathizers intent upon rallying supporters to overthrow the king. Still others protested open air preaching, claiming that soul saving should be conducted inside a church.

John Wesley continued to open air preach, drawing crowds upwards of 10 000. He’d begin at daybreak and deliver three sermons a day always taking care that his worship times didn’t interfere with local church services.

By the end of his career, he had ridden over 250,000 miles on horseback, preached 40,000 sermons of which he published 5000 in pamphlets. At the time of his death, he’d 79,000 followers in England and 40,000 in America.

Remember John Wesley

This article is an Editor's Choice and was originally published January 27, 2017. 

Media Attributions:

John Wesley, oil painting by William Hamilton (1788) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Samuel Wesley (1662-1735) and Susanna Wesley (1669-1742) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The rescue of the young John Wesley from the burning parsonage at Epworth, Lincolnshire. Mezzotint by S.W. Reynolds after H.P Parker [Public doman] via Wikimedia Commons

Chromolithograph of the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford, from the book Old England: A Pictorial Museum of Regal, Ecclesiastical, Baronial, Municipal, and Popular Antiquities (published by Charles Knight and Co., London, 1845, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons] 

King George II and a group associated with the Moravian Church, attributed to Johann Valentin Haidt oil on canvas, circa 1752-1754, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons] 

John Wesley preaching to native American Indians. Engraving, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons] 

John Wesley preaching outside a church, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

Illustration from The Circuit Rider: A Tale of the Heroic Age by Edward Eggleston depicting a Methodist circuit rider on horseback. 1906, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons] 

The New Room: oldest Methodist chapel in the world, (Visual Hunt: Photo credit: Dogfael via Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-SA)]

Remember John Wesley, Wroot. Photo by E Asterion, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons] 

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Gwen Tuinman is a novelist, born and raised in rural southern Ontario, Canada. She currently lives near Toronto with her husband and two chickens. Gwen's storytelling is influenced by an interest in bygone days. She is nearing completion of her current novel, set in a dying paper mill town, and preparing to begin a second, involving characters pitted against the rugged Canadian forests of the 1800's. Her short fiction has been included in The Renaissance Anthology, and has been featured in an exhibit at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Research and reflections relative to her works in progress can be found at gwentuinman.com.

Connect with Gwen on Facebook, Twitter (@GwenTuinman), Instagram, and Pinterest. 

Cold Remedies Before the Modern Era: The Posset

by Lauren Gilbert

Being February, the subject of health, particularly the way to cope with colds and flu, is of great interest. In western medicine, we visit the doctor, or have a chat with a pharmacist. What did they do before modern medicine became available? Home remedies such as willow bark tea or a fever drink, a plaister for a sore throat (a warm wrap for the throat, accompanied by a mixture of honey, juice of houseleek and a little alum blended and taken on a liquorice stick) were possibilities. There was even a specific Recipe to cure a Cold in THE COMPLEAT HOUSEWIFE (containing Venice treacle [also known as theriac, a concoction going back to the Middle Ages of fermented herbs, animal parts, opium and honey], powdered snake root, powdered saffron, hartshorn, and syrup of cloves).

One popular remedy for colds and fevers was the posset.

Silver posset pot, London, England, 1698 

Possets were a fairly simple and nourishing concoction that would have been suitable for adults or children, and would have been easy to drink or eat. As other home remedies evolved (or disappeared), the posset seems to have been a staple, popular for centuries, which isn’t surprising as they were also eaten for pleasure.

Possets go back well before the Georgian or Victorian eras. The name itself goes back to the 15th century. Lady Macbeth slipped her drug into the guards’ possets in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth (Act II, Scene 2). King Charles I was supposedly given a posset by his physician in 1620. A similar word possenet or postnet refers to a small pot or sauce pan, which would have been a practical utensil for making a posset. In 1554, the Spanish ambassador gave Queen Mary I and her husband Philip of Spain a posset set that contained vessels for mixing and serving the possets and for the ingredients needed as a betrothal gift. Such sets could be made of silver, porcelain or pottery and were very popular, and are highly valuable today. (Queen Mary’s set was made of crystal, gold and gems.)

Posset pot with cover, tin-glazed earthen ware

The basic ingredients for a posset include milk or cream, eggs and some kind of alcoholic beverage. At its simplest, it appears that a posset would have been a creamy and nourishing beverage, soothing to a sore throat. There are a number of recipes for possets.

In ELINOR FETTIPLACE’S RECEIPT BOOK, her recipe (which may have come from her mother and go back years before 1647 when she left her book to her niece) contains cream brought to the boil, with egg yolks, nutmeg, sugar and breadcrumbs blended in together. Left to stand before the fire, it would thicken and curdle, at which sack (a fortified wine from Spain or the Canary Islands) and ale were blended it. This may have been more of a custard than a beverage, depending on the quantity of breadcrumbs used (and the taste of the cook).

In A SIP THROUGH TIME A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes, several recipes from 1669 appear. They range from a plain ordinary posset containing no spices, to more elaborate recipes including cinnamon, nutmeg, and ambergris (an excretion from whales found on the beach), and no thickener. These recipes would have resulted in a creamy beverage. There were also recipes with added thickeners including breadcrumbs (as used in Mrs. Fettiplace’s recipe) or French barley. The added thickeners would result in a heavier, more custard-like consistency. The alcohol used in these recipes was primarily Sack wine, varied with muscadine, which were blended with Rhenish or white wine sometimes. Ale did not appear in these recipes.

Eliza Smith included a couple of recipes for posset in her THE COMPLEAT HOUSEWIFE (16th edition, published in 1758), neither of which contained added thickeners. (The quantity of eggs alone would have been sufficient to form a custard consistency.) Both seem to have been designed to be eaten at the table.

Elizabeth Raffald’s THE EXPERIENCED ENGLISH HOUSEKEEPER of 1769 included instructions to temper the wine with hot cream or milk to prevent the posset from curdling. Mrs. Raffald included six recipes using Sack or Lisbon wine, brandy, or ale. She also featured a lemon posset that includes the juice of a lemon, Mountain wine, and orange flower water or French brandy. Although the sack, brandy and wine possets were dishes to be served with toast or tea wafers and eaten, the lemon, almond, and ale possets appear to be more of a beverage or soup consistency.

Posset cup, silver decorated with repouse work, 1764-1765,

Mistress Margaret Dods’ COOK AND HOUSEWIFE’S MANUAL from the mid-1820’s included a sack posset with cream thickened with grated sweet biscuits (cookie crumbs) which was sweetened and spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg; a variation used milk and eggs (instead of the cream and crumbs). Her instructions include warming the wine before adding it. She recommended “pour it quickly from one vessel to another till perfectly smooth....”(1) (Based on these instructions, a consistency similar to modern eggnog or a bit thicker might be expected). There was also an ale posset thickened with breadcrumbs and sweetened but not spiced. This one is ready to be served when the head (curd) rises, so a spoon would have been helpful. 

Instructions with these recipes, especially the earlier versions, allow a cook a great deal of leeway in preparation. For the wealthy, the exotic spices, sugar and wine would have been easily procured. For those of lower income, ale and honey could have been substituted. It can be made with or without eggs. A variation of the posset would have been available to many households to provide a measure of warmth and comfort to a family member suffering from a fever or a cold. A posset would also be a welcome and soothing treat, especially if particular tired or distressed.

Lemon posset with almond bread 

Possets are still enjoyed today as a dessert. A simple internet search will generate numerous recipes for possets for the modern cook. (Lemon posset seems to be particularly popular these days.) With a consistency somewhere between a pudding and a custard, the posset can be found on menus and tables. Even though we would not consider them a medicament, their soothing sweetness is still enjoyed after all these centuries.

(1) Dods, Mistress Margaret. COOK AND HOUSEWIFE’S MANUAL. Page 463.

Image credits

Silver posset pot, London, England, 1698, Science Museum, London, Wellcome Images (CC BY 4.0) http://wellcomeimages.org

Posset pot with cover, tin-glazed earthen ware (British, Bristol, early 18th Century) Metropolitan Museum of Art / CC0

Posset cup, silver decorated with repouse work, 1764-1765, Wellcome Library, London. (CC BY 4.0)

Lemon posset with almond bread by jules, CC BY

Sources include:

Dods, Mistress Margaret. COOK AND HOUSEWIFE’S MANUAL. First published 1829 by Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh. This edition was published in 1988 by Rosters Ltd., London.

Raffald, Elizabeth. THE EXPERIENCED ENGLISH HOUSEKEEPER. First published 1769. This edition was published in 1997 by Southover Press, Lewes.

Renfrow, Cindy. A SIP THROUGH TIME A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes. 4th printing April 2008.

Smith, Eliza. THE COMPLEAT HOUSEWIFE. The Sixteenth Edition, with Additions. First published in 1758. This edition published 1994 by Studio Editions Ltd., London.

Spurling, Hilary. ELINOR FETTIPLACE’S RECIPT BOOK. Published 1986 by Penguin Books Ltd., Harmondsworth.

Britishfoodhistory.com “Possets” posted April 28, 2012.

Theguardian.com “Historic recipes: Sack posset, a rich pudding to cure all ills” by Regula Ysewijn, posted April 7, 2016.

Pepysdiary.com “Posset”. (Copied from Wikimedia 12 February 2020).

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Lauren Gilbert lives in Florida with her husband. Her first book, HEYERWOOD: A Novel was published in 2011. She has articles in CASTLES, CUSTOMS AND KINGS volumes 1 and 2. She has just released her second novel, A RATIONAL ATTACHMENT, and is working on a non-fiction book. Visit her website or her Facebook author page for more information.

What to do about the nudes? Women Artists & the Slade School of Art, Victorian London

By Karen Odden

The Slade School of Fine Art in London is currently ranked as the top art and design school in the UK—but like so many of my favorite elements of England(!), it has its origins in the Victorian period. In 1868, a forward-thinking lawyer and philanthropist named Felix Slade (1788-1868) donated funds to create three Chairs in fine art, based at Oxford, Cambridge, and University College London. Students would only be taught in London—and, in an unprecedented condition set by the founder, women and men at this new school would study art together.

This directive was met with consternation and resistance—for what should be done about the anatomical drawing classes, with live nudes present? The accommodation made was to place the men and women in separate classrooms for the live models, draping the loins when desired. The drawing of nude marble statues, however, was done together.

 Requiring that women be admitted on equal footing with men was a significant swerve away from norms and set a new path for the University College London. Significantly, the Annual General Meeting Report of 1872 recorded that women were permitted to compete for scholarships, and during the first four years, four women and four men were awarded scholarships; the first two recipients in 1872 were women.

The first Chair hired was Edward Poynter, an esteemed artist who painted in the popular “Aesthetic” style which valued “l’art pour l’art” (art for art’s sake).

Poynter - Portrait by Legros

The son of an architect, Poynter was born in Paris. His early education was in England, but he returned to Paris for his training in art, attending the studio of Charles Glevre, where James McNeill Whistler and George du Maurier were also students. Well known for his large historical paintings, he served as professor at the Slade from 1871, when it opened, until 1875, when Alphonse Legros, a friend of Whistler, was given the Chair and Poynter took a position as principal of the National Art Training School.

One of the earliest students at the Slade was Kate Greenaway (1846-1901), the daughter of a working-class engraver who had once been commissioned to create the wood-cut illustrations for Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. So from childhood, Kate—an avid reader—was acquainted with the relationship between books and art. When she was twelve, she enrolled in the Finsbury School, in night classes, which were open to women. The curriculum leaned toward the training of artisans in the design of geometric materials such as wallpaper and tile, rather than the more imaginative, creative arts of painting and sculpture.

Subsequently she moved to the Royal Female School of Art, where she became friends with Elizabeth Thompson, with whom she shared a studio. Together they honed their craft, and Kate was able to draw figures from plaster casts and costumed figures but was frustrated that she was unable to practice anatomical drawing from nudes—which was finally permitted when she moved to the Slade. Even before she arrived there, however, Kate had exhibited and sold her work. She received commissions for illustrations for children’s books, exhibited her watercolors, and had been hired by the successful greeting card company Marcus Ward & Co. where she was praised for her “special talent … in the direction of costume figures and dainty colours.” Kate continued her education, studying painters and illuminated manuscripts at the National Gallery and British Museum, and made her living illustrating books, designing bookplates, and exhibiting her work both in England and America. In 1955, the annual Kate Greenaway Medal was established to honor an illustrator of children’s books.

Greenaway illustrated "Diamonds and Toads" for Frederick Warne & Co in 1871.

Another early Slade student is one of my favorite Victorian artists—Evelyn de Morgan, born Mary Evelyn Pickering (1855-1919) to upper-class parents, descended from landowners, politicians, artists, and nobility. Educated at home, she was tutored in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, classical mythology, literature, and science, like her brother. As a child, she poured her creativity into poetry, which reflects the spiritual and feminist themes she would explore later in her painting. She found daily tasks expected of women tedious and reportedly told her father that if she were forced to attend the Drawing Room to be presented to society, she would “kick the Queen.” Struggling to be taken seriously as an artist, she entered the Slade in 1873 and won one of the prestigious Slade scholarships. Around this time, she began to use her middle name, Evelyn (think Evelyn Waugh), which was used for both men and women, so that her work would be judged on its merits rather than her gender. She made meticulous studies of the human form, paying particular attention to hands and feet, which many artists find challenging. After graduating from the Slade, she sold her works to prominent members of society, and she became friendly with painters in the pre-Raphaelite movement including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. In 1887, she married William De Morgan, a ceramicist whom she helped to support; later he became a novelist and freed Evelyn from the need to sell her work. Although her artistic style changed over her fifty-year career, her paintings are generally figural, often allegorical, and gorgeous, and many were displayed in various galleries and museums throughout England during her lifetime.

“The Love Potion,” 1903 

Since the 1870s, women have been included in every class. The Slade School currently offers degrees from the BA/BFA through the PhD, and according to its site, the Slade approaches “the practice of contemporary art and the history and theories that inform it in an experimental, research-oriented and imaginative way.” You can find the Slade in Gower Street, with its easily identifiable façade (illustration); and the University College London Art Museum nearby houses reserve collections, available for viewing by appointment, that include prize-winning work from the Slade students as well as works by Old Master artists and sculptural masterpieces. The closest tube station is Euston Square.

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Karen Odden earned her PhD in English literature from New York University, where she wrote her dissertation on representations of railway disasters in Victorian medical, legal, and popular literature, tracing our current ideas about “trauma” back to a time before the shell-shock of WWI to the railway disasters of the 1850s-1880s. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; her critical essays on Victorian literature have appeared in numerous books and journals; and for nearly a decade, she served as an assistant editor for the academic journal Victorian Literature and Culture. Her first Victorian mystery, A LADY IN THE SMOKE, was a USA Today bestseller, and her second novel, A DANGEROUS DUET, won for best Historical Fiction at the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards. Her third, A TRACE OF DECEIT, was published in December 2019 by William Morrow. She lives in Arizona with her family and her beagle-muse, Rosy.

www.karenodden.com

twitter: @Karen_odden

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The Seventeenth Century Library

by Deborah Swift

As soon as the printing press had opened up the world of print, people couldn't get enough books. What were once luxury items, individually copied for one particular patron, were now mass-produced for the first time, and in the 17th century, publishers and booksellers proliferated.

A seventeenth century print works

Many of these new publishers began as printing or bookseller apprentices. After their apprenticeship, they saw the profits made from books and opened their own businesses. Book piracy is nothing new, the reprinting of a popular book in its entirety without the permission of either author or publisher was a common practice, and booksellers openly sold these unauthorised editions. Some of these facsimiles even ended up in libraries.

Just like today, not all printing was accurate and seventeenth century typos were rife. Due to the vagaries of spelling in this period, which was not standardized, mistakes with the type-setting could easily be made. But one error was particularly disastrous - in 1631, the word ‘not’ was left out in a reprint of the King James Bible. King Charles I and the Archbishop of Canterbury were somewhat taken aback to read the commandment: Thou shalt commit adultery.

Barker and Lucas, the printers who produced it, immediately had their printing license revoked. All the bibles were ordered to be destroyed, but eleven escaped the cull, and still exist today. This version is now known as The Wicked Bible, the Adulterous Bible or the Sinner’s Bible.

In this period there were many ecclesiastical libraries, but not many had escaped Henry VIII's hatchet job on Catholicism. One example is the 17th century library at Winchester, named after Bishop Morley, whose books are part of the collection. Behind the beautifully carved bookcases, grooves can still be found where secret compartments were made to hide the communion vessels and other paraphernalia. In 1688, when the King had been restored, this library was constructed to hold rare medieval manuscripts such as the illuminated Winchester Bible.

Morley Library Winchester

With the burgeoning popularity of books in this period, it was unsurprising that someone would come up with the idea of a public library. One of the first ever libraries was founded in Birmingham between 1635 and 1642, by Puritan minister Francis Roberts. A building to house the library was finished in 1656, and the accounts of the High Bailiff of Birmingham for 1655 include 3 pounds, 2 shillings and 6 pence paid to Thomas Bridgens towards buildinge ye library. It was obviously meant to be of use to scholars because £126 2s 9d was paid out the next year for buildinge the library, repayreing the Schoole and schoole-masters' houses. This library was one of the first public libraries in England, but its Puritan roots led to the collection being broken up once the King was restored in 1660. It is so fascinating how such precious books have been either banned or preserved by the different religious factions of the day. The Birmingham library doesn't survive in its original seventeenth century building.

St John's Library Cambridge

Another notable library founded in this time is the Jacobean St John's College Library, Cambridge. There is a great artcle here about its history. Its shelves were categorised by lists in the 17th century and these hand-written labels still exist, with the following headings: philologi, philosophi, medici, theologi recentiores, theologi scholastici, historici ecclesiastici, SS Patres, liturgica, biblia sacra, concilia, iurisconsulti, lexicographi, historici, mathematici. So you can see that most libraries were heavily weighted towards scripture.

In Scotland, The Leighton Library, or Bibliotheca Leightoniana, in Dunblane is the oldest purpose built library in Scotland. Take a tour of it on the Youtube video above. It houses about four thousand books from the 16th to the 19th century. Robert Leighton, the then bishop of Dunblane and archbishop of Glasgow, had left the books to Dunblane Cathedral, and these were the bedrock of the collection. Built with £100 from the late Archbishop Leighton, this modest and unassuming building was completed in 1687. The structure is one long panelled room, with two stone vaults below, lit by windows to the south and west. During World War II, it was used as an air-raid shelter and had fallen into neglect, but more recently renovation, repair, and cataloging was carried out, and the library was officially re-opened in May 1990.

Pepys's custom-built bookcases

A more personal library of the time was Pepys's library, which is housed at Magdalene College, since the death of his nephew, John Jackson, His three thousand books, are the end product of a lifetime’s love for books, as evidenced in his diary. The books are housed in twelve matching and sumptuous late seventeenth-century oak bookcases. The collection's fine leather bindings, mostly commissioned by Pepys himself, are of the highest quality, showing how much he held his books in regard, and how much he wanted to show them off. Not everyone could afford to commission cases, and in the 17th century, books were often stored in coffers or trunks. There is a story of a young lad called Grotius escaping persecution and prison in a trunk used to carry books. The prison was Loevestein Castle, a state prison in the Spanish Netherlands, and he made his escape in 1621. Read the story here.

The book chest in which Grotius hid

Also popular in the seventeenth century were travelling libraries of miniature books - especially the Bible and books of Psalms or other religious tracts. Below is one that was brought up for auction recently and dates from 1627. Often these were put together in a series, like in the one below.

This 17th century Travelling Library is delightful, and contains forty volumes. While scholars don’t know exactly who made it, they believe it was commissioned by William Hakewill, an MP, a lawyer, a student of legal history, and an early member of the Society of Antiquaries. The miniature library was held in a wooden case, covered in brown turkey leather,effectively disguising it as one large volume, but it contains three shelves of books, each bound in vellum and tooled with gold-leaf.
The books include works by Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Horace and Julius Caesar. Hakewill seems to have given four similar sets as gifts to friends in the years 1617 and 1618. You can read more about the collection in this Daily Mail article, which calls this set of books 'the Seventeenth Century Kindle'.

Pictures from wikipedia, unless linked.
Sources ;
Samuel Pepys - Tomalin
Every One a Witness - Wolfenden
Voices from The World of Samuel Pepys - Bastable

This article is an Editor's Choice and was originally published on September 26, 2016.

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Deborah Swift is the author of nine historical novels as well as the Highway Trilogy for teens (and anyone young at heart!). So far, her books have been set in the 17th Century or in WW2, but she is fascinated by all periods of the past and her new novel will be set in the Renaissance. Deborah lives on the edge of the beautiful and literary English Lake District – a place made famous by the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge.

For more information of Deborah's published work, visit her Author Page. 

A Thought for Edward VI on a Difficult Day for Him

by Janet Wertman

Despite his enormous promise, Edward VI was a tragic figure, on so many levels.

The first level involves the wrongs his father did to get him. Henry VIII firmly believed he needed a male heir. When his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, proved unable to fulfill this obligation after twenty years of marriage, Henry abandoned her. That the Pope disagreed didn’t matter – Henry abandoned the Catholic Church as well, founding the Church of England to seal his right to remarry. Then when Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, birthed only a daughter and experienced several miscarriages, Henry had her executed on trumped up charges to pave the way for the third wife who would finally give him the son he craved. Jane Seymour, Edward’s mother, is often said to have “walked through Anne’s blood” for her title. In Jane’s defense, we must remember that she paid for the privilege with her life.

The second level involves the circumstances of Edward’s youth. His mother died in childbirth, and his first two stepmothers were little involved in his life. Edward got lucky with his third stepmother, Katherine Parr, who finally gave the five-year old prince a real experience of family life. Life further opened up to him as other children were brought into his household to share his life and his education.

Barnaby Fitzpatrick, the son of an Irish peer, became his whipping boy (since Edward’s teachers could not in good conscience administer corrective beatings to “this whole realm’s most precious jewel”). Still, the fear that surrounded the young prince must have been oppressive: Henry was terrified that something would happen to his only son. Very few people were allowed to visit Edward’s household out of fear of the plague. All of his food was tasted. Every servant was schooled in the rigorous standards of security and cleanliness that Henry imposed. Such constant caution would inevitably be deeply internalized.

Even when Edward acceded to the throne, things did not improve by much. He was so young, only nine years old. This is wonderfully captured in many of the unintentionally poignant entries in his Chronicle (which was, in the words of Wilbur Kitchener Jordan, “in part private diary, in part an educational exercise, and in part considered notes on policy and administration”), like the one he wrote about his coronation, in which he proudly described how he had dined with his crown on his head. Yet the real power belonged to his uncle, Edward Seymour Duke of Somerset, who was named Lord Protector to rule while Edward was still a minor. Importantly, this went against Henry VIII’s wishes – Henry hadn’t wanted anyone to be in a position to divert power from his son: he had envisioned a “Regency Council” that would rule collectively. Nevertheless, Somerset was able to quickly seize control thanks in large part to a last-minute “unfulfilled gifts clause” added to Henry’s will under the dry seal that allowed the executors to distribute lavish gifts to their friends.

Unfortunately, Somerset was not as respectful of his young nephew as he should have been. Somerset was proud and self-interested and kept the young King dependent on him for as much as he could. This encouraged Somerset’s younger brother, Thomas Seymour, to hatch a scheme to replace Somerset as proxy ruler. In the middle of the night on December 16, 1549, Seymour tried to break into the sleeping King’s apartments at Hampton Court Palace. He made it into the privy garden (he had keys), but one of the King’s pet spaniels started barking. Seymour shot and killed it, which brought guards running. There was no defense for being outside the King’s bedroom in the middle of the night with keys and arms – and using them both. It was alleged that Seymour’s plan was to kidnap the King, perhaps force him to marry Lady Jane Grey (Seymour’s ward); this was treason enough. It was suspected that he might himself marry the King’s sister Elizabeth then kill the King and seize the throne. There could be no mercy. Thomas Seymour’s was the first death warrant that Edward VI had to sign, and today is the anniversary of Seymour’s execution (a topic I have covered in a companion post on my own blog, I hope you’ll visit!).

And as if sentencing one uncle to death wasn’t bad enough, less than two years later the not-even-fifteen-year-old King had to do it again. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, engineered a coup d’etat against Somerset. The charges were less clear than the ones against Thomas Seymour, but no less deadly. Edward himself summarized them in his Chronicle as "ambition, vainglory, entering into rash wars in mine youth, negligent looking on Newhaven, enriching himself of my treasure, following his own opinion, and doing all by his own authority, etc." Although Somerset survived this plot, he tried to fight back against Warwick (who had by then become the Duke of Northumberland) – and lost. That was fatal. To use Edward VI’s own words again, on January 22, 1552 "the duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o'clock in the morning".

The next year was a good one for Edward VI – Northumberland made every effort to incorporate him into the running of the government. But then the young King fell ill from what is now believed to have been tuberculosis. As death approached, the fervent Protestant grew terrified at the idea that his staunchly Catholic sister Mary would inherit his throne. He created his own Devise for the Succession which bypassed both his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, and settled the crown on his cousin, Lady Jane Grey. It is not clear whose idea this was, but we do know that Northumberland stood to benefit greatly from this arrangement: Lady Jane Grey was married to his son. Regardless, the Devise failed when England rallied behind Mary as the next rightful heir (in case you were wondering, Northumberland was the first person executed during Mary’s reign).

Tragic all around.

***

SOURCES:

The Chronicle of Edward VI

Wilbur Kitchener Jordan, England’s Boy King: The Diary of Edward VI (1966)

Wikipedia, Luminarium

This Editor's Choice was originally published on March 19, 2015.
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Janet Wertman is a freelance grant writer by day and a writer of historical fiction by night. Books 1 & 2 of the Seymour Saga will be joined in 2020 by The Boy King, which will cover the reign of Jane’s son, Edward VI.

Janet regularly blogs about the Tudors and what it’s like to write about them. Connect with Janet:  Website: https://www.janetwertman.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/janetwertmanauthor/

Beowulf: The Mound and the Dragon

By Mark Patton.

In earlier blog-posts, I explored the survival of the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, and the likely contexts for the poem's performance in the mead-halls of Anglo-Saxon royal courts. Kim Rendfeld has also discussed the origins of the two monsters that the eponymous hero has to defeat in the early stages of the poem, Grendel and his terrifying mother. These early conflicts represent a rite of passage that rulers in the real world of the early Middle Ages had to go through as they came of age. Beowulf is of royal blood, but must prove himself in battle before he can take his rightful place as his father's heir: a king who could not deliver victory in battle was not a king worthy of the title at all.

In the final section of the poem, however, Beowulf is, in his own right, King of the Geats (a people who lived in part of what is now Sweden), a successful warrior and respected ruler. One might think that he had nothing more to prove, but that's not how early Medieval kingship worked: a king always had something to prove, and the final proof was that of his own mortality, something that hangs particularly heavily over Beowulf and his people, since he has no son or heir to succeed him.

Beowulf's last encounter is with a different sort of monster, a dragon:

" ... the wide kingdom reverted to Beowulf. He ruled it well
for fifty winters, grew old and wise
as warden of the land
until one began
to dominate the dark, a dragon on the prowl
from the steep vaults of a stone-roofed barrow
where he guarded a hoard; there was a hidden passage,
unknown to men, but someone managed
to enter by it and interfere
with the heathen trove. He had handled and removed
a gem-studded goblet; it gained him nothing,
though with a thief's wiles he had outwitted
the sleeping dragon; that drove him into rage,
as the people of that country would soon discover."
(Translation by Seamus Heaney).

The awakened dragon wreaks vengeance on the entire community, and, although he was not the thief, it is Beowulf's duty, as protector of his people, to deal with it, even at the cost of his own life.

The "barrow" is recognisable as a burial mound, thousands of years older than the Seventh or Eighth Century poem. Since it is in Scandinavia, it is probably a Neolithic "passage grave," built by early farming people between five and six thousand years ago, but the "long-barrows" of England and Wales are of similar antiquity and significance.

The "passage grave" of Tustrup, Denmark. Photo: Malene Thyssen (licensed under GNU).

The "long barrow" of Wayland's Smithy, Oxfordshire. Photo: Dick Bauch (licensed under CCA). Wayland the Smith is a figure from Anglo-Saxon and Nordic mythology, so the monument must have been known to the contemporaries of the Beowulf poet. 

Although the Stone Age people who built these monuments had no knowledge of metal-working, objects of bronze and gold were sometimes placed in them by later people, either as ritual offerings or for safekeeping. There are also individual burial mounds, "round barrows," built during the Bronze Age, three to four thousand years ago, both in England and Scandinavia.

"Round barrows" on the Dorset Ridgeway. Photo: Jim Champion (licensed under CCA).

For the people of the Middle Ages, prehistoric burial mounds (whether "passage graves," "long barrows," or "round barrows") were distinctive features of the landscape, places of mystery and fear, but also places where a man, if he were brave enough, might dig in search of treasure.

The Rillaton gold cup dates to the Bronze Age (1700-1500 BC), and was found in a "round barrow" in Cornwall. Photo: Fae (licensed under CCA).

The Ringlemere gold cup is of similar antiquity (it may even have been made by the same goldsmith), and was found on a site in Kent where Anglo-Saxon burial mounds sit alongside those of the Bronze Age. Photo: Dominic Coyne (licensed under CCA).

The "passage grave" of Maes Howe, on the Mainland of Orkney, provides a remarkable parallel to the story of Beowulf. The Orkneyinga Saga tells how, in the year 1153, a party of Norsemen entered the monument, and took refuge there: "On the thirteenth day of Christmas they traveled on foot over to Firth. During a snowstorm they took shelter in Maeshowe, and two of his men went insane, which slowed them down badly, so that, by the time they reached Firth, it was night time."

The "passage grave" of Maes Howe. Photo: Tim Bekaert (image is in the Public Domain).

The archaeological evidence shows that Maes Howe really was entered, on at least one occasion, by Medieval Norsemen, who carved runic inscriptions on the stone walls. Some of these are timeless and predictable graffiti: "Inigerth is the most beautiful of all women ... Thorni f****d, Helgi carved." Others, however, refer to treasure: "Crusaders broke into Maeshowe: Lif, the Earl's cook, carved these runes. To the north-west is a great treasure hidden. It was long ago that a great treasure was hidden here. Happy is he that might find that great treasure. Hakon alone bore treasure from this mound, signed, Simon Sirith."

Runic inscriptions at Maes Howe. Photo: Islandhopper (licensed under GNU).

The"dragon" of Maes Howe. Image: Islandhopper (licensed under GNU).

There is even a picture of a dragon. Was it fear of this that drove later intruders insane? Did Hakon and Simon Sirith really find treasure, or had their imaginations been ignited by an oral performance of Beowulf, or a similar poem? Might it really still have been being performed (almost certainly in another language - Old Norse, rather than Anglo-Saxon), five centuries after it was composed, and one hundred and fifty years after the only written version to have survived was placed in a monastic library? Neither history nor archaeology provide definitive answers to these questions, but fiction can travel where the historian and archaeologist cannot go.

"Conversation with Smaug," by J.R.R. Tolkien ("The Hobbit"). Tolkien, who taught Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and translated "Beowulf," drew extensively on the poem, and on the tradition to which it belongs, in his own fictional writing (image reproduced under fair usage protocols). 

[This is an Editors' Choice post, originally published on 17 August, 2017]

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Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. He is a published author of historical fiction and non-fiction, whose books can be purchased from Amazon.