Escape!

By Michael Paul Hurd

Charles II’s Royalist army was defeated by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army at Worcester on 3 September 1651. Following the defeat, Charles II became a fugitive for the next six weeks, before he successfully escaped to Normandy, France, on the morning of 15 October 1651. During his fugitive period, Charles II covered a circuitous 625-mile (1006 km) route from Worcester to Shoreham and were almost captured on several occasions. The route of Charles II’s escape is known as “The Monarch’s Way” and is signposted as a Public Footpath in its entirety. Charles II himself recounted the exact details of his escape to the Earl of Clarendon, Samuel Pepys (pronounced “peeps”), and his personal physician, Doctor George Bate. There were few discrepancies in the accounts recorded by each of the three men.

During his time as a fugitive, Charles II apparently gained a new appreciation for the life of the common man in England and how badly the populace had been affected by the English Civil Wars. Traveling in disguise most of the time and without a significant entourage, he relied on loyal subjects and Catholic noblemen for concealment. The subterfuge was elaborate: Charles was at times dressed as a common field hand, had his coiffure changed to match the locals, and even had what would have been the equivalent of a “dialect coach” to teach him how to speak and walk like a local laborer instead of an educated royal. At other times, he adopted an alias.

One of his most notable situations was his brief stay at Boscobel House in Shropshire, on 6 and 7 September 1651. There, Charles spent all day hiding – and even sleeping -- in a nearby oak tree while Parliamentary forces searched nearby. This tree later became known as the “Royal Oak” and a descendant of that tree still stands on Boscobel grounds. The King’s companion at the time, a Colonel Charles Careless, hid with Charles inside the oak tree and was responsible for alerting the King to imminent danger. Meanwhile, Boscobel House caretakers were detained and questioned by Parliamentary forces at the local militia headquarters but somehow managed to convince their interrogators that the King had never been on Boscobel House grounds, nor the White Ladies priory in particular.

So loyal were the Boscobel caretakers that they did not surrender Charles’s location to the Parliamentarian militia, even when reminded that there was a £1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the King and that the penalty for harboring the royal fugitive was “death without mercy.” However, the proximity of the militia to Charles’s location of concealment emphasized the importance of getting Charles out of England as quickly as possible.

Boscobel House - Image Attribution

Once again, Charles was on the move. His next exploits involved assuming the identity of a servant accompanying a woman who had a travel pass from the Parliamentarian military to visit a friend who was about to have a baby in Abbots Leigh, Somerset. Charles rode with the woman on a single horse, which threw a shoe during the journey. Because Charles had assumed the identity of a servant, it was his responsibility to take the horse to a local blacksmith; there, he engaged in a conversation with the blacksmith. In Charles’s own dictation of the escape to Samuel Pepys, he claimed to have told the blacksmith that “the rogue, Charles Stuart… deserved to be hanged more than all the rest…” Later, the King continued the ruse as a servant and was put to work in the kitchen, tending to a joint of meat roasting in the fireplace. He was inept at winding up the apparatus, and even claimed that he came from such poor beginnings that his family rarely ate meat, hence the inability to operate the roasting jack.

The exploits of the escape became even more elaborate over the next couple of weeks. His loyal accomplices tried to locate available ships to depart from Bristol; there were none available for at least the next month. Finding a hiding place in Trent while two Royalist officers tried to find a ship to sail from Lyme Regis or Weymouth, Charles himself witnessed a celebration by the local villagers who believed that he had been killed at Worcester. No one had recognized him. He later traveled with Juliana Coningsby, a niece of Lady Wyndham (who was the wife of accomplice Colonel Wyndham), pretending to be an eloping couple. They reached the market town of Bridport but found that the town was filled with Parliamentary troops. Charles boldly walked through the town to the best inn and arranged for rooms. He was almost recognized at the inn, but deflected and convinced the ostler that they had been servants together in the employ of a Mr. Potter in Exeter.

After the encounters in Bridport, the escape became much more complicated, but eventually Charles and his longtime traveling companion, Lord Wilmot, reached Brighthelmstone (now known as Brighton). There, the King was recognized by a former servant of the royal household under Charles I. This recognition was immediately problematic for the King; the captain of the vessel that was to transport him and Wilmot to France demanded an additional £200 as “danger money” before he would set sail. On the morning of 15 October 1651, Charles and Wilmot boarded the “Surprise”, sailing at the next high tide, around 7 a.m. A mere two hours later, Parliamentarian cavalry arrived in the village of Shoreham with orders to arrest the King.

Lord Wilmot

The previous narrative is an extreme oversimplification of Charles II’s escape to France. However, throughout the journey, Charles II repeatedly crossed paths with commoners and even assumed the identities of common servants; this is believed to have given him a thorough appreciation for their plight. When he returned to England nine years later at the request of Parliament following the death of Richard Cromwell, England was in political turmoil and the religiously divided House of Commons welcomed the Declaration of Breda in mid-1660. In this declaration, Charles II promised tolerance and liberty. He even promised not to exile past enemies nor confiscate their wealth.

Some historians have characterized Charles II as a popular King and a legendary celebrity in British history. Others have cited his ineptitude and poor judgment as contributing to a series of poorly prosecuted wars in the latter half of the 17th Century. Regardless of the bifurcated opinions, Charles II managed to guide Great Britain out of a period of extended political turmoil and towards the evolution into a constitutional monarchy under the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Acts of Settlement (1701).  These documents actually formed the basis for the United States Constitution, ratified approximately 100 years later.

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Michael Paul Hurd retired from full-time employment in 2018 and began writing his first historical fiction novel in August of that year. His “Lineage Series” of novels projects the touchpoints of his family onto events in history on both sides of the Atlantic. Genealogical research indicated that he is a distant relative of Jane Giffard, wife of Sir John Giffard, MP (1466-1556) and their line, which at one time owned Boscobel House. Married to his wife, Sandy (daughter of a British emigrant to the United States), for nearly 40 years, he spent over a decade working in the United Kingdom, from 1983-1994. There he took an interest in British history, studying under Dr. Sid Brown of Leeds University. Fourteen novels are planned for Hurd’s “Lineage Series,” several of which will involve topics relevant to British history as they evolve out of the vignettes of the first book in the series. 

Connect:

https://lineage-publishing.com/

Buy:

https://amazon.com/author/hurdm

Tea Rooms and the Women’s Suffrage Movement

by Anita Davison

The Gardenia

Until the 1880’s it was not considered respectable for a woman to eat or drink in public either alone or in the company of other women. Kate Frye, an organiser for the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage, stayed in a Norfolk hotel while organising suffrage meetings. Her diary of 22nd March 1911 states:

Came in, had my lunch [in the hotel dining room] in company with four motorists. It is funny the way men come in here and, seeing me, shoot out again and I hear whispered conversations outside on the landing with the waitress. Then they come in very subdued and make conversation one to another and try not to look at me. Awfully funny – they might never have seen a woman before – but I suppose it does seem a strange place to find one.

Some enterprising business men, and women, saw the need for a haven for women away from the home, especially those providing female rest rooms. Thus cafes and tea rooms started to appear in the west end. These proved immediately popular for suffragists who would gather there or hire adjoining rooms in which to organise their activities and hold meetings.

The smarter restaurants were Slaters, Fullers, and The Criterion Restaurant Room at Piccadilly Circus. Smaller establishments were Alan’s Tea Rooms at 263 Oxford Street, The Tea Cup Inn, Kingsway, and the Gardenia, a vegetarian Restaurant in Catherine Street, Covent Garden.

Some of these cafes were part of chains, like the ABC, founded in the 1880s, and Lyons in 1894, catering for upper-working-class and lower-middle-class women who could sit at separate tables and be served, not by waiters, but by waitresses.

Alan’s Tea Rooms

Corner of Alans Tea Rooms

Alan’s was located on the first floor of No 263 Oxford Street, close by Jay's fashion store. The red brick building, constructed circa 1864, had a semi-circular arcaded Venetian style window, an early-19thc-style fireplace, and contained arts and crafts furniture with slightly splayed legs and high stick-backs chairs with rush seats.

The owner was 34 year old Miss Marguerite Alan Liddle, the daughter of a Shropshire solicitor. She employed her brother, Alan who lent his name to the café, as a manager. When Emmeline Pankhurst split from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies [NUWSS] in 1903 to form the more militant Women’s Social and Political Union [WSPU], she began a newspaper, Votes for Women, in which Alan’s Tea Rooms was advertised. Helen Liddle lived at 8a Holland St, Kensington as a lodger in the apartment of Miss Emilie Chapman, a nurse, and ran the tearooms until 1916.

After a series of disruptive activities, in October 1909 Helen broke a post office window in protest at women being excluded from a Parliamentary meeting for which she was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour. Her companion was Emily Wilding Davison whose will she had witnessed earlier that day. In Helen’s book, The Prisoner, a suffragette memoir, she states that she wanted to describe the atmosphere of prison and its effect upon a prisoner who is forcibly fed. While her brother was advertising her luncheons etc. in Votes for Women her sister was on hunger strike in Strangeways.

The Gardenia opened in 1908 by Thomas Smith, a young man who lived with his wife and two children in rooms above the restaurant. This establishment was well placed for the suffragist movement, as the Women’s Freedom League headquarters were located in Robert Street, just south of the Strand. The WSPU headquarters were to the east of Aldwych in Clement’s Inn. Vegetarian restaurants were particularly popular among suffragettes – many of whom were aligned to the anti-vivisectionist campaign.

The Teacup Inn opened in 1910 in a ground floor shop and basement, located in Portugal Street off Kingsway. Entirely staffed and managed by women, the owners, Mrs Alice Mary Hansell and Miss Marion Shallard, advertised the cafe in Votes For Women as "Dainty luncheons and Afternoon teas at moderate charges. Home cookery. Vegeterian dishes and sandwiches. Entirely staffed and managed by women."

Across Portugal Street, the Tea Cup Inn faced the London Opera House which opened in November 1911 close to the WSPU office. In 1912 the WSPU moved to Lincoln’s Inn House in Kingsway, making the Teacup Inn probably the nearest place of refreshment. The Teacup Inn was advertised at least once in the Pankhurst paper, The Suffragette, in June 1914, stressing: "Kitchens open for inspection".

Molinari’s Restaurant was at 25 Frith Street, Soho, advertised in The Suffragette magazine, offering to donate 5% of their takings to the cause for suffragists who wore badges. However in the 1920s the Home Office reported that its proprietor, Angelo Molinari, was the proprietor of ‘doubtful’ restaurants – suspected of running brothels in upstairs rooms.

Criterion Restaurant - The Criterion Restaurant built in 1874 at Piccadilly Circus [where it still remains] adjoins the theatre. In its Edwardian heyday it offered the Victoria Hall and the Grand Hall for hire on the first floor. The magnificently decorated Grand Hall overlooked Piccadilly Circus and was a café which provided the much vaunted ladies’ cloakrooms. The Actresses’ Franchise League [AFL] held its meetings at the Criterion due to its convenient location close to the theatre district.

Eustace Miles Restaurant opened at at Chandos Place, Covent Garden in May 1906 by Eustace Miles, who was a Cambridge-educated health guru – a real tennis player – prolific author – and vegetarian. He ran his establishment with his wife, Hallie as a ‘Food Reform’ restaurant.

Among his shareholders was the writer E.F. Benson, the headmaster of Eton, Bernard Shaw and his wife, Dr Helen Wilson, a Sheffield-based doctor and suffragist, and Mrs Ennis Richmond, a suffragette who ran West Heath, a progressive school in Hampstead.

Ellen Terry’s daughter, Edith Craig, who lived nearby in Bedford Street, sold Votes for Women from a pitch outside the Eustace Miles.

In March 1907 the WSPU chose it as the venue for a breakfast celebrating the release from Holloway of the prisoners who had been arrested when taking part in the deputation from the first Women’s Parliament. A year later, a breakfast was held for women who had taken part in the pantechnicon raid on Parliament.

English Suffragette China

As with Alan’s Tea Rooms and the Gardenia, the Eustace Miles rented a room for suffragist meetings and by those giving women-related talks. Kate Frye, a non-vegetarian, often ate there. The restaurant flourished during the First World War when meatless cookery became a necessity and stayed in business for over 30 years.

Prince’s Skating Rink Exhibition
In May 1909, the more militant of the suffragist organisations, the WSPU, held a fund-raising event at the Prince’s Skating Rink, Montpelier Square in Knightsbridge, where Mrs Henrietta Lowy and her four daughters together with Una Dugdale ran a tea room to serve refreshments for delegates. Una, the debutante daughter of a naval officer, sparked a national scandal in 1912 when she married Victor Duval, the founder of the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement, but refused to use the word "obey" in her marriage vows. The hall designated for the tea room was decorated with purple, white and green murals to Sylvia Pankhurst's designs with a blend of Pre-Raphaelite, Biblical and pagan symbolism of a female sower and angels as the centrepiece.

Lowry and Dugdale commissioned a Staffordshire pottery to make china specifically for serving refreshments at the exhibition - white china with a design based on Sylvia Pankhurst’s ‘portcullis’ and sported an ‘angel of freedom’ motif. The initials ‘WSPU’ are set behind the angel set against dark prison bars, surrounded by thistle, shamrock, rose and dangling chains. At the end of the Exhibition, 22 piece sets were offered for sale and used as propaganda tools to convert the ladies’ ‘anti’ neighbours.


Sources:
http://womanandhersphere.com/
http://womenshistorynetwork.org/blog/?tag=tea-cup-inn
http://ourhistory-hayes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/wspu-suffeagette-restaurant-eustace.html

From the EHFA Archives, originally posted on February 6, 2015. (Post slightly altered to meet EHFA guidelines.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anita Davison also writes as Anita Seymour. Her first published novels were set in the 17th Century and include Royalist Rebel and The Woulfes of Loxsbeare series. Her latest novels are Edwardian cozy mysteries, the Flora Maguire Mysteries.

Research of Edwardian London provided her the opportunity to look at the history of the Women’s Suffragette Movement.

Find Anita:
WEBSITE: https://www.anitadavison.co.uk/
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/anita.davison
GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13735328.Anita_Davison
TWITTER: @AnitaSDavison

MacDonald's Choice

By Dr John Little

For many years Britain regarded herself as a seafaring nation and much of her folklore tapped into that. The size of her trading empire, the might of her navy and the ubiquity of her merchant ships upon the world’s oceans made it inevitable that seamanship and competence in navigation were things almost universally admired. History is littered with tales of bravery at sea, feats of endurance and hardihood in the face of great odds. Particular instances which stand out are those of William Bligh, of the Bounty, and Ernest Shackleton. Bligh’s astonishing voyage of 4,164 miles after being cast adrift was a cause of great admiration when he wrote about it on his arrival back in England. Similarly Shackleton’s traversing of 800 miles of ocean in an open boat to fetch help for his stranded expedition was instrumental in making him a national hero.

19th-Century Three Mast Barque similar to the Henry James
(Public Domain Image)

The actual deed of heroism need not involve great distances; Victorian Britain held up Grace Darling as an extraordinary heroine for rescuing people from a wreck using a small rowing boat. This admiration of people who took on the sea in open boats against all odds, has extended to those of other nations. Names such as Willem Bontekoe, Willem Barents, and more modern voyagers like Sir Francis Chichester, Sir Alec Rose and Dame Ellen MacArthur still have power to cause admiration and even awe at what they accomplished. Chay Blyth and Robin Knox-Johnson also come to mind; doubtless there are many others. There is however one man missing from this canon and his name has been almost forgotten, along with his voyage.

Scotland is a nation whose men have used the sea for centuries and this is especially true of those who come from the western isles. In 1888 the first mate of the iron barque Henry James was a Lewisman called Donald MacDonald. On 10 April his ship hit an uncharted rock in the Pacific Ocean and, burdened with several thousand tons of coal, she sank quickly until mostly submerged. There was no chance to take much as the passengers and crew abandoned ship; supplies were loaded into a boat but it was wrecked by the swell. It happened so quickly that some of the crew were stark naked. Thirty people in two boats had to make for the nearest land, which was Palmyra Atoll, almost 50 nautical miles away.

Four small girls, two women, one of them heavily pregnant, and twenty-four men struggled to reach terra firma. When they got there, tired, baked by the sun and almost without resources, they found the island to be deserted. There were no fruits or berries, no vegetables of any kind save coconuts, no animals and, at first, no water supply. There were some abandoned huts which gave shelter but for the next two weeks they foraged and scraped for shellfish, land crabs, sharks, pepper grass and anything else which could sustain life. They were way off a shipping lane and rescue looked as if it might be years away.

Passenger List (Image Credit)

Captain Lattimore asked Donald MacDonald if he would undertake to go and get help. Presumably as a western isles man he was well used to open boat travel; MacDonald refused. The journey proposed was 1300 miles to the nearest possible rescue and he was very unlikely to make it, let alone the men who would go with him. After two weeks on the island MacDonald was looking at one of the four small girls among the castaways and she was struggling to eat and swallow part of a seagull which was raw. One of the crew made a doleful remark to him that the poor child was not long for this world; her name was Laura Mary Hastings. It was at that moment that MacDonald made his choice and undertook to go and find help.

In a twenty-seven foot ship’s boat loaded with what provisions could be spared and many coconuts, he and four other men set off, hoping to reach Samoa. Before he left MacDonald gave a ring to one of the small girls, convinced that he had spent his last day on solid earth and would not make it to Samoa. They went well at first but hit a frightful thunderstorm a few days into their voyage. The coconuts turned sour in the heat and had to be thrown overboard. The rest of the food soon ran out and they resorted to eating their shoes. After eating the leather binding of their telescope they found that their tongues swelled up and their lips cracked; a couple of the men sucked their own blood to gain relief from the hunger. They suffered from dysentery and pain in the guts; the sun dried them out until their skins were burned black and covered in sores from burn and salt.

After eighteen days at sea they were dried out husks, two of the men were incapable of further effort and they had all but given up. As the sun came up on the eighteenth day at sea they sighted Samoa in the far distance and headed for it. Soon they met an island schooner which took them into the harbour at Apia and they could tell their tale and beg for rescue. MacDonald had navigated 1300 miles in an open boat across the ocean and hit his target bang on; a truly amazing piece of seamanship and navigation.

Sketch by helmsman Chambliss of Capt.
Lattimore coming aboard the Mariposa
Image credit

There were steam warships that could have gone to rescue the people on Palmyra but they could not move because of the political situation on the islands which were in a state of civil war. The British consul organised a schooner to go to the rescue but she would have to beat against the wind and the journey would take at least a month. After the schooner’s departure on its mission of mercy a great American steamer, the Mariposa arrived in Apia and its legendary Californian Captain Hayward heard the story for himself. He decided to alter his course and rescue the people on Palmyra, which he did. The steamer arrived at the atoll ten days before the schooner and took on the twenty five people still cast on the shore, taking them to Hawaii from whence the British Consul was able to despatch them homewards. Throughout the whole perilous debacle, no one had died.

The Maripsosa (Public Domain Image)

MacDonald returned home to Glasgow and the shipping community there was full of admiration. His bosses recommended him to the Board of Trade to receive a medal for bravery at sea. This was refused and the only reason that seems plausible was because such a thing would have made national, even international news. The political situation between Britain, the USA and Germany in Samoa at this time was so delicate that the British government had good reason for not wishing to place Samoa centre stage in the attention of the world’s press. The indignation caused in Glasgow was considerable and The North British Shipping Company instead nominated MacDonald for a Lloyds Bronze medal for saving life at sea. This was awarded and the ceremony was reported in the Glasgow newspapers; it was ignored by the newspapers nationally which was rather anomalous. Normally one would have expected to see paragraphs about such things in regional newspapers across the nation. MacDonald would have been a national hero; but it did not happen.

At the ceremony MacDonald appears to have been very shy; he had to have someone speak for him after the medal had been awarded. His family and friends had been told nothing about it, and MacDonald never spoke of it until he described the voyage in a letter forty years later. Unlike Bligh or Shackleton, MacDonald was no patrician with a fine accent; he was an ordinary working sailor from Lewis and this may have had something to do with his treatment; but the non syndication of his story across the UK remains a puzzle.

There is a particular grace note to this story which played out eight years after the rescue. Donald MacDonald was by now the first mate of the Auldgirth, a Glasgow ship on the Australia trade run. Docked at Portland, Oregon, MacDonald saw two young women approach the gangplank of the ship and one of them called up to him and asked if he had been the first mate of the Henry James.

“‘Well ladies, I saw the last of that ship’ I replied.

She then took off her glove, took a ring from her finger and handed it to him. It was his own.

Putting my hands on her shoulders I said ‘Then you are Laura Mary Hastings’

‘Between sobs she answered ‘I am sir, and this is my sister Ada.’”

MacDonald's Medal (Image Credit)

MacDonald’s medal is in New Zealand, where he settled after retiring. His story may be found in a few contemporary newspapers and in more detail in The Gaelic Vikings by James Shaw Grant from which the above extract is taken. Apart from that his name is virtually forgotten in Lewis, in Glasgow, in Scotland and in history.

What MacDonald did ranks with the great open boat voyages in the history of the sea; if this article helps to raise his profile slightly then I can only be glad.

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Dr John Little spent almost forty years teaching in various schools in London and the South East. He was head of History at Meopham School and Rochester Independent College. He gained the first History PhD  awarded in the University of Westminster. He has done a considerable amount of long distance walking in the UK and particularly the Lake District. Until he was 52 he could not drive and cycled everywhere, including completing a Land's End to John o' Groats ride. He has cycled extensively in Britain and some parts of Europe. His PhD was grounded in WWI and he has guided numerous trips for children and adults to the Western Front.

He has written nine books, mostly novels, and has settled into historical fiction as his favoured genre. His work is based on real evidence, people and events contained in plausible narratives. He also give talks and presentations on the topics about which he writes.

The Pantechnicon Fire of 1874

By Karen Odden

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the developer Seth Smith helped to transform a swampy mire into the elegant West End of London.

Seth Smith

One of his buildings, the Pantechnicon, occupied nearly two acres in Motcomb Street, smack in the middle of Belgravia. It stood five storeys tall and had an elegant Greek-style portico, with a façade of pale marble Doric pillars, suggesting the majestic durability of ancient buildings and similar in style to museums such as the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square (built in the same decade). The name “Pantechnicon” meant “all” (pan) “art” (techne), and the building was originally conceived as a bazaar with stalls where all types of art could be sold—the work of jewelers, blacksmiths, painters, carpenters, and so on. The bazaar business failed, and eventually the building was re-purposed as both a storage facility for carriages and a warehouse where wealthy Londoners could store their valuable belongings when they closed up their city houses during the off-Season, when parliament was not in session. The Spectator commented with some asperity:

“It had become a habit of Belgravia and Tyburnia when the rich inhabitants … went out of town, to pack valuables and furniture in crates and send them to the Pantechnicon, and habits pursued for forty years by the rich and indolent can seldom be interrupted.” 

Deposited valuables included furnishings, paintings, pianos, jewels, silver, libraries, family heirlooms, and objets d’arts; some London bankers even rented rooms there for the deposit of deeds and plate.

This new storage business was enabled by the new Pantechnicon van, with a movable ramp at the back, that made it convenient for removers to fetch items from people’s homes and then deliver them back upon request. (Now the word “Pantechnicon” refers to the large moving vans themselves.) The general manager of the building was George Radermacher who also—an interesting tidbit for literary fans—was responsible for cataloging George Eliot’s  library.

The Pantechnicon was advertised as “the largest, the safest, and the most fireproof warehouse in the metropolis.” According to an 1874 issue of The Saturday review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art,

“the ceilings were lathed with iron rods and covered with a composition which, as was hoped, would resist the fiercest fire, and would not crack or fall down if water was thrown upon it while hot. The boarded floors were covered with iron plates laid upon patent felt to preserve the under side of the iron from rust and to deaden the sound. The rooms were separated from each other by brick walls and wrought-iron doors, and the stairs were all of stone. All the chimney flues were lined with cast iron, and there was not a piece of wood exposed … [because] a belief prevailed forty years ago in iron as a protection against fire … a belief that has probably perished in the ruin of the Pantechnicon.” 

Four different iron walls stretched east to west, “the idea being that the doors could be shut, the progress of the fire stopped, and the damage confined.” Not a gaslight was allowed on the premises except in the offices at the entrance. The only lamps used were safety lamps.

Despite these precautions, beginning at approximately 4:30 pm on Friday, February 13, 1874, the Pantechnicon went up in flames, shooting crimson and orange spears high into the sky and spreading smoke for miles.

Nearly all the firetrucks in London were called upon; men from the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, troopers of the Life Guards, Foot Guards from the Chelsea barracks, and members of the Salvage Corps cooperated to bring the fire under control and prevent nearby houses and stables from being damaged. At 7 pm, the roof fell in with a great crash; still, it took three days for the fire to be fully extinguished. Some personal property including approximately 100 carriages was saved, but between the fire and the streams of water, the event was perhaps the single largest episode of destruction of art and furnishings in the Victorian era—and it could have been worse. The Spectator noted, “the landlord of the House of Commons is much more indebted to the [change in] wind [direction] than to Captain Shaw [superintendent of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade].”

The timing of the fire was also remarkably unfortunate. Usually, Parliament would be in session in February—and the MPs, having returned to town, would have retrieved their items out of the Pantechnicon. But by the end of 1873, it was clear that Gladstone would call a General Election, beginning February 1 and lasting two weeks, so Parliament was not in session as usual on February 13. One journalist made the dark jest that the MPs could lay the bill for lost items at Mr. Gladstone’s door.

It is difficult to assess the value of the objects lost. Because people had such faith in the Pantechnicon, they under-insured their valuables—or found ways to avoid insuring them altogether. For example, one family hid their jewels in their furniture. The cost of insuring a headboard was significantly less than insuring jewels—but jewels hidden inside were (ostensibly) safe all the same. (Tricky!) However, it is known for certain that the fire destroyed the MP Sir Richard Wallace’s painting collection, worth £150,000; and the MP Sir Seymour Fitzgerald’s art collection, worth £200,000, which included many portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds and paintings by other masters including J.M.W. Turner. Contemporary accounts estimated the total value upon the destroyed items at £2,000,000 (approximately £220,000,000 or $280,000,000 today).

The Pantechnicon fire wasn’t the first major fire of the Victorian era, of course. Earlier fires occurred notably at the Houses of Parliament (1834), Tower of London (1841) and in Tooley Street (1861). The London Fire Engine Establishment (LFEE) was founded in 1833, a conglomeration of fire insurance company brigades, and the “firemen” were intent on saving insured property (as opposed to uninsured property or lives). A concern for saving lives led to the establishment in 1836 of the Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire, which was recognized by Queen Victoria. It offered rewards to “escapemen” for saving lives and placed scaleable ladders throughout the city, to facilitate rescues.

Somewhat like the physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries who squabbled for authority over patients after the Medical Act of 1854, conflicts arose between the firemen and escapemen over objectives and methods. Eventually, the LFEE handed over their equipment and responsibility to the government, and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, assigned the task of protecting both lives and property, was founded in 1866. It had been in place for eight years under the supervision of Captain Eyre Massey Shaw when the Pantechnicon fire broke out.

The mystery of how the fire started was never solved, but the Pantechnicon fire focused public attention upon urban fires and how to prevent and contain them. Fireproofing was not the science it is now; it was generally thought that iron and stone were more fireproof than wood, although by the 1870s Edwin Chadwick, a Victorian social reformer, pronounced that the most important factor was decreasing response time and having “hydrants and a ready water supply,” whereas a writer for The Saturday Review claimed that what mattered were the building materials, as “it is acknowledged now that good stout timber is more trustworthy than iron for supports, because timber will stand till nearly burnt through, whereas iron will bend or yield under heat, and throw down that which rests upon it.” Conversely, a writer for the Spectator declared with equal confidence,

“It is [in] brick, brick solidly built, brick in thick masses, that we repose our confidence, which increases with every reduction in the height of the building at stake. Sparks fly upwards here as well as in Judea, and the lighter the roof the less in the danger of that ‘tumbling in’ which usually destroys all hope. We cannot see why wood, or iron, or stone should be used at all.” 

It would be some time before science caught up with the behavior of fires.

The original façade of the Pantechnicon survived the fire, and eventually the building was rebuilt. It has recently been developed into a public space with shops and eateries, and people can visit it in London.

~~~~~~~~~~

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

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Happy New Year from EHFA

From your Editorial Team: Cryssa Bazos, Charlene Newcomb and Annie Whitehead

We're taking a short break until after New Year but we very much look forward to sharing lots more articles with you in 2020, covering all aspects of British History.

We'd like to take this opportunity to wish our readers a Very Happy New Year!

Mary Edwards, An Independent Woman

By Lauren Gilbert

Portrait of Mary Edwards by William Hogarth

Mary Edwards (or Edwardes) has already been mentioned on the EHFA blog in connection with the arts and Hogarth. She was a fascinating and strong-minded woman, not afraid to make decisions or to take her life into her own hands.

Mary was born c 1704 or 1705, daughter of Francis Edwards of Welham Grove, Leicestershire, and his wife Anna Margaretta Vernatti, who was a wealthy Dutch woman. She may have been baptised May 25 1705 at Saint Anne Soho, Westminster, London. A great heiress, Mary succeeded to the estate of her father upon his death 1728-1729. Her estates included properties in the counties of Essex, Hertford, Kent, Leicester, Middlesex and Northampton, in the city of London, and in Ireland. She had an annual income between 50,000-60,000 pounds. All were at her disposal. Data indicates she preferred being in London rather than her estate at Welham.

Mary was of age and in control of her own fortune. Mary met Lord Anne Douglas Hamilton (who was the 3rd son of the James Hamilton, 4th Duke of Hamilton, and was born Oct 12, 1709) about 1730. He was the godson of Queen Anne, and named for her. He was younger than Mary by four to five years. Accounts indicate she fell in love with him. They may have been married sometime around 1730-1731, possibly in Fleet, but the location is unclear. Their marriage appears to have been a hasty marriage, as no one’s approval was required. A certificate may exist but has not been found.

Circumstantial evidence supports that there was a marriage in 1731 or earlier: on July 8, 1731, Mary granted property to Lord Anne in Leicester and on Aug 15 1733, her arms and crest were granted to Lord Anne; he added Edwards to his name as shown on bank stock September 11, 1733 in the name of Lord Anne Edwards Hamilton; she called herself Lady Hamilton Edwards.

Mary and Lord Ann had a son, born circa 1732-1733. There are indications that the child’s birth date may have been March 4, 1733 (old calendar). (A bill, Edwards v Mitford, filed in 1743 shows Gerard Ann Edwards as the surviving son of Mary Edwards and his age as 10, which supports a 1733 birth date.) Lord Ann’s possible marriage to Mary and their son appear in Anne Hamilton’s listing in The Peerage, as well as in the Scots Peerage, which implies that the question of the marriage’s validity has been a topic of discussion.

A patron of the arts, Mary’s name is linked to that of William Hogarth, and she was one of his most loyal patrons, encouraging his satirical works. She was also a subject for him. Coincidentally, some of his works appear to support the marriage:

A portrait of Anne Edwards Hamilton was painted in the uniform of the Second Regiment of the Guards c 1731 has been attributed to William Hogarth; Hogarth painted a portrait of her son Gerard Anne Edwards Hamilton c 1732 and the entire family (The Edwards Hamilton Family) c 1733.

The marriage disintegrated between 1733 and 1734. Available data indicates that Lord Anne was an avaricious spendthrift, and Mary was concerned about preserving her fortune and her child’s inheritance. Long before the Married Women’s Property Acts, Mary had no real recourse in law as Lord Anne’s wife to prevent him from draining her funds. So she took an unusual and drastic step and repudiated the marriage.

The process appears to have begun when she had their son christened as Gerard Anne Edwards on March 28, 1733 St. Mary Abbots Church, and showed herself in the record as a single lady. There was no marriage contract, and she allegedly bribed the officials at the Fleet to delete all references to their marriage from the Fleet registers. There is an indication that a final separation was established in a deed dated in May of 1734. The Leicestershire Archives show several documents from June of 1734 filed as Hamilton v Edwards, showing Mary Edwards as “spinster” that involve the support of Gerard Anne Edwards. She subsequently referred to herself as Mary Edwards, spinster. This process had the side of effect of rendering her son illegitimate legally. Mary never remarried.

Lord Ann was married (or married again, as one prefers) in Oct 1742 to Anna Charlotte Maria Powell, an heiress, in Bath. (This was before Mary’s death in 1743.) They had two sons. If, in fact, he and Mary were legally married, this marriage would have presumably been bigamous, which would have had serious ramifications for inheritance. The matter has not arisen as no primary evidence has surfaced, and efforts to document such evidence apparently have not been successful.

Mary made her will on April 13, 1742, leaving her entire estate to her son, and she died at approximately age 38 on Aug 23, 1743. There is an indication that her death may have been precipitated by her consumption of gin. A commemorative panel appears on family tomb in the Church of St Andrew Welham.

Mary’s mother Anna Margaretta survived her. Data shows her death occurring in 1765. Leicestershire Archives holds a copy of Anna’s will, proved April 15, 1765, leaving her estate to Gerard Ann Edwards (son of Mary Edwards, decd.).

Gerard Ann Edwards was married to Jane Noel, daughter of Baptist Noel, 4th Earl of Gainsborough on October 8, 1754. He died October 29, 1773. His only son, Gerard Noel Edwards, succeeded to the estate of his uncle Henry, 6th Earl of Gainsborough, and assumed by royal license the name and arms of Noel May 5, 1798.

Sources include:

Curzon, Catherine. (2015, June 13). “A Beloved Patron: Hogarth and Miss Mary Edwards,” on English Historical Fiction Authors.

Tscherny, N. “An Un-Married Woman, Mary Edwards, William Hogarth and A Case of Eighteenth Century British Patronage”, in WOMEN AND ART IN EARLY EARLY MODERN EUROPE: Patrons, Collectors and Connoisseurs edited by Cynthia Lawrence. University Park, PA : Pennsylvania State University Press, c1997.

Paul, Sir James Balfour, ed. THE SCOTS PEERAGE Founded on Wood’s Edition of Sir Robert Douglas’s PEERAGE OF SCOTLAND. Vol. 4. Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1907. [on Mary Edwards.]

Googlebooks. Maclehouse, James, ed. THE SCOTTISH HISTORICAL REVIEW. Vol. 5. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1908. [on Lord Anne Hamilton.]

The Peerage. “Lord Anne Hamilton,” last edited 15 June 2014; “Gerard Anne Edwards,” last edited 6 December 2009; “Mary Edwardes,” last edited 29 June 2008.

British History Online. “Welham” by J. M. Lee and R. M. McKinley in A HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF LEICESTERSHIRE: Volume 5, Gartree Hundred. PP. 330-336. London: Victoria County History, 1964. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/leics/vol5/pp330-336

Kensington Parish News, Spring 2014. St. Mary Abbots Church. “Inspiring Women” by Jane McAllen (The article refers to Mary Edwards, and shows the date of baptism of Gerard Anne Edwards on 28th March 1733.) https://www.smaw8.org/uploads/5/0/2/5/5025325/kpn_-_spring_2017.pdf

Illustration: Portrait of Mary Edwards by William Hogarth [Public domain].

~~~~~~~~~

Lauren Gilbert was introduced to English authors early in life.  Lauren has a Bachelor of Arts degree in liberal arts English with a minor in Art History.  A long time member of JASNA, she has presented several programs. She lives in Florida with her husband.  Her first book, HEYERWOOD A Novel, is available.  A RATIONAL ATTACHMENT, her second novel is in production and will be available soon.  A long-time contributor to this blog, her work is included in both volumes of CASTLES, CUSTOMS AND KINGS: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors. She is also researching material for a non-fiction work.  For more information, visit her on Facebook  and on Amazon.

Christmas at EHFA

From the Editorial Team: Cryssa Bazos, Charlene Newcomb and Annie Whitehead

Thanks to all our readers for the wonderful comments and feedback over the past twelve months.

We are taking a short break over the festive period, but please do join us here on Friday 27th December for a new post from our regular contributor Lauren Gilbert.

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and don't forget there are plenty of posts for you to read if you have a quiet moment over the holiday period.

An Emperor's Christmas at Eltham in 1400

by Mark Patton

The south London suburb of Eltham today seems an improbable location for a Medieval Christmas celebration involving kings and emperors, but the area was, in the Fifteenth Century, in open countryside, just a day's ride from London, but sufficiently distant from the polluted Thames and from the frequently plague-ridden capital, for a King of England to entertain his guests in style and to enjoy, with them, the favoured pastimes of the time and season, notably hunting and jousting.

Eltham Palace: the Medieval great hall is on the right; the buildings on the left
were added in the 1930s, as the private home of Stephen and Virginia Courtauld.
Photo: Nick Blackburn (licensed under CCA).

Over the Christmas season of 1400-1401, the King in question was Henry IV, and his guests included the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel II Palaeologus. We refer today to the "Byzantine Empire," but nobody who lived in it ever thought of it as anything other than the "Roman Empire." Although his capital was Constantinople, not Rome, and his people spoke Greek, rather than Latin, Manuel regarded himself as the heir to the empires of Augustus and of Hadrian: and of Constantine, who had made the empire Christian and moved the capital eastward to a new city named after himself.

King Henry IV, UK National Archives DL 42/1
(image is in the Public Domain).

Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus,
Bibliotheque Nationale de France
(image is in the Public Domain).

Roman or Byzantine, however, the Empire, in 1400, was crumbling. The schism that had opened up in 1054, between the Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic Churches, had never been repaired: and in 1204, the forces of the Fourth Crusade, in open defiance of the Pope, had sacked and pillaged Constantinople, dividing much of Byzantine territory up between Catholic French, German and Italian nobles. Now the Empire faced a new threat from the Muslim Ottoman Empire, which had more or less encircled Constantinople, cutting it off from its agricultural hinterland.

The Hippodrome of Constantinople, here shown on a 17th Century print,
was destroyed by the forces of the Fourth Crusade and never restored
(image is in the Public Domain).
The chariot races held here were among the city's last
tangible connections to the Rome of the Caesars.

The Mediterranean World in 1400 (image is in the Public Domain).

Manuel's journey to the west, far from being just a friendly visit, was a life-or-death diplomatic mission to secure the military and financial support that might enable his Empire to survive. One can hardly fail to admire his efforts, but the harsh truth is that it was probably already too late to save the Empire, which would ultimately fall to the Ottomans in 1453.

As a young man, Manuel had been a hostage of the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid I at Bursa, and had escaped to Constantinople, where he was proclaimed Emperor. Bayezid besieged Constantinople from 1394 to 1402, and it was during a lull in the fighting that Manuel and his family had slipped away from the city to seek support overseas. Leaving his capital under the regency of a nephew, and his wife and children under the protection of his brother in Greece, Manuel traveled to Venice, and on to Padua, Milan, and Paris, where he met the French King, Charles VI.

The meeting of the magi, from Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry,
Musee Conde (image is in the Public Domain).
The figure on the white horse is believed by some to be styled on Manuel.
Clearly a fine horseman, the fifty year old emperor impressed the Parisian crowd
by leaping from one horse to another without touching the ground. 

His Christmas sojourn in England may, in fact, have been an accident, prompted by a recurrence of the mental illness that had dogged Charles throughout much of his reign. Henry IV, however, was a natural ally. He was more widely traveled than many English monarchs, having participated with the Teutonic Knights, in a "Crusade" against the supposedly Pagan Lithuanians, and having made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he had promised to return as a Christian liberator.

Henry met the Emperor at Blackheath, and conducted him, with his forty retainers, to Eltham Palace. Manuel spoke no English, which was unsurprising, but he equally spoke no Latin (the universal language of diplomacy and scholarship in the Catholic west). His entourage must have included men who could translate between Latin and Greek, whilst Henry's court would have included many who could translate from Latin to English. Conversation cannot have been easy; already, from Paris, Manuel had complained in a letter to a Greek friend, that "the difference in language ... did not allow us to converse, as we had wished, with really good men who were extremely anxious to show us favour."

Hunting in December, from Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry,
Musee Conde (image is in the Public Domain).

The Medieval hall of Eltham Palace (extensively remodeled by Edward IV).
Photo: David Hatch (licensed under CCA). 

Manuel had brought with him Christmas gifts of religious relics: fragments of the True Cross and of garments believed to have been worn by Christ and the Virgin Mary. There was much hunting and feasting, and some of the people of London traveled down to Eltham to entertain the royal party with carols and mumming. Ultimately, however, Manuel returned to Constantinople empty-handed. Neither his English nor his French allies were able to offer any meaningful assistance, their own armies and treasuries seriously depleted by decades of war and plague.

Mark Patton is a published author of historical fiction and non-fiction, whose books can be purchased from Amazon.

[This post is an Editor's Choice article and was originally published on the blog on 16th December 2017]

Party clothes in the 17th Century

by Deborah Swift

I wondered if my 17th century equivalent would open her closet and sigh the way I did, when someone invited me to a party and I couldn't decide what to wear. So just what would the fashionable woman about town be wearing in the 17th century?

On the left you can see the 17th century equivalent of the "little black dress" in this painting by Verceulen. Invisible in this picture is the fact that at the beginning of the 17th century women wore farthingales and whalebone corsetry beneath their clothes to emphasise a small waist and large hips. So she is probably not as comfortable as she looks. The large amount of gorgeous lace would be hand-made as Elizabethan ruffs gave way to expensive lace collars. Fancy embellished petticoats were now revealed as skirts were hooped back to display them. Perhaps she has one on, just out of view! After the restoration of the monarchy women’s clothes were elegant and colourful and made from costly fabrics such as satin and silk.

But what accessories might you choose on your night out - perhaps dining with a courtier, or attending a concert?

Well one of the oddest 17th century accessories was the mask or "vizard". These were commonly worn by women to protect their skin from the sun when they went outside, particularly for horse-riding or on carriage journeys. Women also wore masks to maintain their mystery as well as to keep their identity secret, although not many masks survive, and those that do are in poor condition.

Here is a real surviving example - this vizard was found during the renovation of an inner wall of a 16th-century stone building. The nose area is strengthened to stand out and form a case around the wearer's nose. The outer fabric is black velvet, the lining of silk, and inside it is strengthened by a pressed-paper inner. A black glass bead attached by a string to the mask was used to hold the mask in place - the wearer would hold the bead tightly in her mouth. This of course made speaking impossible, so I don't think I would have worn mine for long!

An exerpt from Phillip Stubbes Anatomie of Abuses, published in 1583:

"When they use to ride abrod, they have invisories, or masks, visors made of velvet, wherwith they cover all their faces, having holes made in them against their eyes, whereout they look. So that if a man, that knew not their guise before, should chaunce to meet one of them, he would think hee met a monster or a devil; for face hee can see none, but two brode holes against her eyes with glasses in them".

So now you have your dress and your vizard, what else might you need? Well, fans made from silk and decorated paper were widely used by wealthy people during the 17th century and the most essential accessory for women during the Stuart period. And without being able to speak you would definitely need the 'language of the fan'.

The example I show is from the Fitzwilliam Museum.

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

But I feel we are lacking a bit of glitz and glamour, don't you? So how about embroidered petticoats and a bit of twinkling jewellery?

There was a passion in this period for floral fabrics and jewellery, so it was likely you would put on your earrings by looking in a mirror with an engraved or enamelled back, decorated with floral motifs like the one on the left. You might be tempted to have your dressmaker make a gown, or under-dress, from flower-inspired fabric like the example below made in India for export to the English market.

Cosse-de-pois (pea pod) shapes and later flowers became very popular and many designs in this fashion were produced. Exotic flowers were immensely popular and botany became a study in its own right. In The Lady's Slipper, my main character Alice Ibbetson is a botanist and artist. Like many ladies of this era she was fascinated by new varieties of flowers.

The intensification of the trade with the near East had brought flowers and bulbs to Europe which had never been seen before, and a true craze for flowers suddenly sprang up. The Tulipomania of 1634 is a well-documented example. Flora had been fashionable in embroidery since the end of the 16th century but was now adopted by jewellery designers as well. From the 1650's on engraving in metal was another, and later preferred, way of depicting flowers.

Other popular jewellery designs were the three droplets, or ‘girandoles’, called this as they resembled the lit branches of a candlestick. Examples of these gorgeous 17th century designs for earings and pendants are from http://elogedelart.canalblog.com and http://www.langantiques.com

If you were going to go outside then the latest fashion was for Venetian "chopines" - a type of sandal or stilt designed to keep your shoes protected from the filth and dirt of the city streets, and for short ladies, to add a little height.

Constructed from carved wood and silks, they must have been as uncomfortable to wear as modern platform soles, but twice as difficult to keep on. Chopines apparently caused an unstable and inelegant gait. Women wearing them were generally accompanied by a servant or attendant on whom they could balance themselves, and even to put them on was a little like climbing onto stilts, so they were usually put on with the help of two servants.Some chopines could be as high as 50 cm, and their height became symbolic of the status of the wearer.

So now, in whalebone re-inforced black dress, gripping my vizard between my teeth, ears heavy with floral gems, I shall totter on my chopines to my sedan. Have a great Christmas party time, everyone!

This article is an Editor's Choice and was originally published December 12, 2011.

~~~~~~~~~~

Deborah Swift is the author of eight 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. 

Dunnottar Castle - Majestic Ruin with Tales to Tell

By Annie Whitehead

Dunnottar Castle: if you’ve never visited, chances are you’ll still recognise it. It’s a ruin now, perched on a headland just south of Stonehaven, in the northeast of Scotland. What remains visible dates to mainly the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but there is evidence of habitation from a much earlier period.

There are two references to it in the Annals of Ulster, under the entries for 680 and 693, where it is named as Dùn Fhoithear, which means ‘fort on the shelving slope.’ The antiquarian, William Skene, commenting on Fordun’s Scotichronicon, called it Dunnottar in the Mearns, ‘Mearns’ being the old term for Kincardineshire.

It is said that Saint Ninnian, born around 360AD and known for his missionary work among the Picts, built a chapel at Dunnottar.

A dig carried out by the nearby University of Aberdeen found evidence of Pictish occupation on the sea stack of Dunnicaer to the north of the castle. It was, apparently, the oldest Pictish fort to have been found. It seems that the site remained in continuous use for some centuries.

No finds or structures earlier than the late twelfth century were discovered under the castle ruins, but the archaeologists knew from research that the site was one of the centres for trade bringing glass and pottery from Gaul into Britain and Ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries. Examining the symbols carved on the group of five Class 1 Pictish stones on the sea stack known as Dinnacair or Dunnicaer, they concluded that St Ninian’s missionary church was on Dunnottar Rock and that Dunnicaer might have been a ‘disert’, or place of retreat from Ninian’s missionary station.

In the seventh century Dunnottar came under attack from King Bridei III, king of the Picts from 672 until his death in 693. He launched his assault on Dunnottar in 680/1, before turning his attention to the Orcadian kingdom where, according to the Annals of Ulster, he ‘destroyed’ the Orkney Islands. Bridei was quite some warrior, fighting and defeating Ecgfrith of Northumbria at the battle of Nechtanesmere in 685.

Pictish Stone generally accepted to depict the
battle of Nechtanesmere - public domain image

In the late ninth century, Domnall mac Causantín, better known perhaps as Donald II of Scotland, had the misfortune to be ruler at a time of Danish raids in the area. According to the Chronicles of the Kings of Alba, Donald ruled between 889–900 and 'The Northmen wasted Pictland at this time. In his reign a battle occurred between Danes and Scots at Innisibsolian where the Scots had victory. He was killed at [Dunnottar].' The castle was then apparently destroyed. With his back literally to the sea, the fight must have been intense, and desperate. Looking out over the water, on a cloudy autumn day, I couldn’t help but think that it was a rather desolate end for him.

In 934, according to the chronicler Simeon of Durham, ‘King Athelstan, going towards Scotland with a great army ... subdued his enemies, [and] laid waste Scotland as far as Dunnottar and Wertermorum (unidentified). For context, it takes around six hours to drive in a modern car along mainly dual-carriageways and motorways from the current England/Scotland border to Dunnottar, and at least as long in the other direction to get to ‘Wessex’. Athelstan was a long, long, way from home. Sometimes we are grateful to have more than one source, for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry (Ms C) for the same year tells us only that ‘King Athelstan went into Scotland with both a land force and a naval force, and ravaged much of it.'

In 1276 a new church was built on the site of St Ninian’s chapel, erected in stone in the Norman style and consecrated by William Wishart, who was the bishop of St Andrews until his death in 1279

Dunnottar was to see more action when in 1297 a force led by none other than William Wallace captured the castle. It is said that the English soldiers garrisoned there took refuge in the church and that Wallace burned the church with the soldiers inside it, but I have read sources which state that this might not be true.

Things seem to have calmed down a little in the fourteenth century when the Keith family took up residence. However, this was not a time of peace in Scotland. In 1314 Sir Robert Keith was in command of the Keith cavalry at the battle of Bannockburn.

His descendant, Sir William Keith oversaw the building of the keep, which has survived to the present day.

The Keep

The family remained in the ascendant and Sir William was appointed first Earl Marischal of Scotland by King James II in 1458. Mary Queen of Scots visited Dunnottar on more than one occasion, bringing with her, in 1562, her son, the future James VI of Scotland (and subsequently I of England). In 1580 he visited by himself and apparently stayed for several days’ hunting on the Keith family estates.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the fifth Earl Marischal, George, built on the site and founded Marischal College in nearby Aberdeen.

But the family fortunes were to take a downturn.

It’s strange to think of the English Civil War having an impact on this remote part of the world, but it did, for the people of Scotland were caught up in the wrangle too. In 1645, James Graham, earl of Montrose, (who’d been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Scotland) marched his army to Dunnottar and requested a treaty with the Earl Marischal, who declined to respond. Montrose set fire to nearby homes, farms and boats in the harbour below.

Nor was Dunnottar safe from Parliamentarian forces, for Cromwell’s army also besieged it in 1650 for a long and trying eight months. The castle surrendered, but the Honours of Scotland, which were in effect the Scottish Crown Jewels, had been smuggled out of the castle to Kinneff Church nearby.

1715 saw the first of the Jacobite risings and the incumbent of the castle at this point, George Keith, the tenth (and last) Earl Marischal, was convicted of treason for taking part in the doomed rebellion. Dunnottar, among his other holdings, was forfeited to the government. Two years later, it was sold to the York Mining Company and was stripped of all valuable materials. The floors and ceilings were taken and all the furniture was removed. After that, it was inevitable that the castle would fall to ruin.

What the visitor sees today is somewhat of a romantic ruin. It must have looked much more impressive in its heyday but as it stands, it sparks the imagination. Indeed, lovers of folklore will be pleased to know that Dunnottar features in the story of Fergus.**

The young man, Fergus, encounters the young lady Galiene whose uncle is the castellan of Liddel Castle (in Roxburghshire). She falls in love with him, but he says he will only return to her once he has completed his quest to vanquish the Black Knight. He does so, but when he returns to claim Galiene he discovers that she is not there. He searches for a year, eventually encountering a dwarf who tells him that his lost love will only come back to him if he takes a shield from a witch at Dunnottar. He travels all the way to Scotland, reaches Dunnottar, slays the witch and returns via Lothian, where he finds that Galiene is now Queen of Lothian, under siege from the neighbouring king of Roxburgh. Fergus then has to fight the avenging husband of the witch he killed at Dunnottar. The story goes on, although the rest is not linked to Dunnottar.

On the overcast, windy day when I visited, it was certainly easy to see how this place inspired such legends. But perhaps it's harder to believe, looking at it in its present state, how many true stories it holds.

* https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archive

** The Roman de Fergus - a 13th-century Arthurian romance written in Old French

~~~~~~~~~~

Annie Whitehead is an author and historian, and a member of the Royal Historical Society. She has written three award-winning novels set in Anglo-Saxon Mercia, including To Be A Queen, the story of the life of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. Her history of Mercia, from Penda the pagan king to the last brave stand of the earl of Mercia against the Conqueror, Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, is published by Amberley. Her new book, about Anglo-Saxon Women, will be published by Pen & Sword in 2020.

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