Old English - The Language of the Anglo Saxons

by Richard Denning

The Anglo Saxon’s used a language called Old English which evolved out of Old German – the language spoken in the homelands in West Germany. Old English was in use between the 5th and 11th centuries when it merged with Norman French and produced middle English – the language of Chaucer.

Old English looks and sounds VERY alien to a modern English speaker. Here is a reading of the Lord’s Prayer in Old English:

Here is the text in Old English and Modern English Fader ure au ae eart on heofonum; Si ain nama gehalgod to becume in rice gewure in willa on eoran swa swa on heofonum. urne gedghwamlican hlaf syle us todag and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfa urum gyltendum and ne geld au us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele solice

Translation of the Old English Text

Father our thou that art in heavens
be thy name hallowed
come thy kingdom
be-done thy will
on earth as in heavens
our daily bread give us today
and forgive us our sins
as we forgive those-who-have-sinned-against-us
and not lead thou us into temptation
but deliver us from evil. truly
Whilst much of modern English comes from the French brought over by the Normans in 1066, the majority originated in the older form of old English. This then is how our ancestors would have sounded. Much of Old English survives in the names we use for our days and for our towns.

Anglo Saxon Day Names

The Germanic races took the Roman day names that they encountered with dealings with the Roman Empire and translated it into Old German, Old Norse and ultimately Old English. They replaced the Roman god names with their own (with the exception of Saturday).

Modern English day  

Old English day  

English day meaning  

Latin day name  

Latin day name meaning

Monday
Monandag
“Moon’s day”
Dies Lunae
“Day of the Luna”

Tuesday
Tiwesdag
“Tiw’s day”
Dies Martis
“Day of Mars”

Wednesday
Wodnesdag
“Woden’s day”
Dies Mercurii
“Day of Mercury”

Thursday
Thunorsdag
“Thunor’s day”
Dies Iovis
“Day of Jupiter”

Friday
Frigedag
“Frija’s day”
Dies Veneris
“Day of Venus”

Saturday
Saturnesdag
“Saturn’s day”
Dies Saturni
“Day of Saturn”

Sunday
Sunnandag
“Sun’s day”
Dies Solis
“Day of the Sun”

Anglo Saxon Town and Place Names

Many elements in our modern English place names ultimately come from Anglo Saxon place names (although in the north and east from Norse names). Often a name would combine a reference to the owner of the land and some description about it. Here are some common elements in place names:

barrow - a wood
burna (-borne) - a brook, stream
burh (modern word – borough) - Fortified town
combe - Small valley
ford - a shallow river crossing
dun – a hill
eg (-ey) - an island
halh – a nook, corner of land
ham – a homestead
hamm – an enclosure, water-meadow
hurst - wooded hill
ingas (-ing) - the people of …
leah (-ley) - a clearing
stede – a place, site of a building
tun – an enclosure, farmstead
well – a well, spring
wick - Farm or dwelling
worth – an enclosure, homestead

Here are some examples of Old English place names and the modern name and what it means:.

Birmingham
Beorma+inga+ham
enclosure of the sons (or descendants) of Beorma

Oxford
Oxon Ford
Place where Oxon can cross the river

Warwick
Weir+wic
Dwelling by the weir

Hastings
Hast+ ingas
Hasta’s people

Hertford
Hart+ford
Place where stags forded the river 

Cantley
Canta + leah
Canta’s clearing

Downham
dun + ham
Hill village

Elmswell
elm + wella
Elm-trees’ spring


Wortham
worth + ham
Homestead with enclosure

Colby
Koli + by
Koli’s farmstead

Westhorpe
vestr + thorp
Westerly outlying farmstead

Stanton
stan + tun
Stony farmstead

Gisleham
Gysela + ham
Gysela’s homestead

Anglo Saxon Months

The Anglo-Saxon year was originally divided into twelve lunar months (which mean ‘moons’), but this created a problem because a lunar cycle is about 29 days. The result was a 354 day year. After only a few years the lunar and solar months would be out of alignment. To get around this issue the Anglo-Saxons would have leap years and would insert an extra month into the summer. The summer was one long 2 month period called liaa, roughly corresponding to June and July.So the leap years was called ÐriliÃi (three liÃas).

The year began on Modranecht, Mothers’ Night, the 25th of December. This festival was later adopted as the date for Christmas in the typical pragmatic style of the Church. It's possible that Anglo-Saxons honoured female ancestral spirits on this day.

December and January were both called Giuli, or’Yules’. Yule, was the name for the winter solstice period – the shortest days in the year when the anglo Saxons would drive away the darkness by feasting. December was roughly equivalent to Ærra Geola, or ‘before Yule’, and January was Æfterra Geola, ‘after Yule’.

February was known as Solmona or ‘Mudmonth’.

March was Hreamona possibly named after a goddess Hrea of which we know little.

April corresponded with the lunar month of Eostermona named again after an obscure deity called Eostre. This month has survived into modern times as the word Easter which is typically celebrated in March or April.

May was Ðrimilcemona, ‘month of three milkings’. “So called because in this month the cattle were milked three times a day,” commented the 7th century historian Bede.

As has been said June was known as Ærra Liaa, ‘first’ or ‘preceding’ Liaa and July was Æfterra Liaa, ‘following Liaa’. The word Liaa might mean sailing as this was the time of year when sailing was easiest due to calm weather. So this was the summer sailing season.

August was called Weodmonað, ‘weed month’ probably because weeds and crops wwere growing fast.

September was Haligmonað, ‘holy month’. It was a time to give thanks to the gods for the fruits of the summer harvest. Harvest festivals stll survive in many countries into the modern period.

October was Winterfille – the begining of winter.

November was called Blotmona. This many have been a month of sacrifices BUT more likely it was the time of year when the animals would be saluaghtered and preserved for the coming winter feasts.

Material on this page is sourced from Omniglot Wikipedia and English Place names

William X, Duke of Aquitaine

by Christy English

Like many amazing women, Eleanor of Aquitaine had a strong man behind her. Without the love and support of her father, William X, Duke of Aquitaine, Eleanor would never have risen to power as duchess at all.

Of course, I have no written proof of William's devotion to his daughter. He never wrote a letter on vellum to posterity, telling the world what an amazing woman and ruling duchess he hoped Eleanor would become. But William's actions, as well as Eleanor's life, speak for themselves. William never remarried after his wife and only son died, though he was under a great deal of pressure from both Church and secular authorities to do so.

The Flag of Aquitaine

Though he had many enemies in the Church, William did not stay humbly in the background but worked to help his ally become Pope. That bid for papal power failed, and a man from an enemy faction won the battle for the papacy, putting William on the losing side of the battle for supremacy in the Church.

The new pope required William to do penance for the sin of backing his enemy, calling on the Duke of Aquitaine to choose between making a pilgrimage to Rome to be shriven of his sins, or a pilgrimage to the popular holy site, Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. William chose the closer route, and before he began his journey to Spain, he made certain that Eleanor was a ward of the Crown of France. That way, in the event of his death, Eleanor would be protected not just by his own barons, who had sworn fealty to her directly on Easter in 1136, but by the King of France.

So when William died of drinking "bad water" at Santiago, he did not die in vain. Eleanor was ready to take her place as duchess and to finish brokering her marriage to the young son of King Louis VI of France. Duchess at fifteen and Queen of France less than six months later, Eleanor more than proved herself to be a powerful woman in a world of men. She took up the reins of power as her father had taught her to, and protected that power all of her life. Had he lived to see Eleanor's strength come to fruition, I have no doubt that William would have been proud of her.

For more about Eleanor of Aquitaine and my obsession with her life, please visit me on my website http://www.ChristyEnglish.com

Elizabeth Tudor's First Crisis: Enter Mary Queen of Scots

by Barbara Kyle

When Elizabeth Tudor, at the age of twenty-five, inherited the English throne from her half-sister Mary in November of 1558, the country was on the brink of ruin. Mary had bankrupted the treasury by her disastrous war with France, which she had lost, leaving Elizabeth burdened with massive loans taken in Europe’s financial capital of Antwerp, and a grossly debased coinage that was strangling English trade.

Danger threatened Elizabeth on every side. Spain, having ruthlessly established dominion over the Netherlands, eyed England as a possible addition to its empire that already spanned half the globe. French power, too, was dangerously close in Scotland, a virtual French province under Marie de Guise who ruled in the name of her daughter Mary Stuart, whose kingdom it was; Mary had married the heir to the French throne and by 1558 was Queen of France and, as Elizabeth’s cousin, a claimant to Elizabeth’s throne. Scotland’s government was dominated by French overlords and its capital was garrisoned with French troops, providing an ideal bridgehead for the French to launch an attack on England. Meanwhile, at home Elizabeth faced seething discontent from a large portion of her people, the Catholics, who loathed her act of Parliament that had made the country officially Protestant. France and Spain sympathized with, and supported, the English Catholics.

If overtly threatened by either of those great powers, England would be vastly outmatched. The English people knew it and were frightened. Officials in the vulnerable coastal towns of Southampton, Portsmouth, and the Cinque Ports barraged Elizabeth’s council with letters entreating aid in strengthening their fortifications against possible attack. Unlike the European powers, England had never had a standing army. Her monarchs had always relied on a system of feudal levies by which local lords, when required, raised companies of their tenants and retainers to fight for the king, who then augmented the levies with foreign mercenaries. England was backward in armaments, too; while a revolution in warfare was happening in Europe with the development of artillery and small firearms, English soldiers still relied on pikes and bows. Even Elizabeth’s navy was weak, consisting of just thirty-four ships, only eleven of them ships of war.

Ten months after Elizabeth’s coronation, people throughout Europe were laying bets that her reign would not survive a second year. One crisis could destroy her.

That crisis came in the winter of 1559. In Scotland.

John Knox’s Protestant rebel army, backed by several leading nobles including Lord James, the late king’s illegitimate son, went on a country-wide rampage to oust Marie de Guise, the Queen Regent, and they won much of Scotland to their cause. The Queen Regent’s response was to bring in thousands of French troops. This huge French military build-up on Elizabeth’s border deeply alarmed her and her council (prompting the Spanish ambassador in London to write to his king, “It is incredible the fear these people are in of the French on the Scottish border”). Elizabeth sent clandestine financial support to Knox’s rebels. She also sent Admiral Winter’s small fleet into the December gales to intercept French ships bringing more troops. Knox captured Edinburgh. The momentum was with the rebels.

But the Queen Regent successfully counterattacked, forcing Knox’s army to retreat to Stirling. Word reached Elizabeth that Philip of Spain had ordered thousands of Spanish troops in the Netherlands (a Spanish possession at the time) onto ships to sail to Scotland to help France put down Knox’s “heretic” rebels. Had the Spanish arrived the fate of Scotland, and of England, could have been very different, but just then Philip’s army in the Mediterranean battling the Turks suffered a devastating setback that made him halt his northern troops about to sail to Scotland and re-route them to fight the Turks. On such surprising hinges history often swings.

Elizabeth finally sent an English army into Scotland, to disastrous results at first when they attacked the French at Leith, but eventually laying a long siege that resulted in the surrender of the French and total victory for the English. John Knox, having secured the Scottish Reformation, had changed the course of Scotland.

Elizabeth’s victory over the French in Scotland was a turning point in her fledgling reign, and its significance cannot be overemphasized. Her decision to defy the great powers of France and Spain, and to gamble on intervention, destroyed French domination in Scotland and made English influence there permanently predominant. Furthermore, it elevated Elizabeth’s status at home and in the eyes of all Europe, whose leaders had to acknowledge her as a formidable ruler. She did this at the age of twenty-six, in just the second year of her reign.

Marie de Guise, unwell throughout the war with Knox’s rebels, did not survive her troops’ surrender; she died in Scotland in June 1560. Her daughter, Mary Stuart, Queen of France at the time, refused to sign the Treaty of Edinburgh, one article of which was her relinquishing her claim to the English throne. Her refusal infuriated Elizabeth, and thus began their nineteen-year feud.

Eleven months after the French surrender in Scotland Mary Stuart, after less than two years as Queen of France, was widowed at age eighteen when her young husband, King Francis, died. With little status in the new court of her brother-in-law King Charles, Mary left France for her birthplace, Scotland, arriving at Leith by sea in August 1561, and took up her birthright, the Scottish throne.

Elizabeth’s problems with Mary, her cousin and fellow queen, had just begun.

Barbara Kyle is the author of the Tudor-era "Thornleigh" novels: The Queen's Gamble, The Queen's Captive, The King's Daughter, and The Queen's Lady.

 

Website: www.barbarakyle.com
Facebook: Barbara Kyle Author Page
Twitter: BKyleAuthor

Why I write historical fiction - Deborah Swift

A few years ago I would have been surprised to find I had produced a historical novel. So why write one?
Before I came to write The Lady's Slipper, most of my writing was contemporary. I read a lot of contemporary fiction, and was a member of a book group that read mostly literary fiction.So what won me over to writing historicals?

The answer is that it wasn't a case of me deciding on a period and then setting the novel there, it was more that my characters demanded certain conditions to flourish and tell their story. I started with a character who wanted to paint an orchid - I had seen the rare lady's-slipper orchid myself and wanted to write (initially) a poem about it. This desire was subverted into my character's desire to capture it in paint. From then on the character grew and developed. I thought for the flower to have impact I needed a time when ideas about botany and images of flowers were new and fresh. Perhaps a time before mass printing, a time when herbs and flowers were used for healing. This led me to the 17th century when herbalists such as Nicolas Culpeper were just making their mark on history and the science of botany was in its infancy.

The idea of the medicinal use of the lady's-slipper then sparked the character of Margaret the herbalist, whose views on "the web of the world" were a very different religion from the conformist view of the time, and would probably be pigeon-holed as 'pagan' today. I have always been interested in the different ways that faiths have shaped the world and this tied in nicely with the burgeoning Quaker movement, viewed in the 17th century as radical and dangerous. I couldn't resist having a Quaker character, so Richard Wheeler  - the soldier turned quaker - was born. In addition, the Quaker movement started close to my home, and visits to the still surviving 17th century historical sites fascinated me.

My creative writing class were always telling me that conflict drives a novel so I was also keen to exploit enmity between the Quakers and the ruling class, and to create an atmosphere of unease. The English Civil War where the King had been beheaded by his own people supplied the background disturbance I needed.So my first book's period grew from the desire to find a setting for my characters and not the other way round. The setting has a function to allow me to explore certain ideas and let them flourish to the maximum effect.

The book I am just finishing now and which is about to land on my agents and editors desk - tomorrow if I can get it done, is set in a different period, which has difficulties in that it involved a whole new area of research in a whole new country. As with the first two I was looking for a time and place where my characters and ideas would collide in the most satisfying way and that led me to turn of the 17th century in Seville, with its clash of Islamic and Iberian cultures, the threat of the Inquisition, and its reputation for swordsmanship and bravado.So I'm afraid my characters had to be taken away from their usual English comfort, the drizzle and the cold, and into the heat, dust and passion of Spain.

17th century Seville

My second book, The Gilded Lily (out later in the year) is set in England through necessity as it features Ella, one of the characters from The Lady's Slipper. It is a very different book though as it is set in Restoration London, a choice made so that I could exploit the desire for wealth and luxury which is a part of Ella's character. Ella is considered beautiful and her sister Sadie, plain, so I needed an environment where the attitudes to beauty would be able to feature heavily in the plot. How would the two girls fortunes differ because of their difference in appearance? The period of the Restoration is perfect because after the monarchy returned everyone was obsessed with fashion and glamour, and the theatricality and artificiality of this led me to be able to explore the idea of storytelling, how the girls re-invented themselves, and how we all shape our own stories.

In all my books I start with the characters and then find the way to give them maximum rein through the setting. I used to be a scenographer so I draw on my experience of how a theatre setting can interact with the action in my writing. I choose history because I can examine contemporary ideas as if in a mirror. I am sure many other writers do the same, and would be really interested to hear what the process is like for them. I find I enjoy the researching part of writing enormously, and the wonderful excuse it gives me to hang around museums, historic houses, art galleries and libraries. And I have had to catch up quickly with my reading of historicals. I've discovered some fantastic writers in the  genre, who have given me further insights into our rich heritage, and  so I cannot imagine that I will run out of ideas from the wealth of our history, and I guess that will keep me writing historical fiction for a while yet!

You can find out more about my writing on my blog

www.deborahswift.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading!

Giveaway: Victorian Novel by Jenna Dawlish

This week, Jenna Dawlish is giving away a paperback copy of her Victorian novel Love Engineered.

To read more information about the book please click here. Don't forget to leave your email address!

Death of King Charles II

By Katherine Pym

First, a little about him…

King Charles II lived a life full of sex and sport. During his youth, he learned to keep his own counsel. He was kind natured, only allowing his need for revenge against a few of the regicides. Cromwell was one of these, even though already dead and buried.

Charles took a long time to come to a state decision. He’d put it off with a wave of his hand, and play with one of his women. He loved spaniels, and several romped in his private chambers, soiling the floors so that no one could walk across the room in a straight line.

Even though he reigned in a Protestant country, while on the run in 1651 after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester, Charles was protected at their peril by Catholics. For a few hours, Charles hid in a priest hole, very snug and claustrophobic, while Parliament men searched for him. By the end of his trek through England and into exile, Charles had gained a high regard for Catholics and Catholicism.

But I digress.

While Charles reigned, he did not confide in many. He was considered an enigma by both his contemporaries and those who study him. He had a kind heart. His nature made people comfortable. They confided in him, wanted to be near him. But when Charles wanted to be alone, or was tired of the subject, he’d pull out his watch. Those who knew of this would quickly state their business, for soon their king would walk away.

Charles loved reading (not political or religious). He brought great strides to the theatre sector, and he enjoyed science. In 1660, he approved a charter for The Royal Society. The group of great minds, Isaac Newton for one, met at Gresham College in London City. Experiments took place there, including draining the veins of a dog into the veins of another dog. The results amazed those curious people.

So, we come to his death…

‘He fell sick of a tertian fever’, but the official cause of death is: Uraemia (per dictionary.com—“a condition resulting from the retention in the blood of constituents normally excreted in the urine.”), chronic nephritis. Syphilis.

On the evening of February 1, 1685, Charles went to bed with a sore foot. By early morning, he was very ill with fever. His physician (Sir Edmund King) tended to his foot whilst a barber shaved his head. Suddenly, the king suffered apoplexy. His physician immediately withdrew sixteen ounces of blood. Sir Edmund took a big risk, and could have been charged with treason. The protocol was to get permission from the Privy Council prior to a bloodletting.

For several days, Charles was tormented by his physicians. As a private man this must have been difficult. Surrounded by more physicians than could gain his bed, they attempted to remove the ‘toxic humours’ that penetrated his body.

He was bled and purged. Cantharides plasters were stuck to his bald pate. They caused blistering. They attached plasters of spurge to his feet, then red-hot irons to his skin. Besides the large number of physicians crowding his bed, His Royal Highness’ bedchamber was filled to the walls with spectators (family members and state officials).

They gave the poor king “enemas of rock salt and syrup of buckthorn, and ‘orange infusion of metals in white wine’. The king was treated with a horrific cabinet of potions: white hellebore root; Peruvian bark; white vitriol of peony water; distillation of cowslip flowers; sal ammoniac; julep of black cherry water (an antispasmodic); oriental bezoar stone from the stomach of a goat and boiled spirits from a human skull.”

After days of this, he apologized for taking so long to die, then added, “I have suffered much more than you can imagine.”

Finally, on February 6, 1685 “the exhausted king, his body raw and aching with the burns and inflammation caused by his treatment, was given heart tonics, to no avail. He lapsed into a coma and died at noon on February 7.”

His death is considered by historians as “iatrogenic regicide”.

I give thanks to Royal Poxes & Potions, The Lives of Court Physicians, Surgeons & Apothecaries, by Raymond Lamont-Brown.

For more on Charles II (not his death but a bit on his return from exile), please see my historical novel, Viola, A Woeful Tale of Marriage - mostly of marriage and bigamy during the mid 17th century.

To read my historical novels in London 1660's and one odd French Revolution story, please see http://www.amazon.com/Katherine-Pym/e/B004GILIAS

Boadicea: Warrior Queen of the Iceni Britains

Boudicea was Queen of the Iceni, a tribe of the ancient Britons (in what is now Norfolk) during the era when Nero ruled in Rome and Roman troops occupied Britain. Her husband, Præsutagus, was King of the Ice'ni, and a Roman ally. Under Roman law, the sovereignty of Præsutagus' realm would end at his death and neither Boudicea, nor their daughters would be allowed to rule in his stead, however his personal wealth was his to distribute as he would. Præsutagus, a powerful ruler, had amassed a great deal of wealth during his reign.  In an attempt to placate the

"Rome shall perish--write that word
           In the blood that she has spilt;--
         Perish, hopeless and abhorred,
           Deep in ruin, as in guilt."
                          William Cowper's "Boadicea

occupying Romans and protect his family's legacy, Præsutagus, made the emperor of Rome co-heir to his personal wealth along with his two daughters. Unfortunately, Præsutagus underestimated the greed and brutality of the Romans. Immediately upon his death, they not only took possession of his lands, but also seized all of his personal assets. The widowed Queen was outraged and protested vigorously. For her impertinence, she was seized by the Romans and publicly stripped and flogged. Her daughters, were turned over to the Romans soldiers and subjected to indignity and rape.  Other Iceni nobles could not help the widow and her daughters, for their homes were also plundered and robbed, and those who were close relatives of the deceased king were reduced to either slavery or poverty when their loans were called in by the Romans.

The Roman depredations had gone too far, and as such, they reaped terrible retribution. With Boudicea as their symbol and leader, the Icenis broke into open revolt. They were quickly joined in this insurrection by infuriated Britons from surrounding regions.  Outraged by the heavy hand of Roman rule, conscription, onerous taxation and numerous other Roman cruelties, the Britons marched as one in the spirit of vengeance.  Boadicea was the leader of the rebellion, both in reality and spirit. Her wrongs had initially stirred them to revolt, and her bloodthirsty desire for vengeance led them to numerous victories. Before she was finished the warrior queen's army had burned the Roman colonies of Colchester,  London and Verulam, burning, torturing and slaying more than 70,000 Roman and Roman sympathizers in the process.

Her campaign of vengeance began at Camalodunum (Colchester), where there had lately settled a colony of Roman veterans, who had treated the Britons cruelly, driving them from their houses, insulting them with the names of slaves and captives, and then standing idly by while the common soldiers further degraded and robbed the native landowners.

Paulinus Suetonius, who then commanded the Roman forces in Britain, was absent on an expedition to further subjugate the Britons by crushing the Druid stronghold on the the island of Mona. Of this expedition the historian Tacitus gives a vivid account.

Suetonius' boats approached the island to behold a terrifying sight. On the shore, Briton warriors prepared to receive them. Through their ranks rushed their women in funereal attire, their hair flying loose in the wind, flaming torches in their hands, and their whole appearance recalling the frantic rage of the fabled Furies. Near by, ranged in order, stood the venerable Druids, or Celtic priests, with uplifted hands, at once invoking the gods and pouring forth imprecations upon the foe. The spectacle filled the Romans with awe and wonder. They stood in dumbfounded amazement, riveted to the spot--an easy mark for the foe had they been then attacked. The Romans, after their initial fright, found themselves ashamed of being held in awe by a troop of women and a band of fanatic priests, and rushed to the assault, cutting down all before them, tossing them into their own sacred fires, and burning the edifices and the sacred groves of the island.

In addition to the actual peril presented by angry Britons, the Romans were frightened with dire omens. The statue of victory at Camalodunum fell without any visible cause, and lay prostrate on the ground. Clamors in a foreign accent were heard in the Roman council chamber, the theaters were filled with the sound of savage howlings, the sea ran purple as with blood. The figures of human bodies were traced on the sands, and the image of a colony in ruins was reflected from the waters of the Thames.

These omens threw the Romans into despair and filled the minds of the Britons with joy. No effort was made by the soldiers for defense, no ditch was dug, no palisade erected, and the assault of the Britons found the colonists utterly unprepared. Taken by surprise, the Romans were overpowered, and the colony was laid waste with fire and sword. The fortified temple alone held out, but after a two days' siege it also was taken, and the Ninth Legion, which marched to its relief was cut to pieces.

Suetonius' army was small and the number of the Britons was overwhelmingly greater. In the final analysis, the interests of the empire trumped those of any city* and Suetonius abandoned London to the Britons, despite the supplications of its imperiled citizens. He agreed to take under his protection those who chose to follow his banner. Many followed him, but many remained, and no sooner had he marched out than the Britons fell in rage on the settlement, and uninterested in either mercy, ransom, or prisoners, slaughtered all they found by gibbet, fire, or cross. Before they were through, Tacitus tells that more than 70,000 Romans, and Britons friendly to Rome, were massacred, and the Ninth Legion marching from Lincoln to the rescue had been nearly annihilated.**

But in the end, the Romans had their own revenge.

Suetonius marched through the land, and at length the two armies met. The skilled Roman general drew up his force (estimated to be 10,000 in number) in a place where a thick forest sheltered the rear and flanks, leaving only a narrow front open to attack. Here the Britons, twenty times his number (figures are quoted as upwards to 230,000), and confident of victory, approached. The warlike Boadicea, tall, stern of countenance, hair hanging to her waist, and spear in hand, drove along their front in a her chariot, with her two daughters by her side, and eloquently sought to rouse her countrymen to thirst for revenge.

Telling them of the base cruelty with which she and her daughters had been treated, and painting in vivid words the arrogance and insults of the Romans, she besought them to fight for their country and their homes. "On this spot we must either conquer or die with glory," she said. "There is no alternative. Though I am a woman, my resolution is fixed. The men, if they prefer, may survive with infamy and live in bondage. For me there is only victory or death."

Stirred to fury by her words, the British host rushed their enemies. But the weaponry and greater experience of the battle-hardened Romans proved far too much for native courage and ferocity. The Britons were repulsed, and the Romans, rushing forward in the strategically superior wedge, cut a fearful strath of carnage through the disordered Briton ranks. The Roman cavalry followed and thousands fell. The wagons and families of the Britons, which had been massed in the rear, impeded  Briton retreat, and a dreadful slaughter, in which neither sex nor age was spared, ensued. Tacitus tells us that eighty thousand Britons fell, while the Roman slain numbered no more than four hundred men.

Boadicea, who had done her utmost to rally her flying hosts, kept to her resolution. When all was lost, according to Tacitus, she, like Cleopatra before her, choose poison over capture by the Romans, and perished upon the field where she had vowed to seek victory or death. With her decease the success of the Britons vanished and to ensure Roman dominance, the insurrectionists were hunted down and killed. Suetonius' was recalled to Rome, his ferocity deprecated, and himself judged wanting for his failure to control his subordinates, thus laying the groundwork for Boudicea's rebellion. As for Britain, she buried the memories of her rebellious Warrior Queen for many centuries and became a quiet and peaceful part of the Roman Empire.


      BOADICEA.


  While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries
  Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,
  Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
  Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility,
  Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune,
  Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 Compiled From Sources In The Public Domain.


Teresa Thomas Bohannon,
MyLadyWeb, Women's History, Women Authors
Regency Romance A Very Merry Chase
Historical Fantasy Shadows In A Timeless Myth.

*London at that time was a collection of miserable huts and entrenched cattle-pens, which were in Keltic speech called the "Fort-on-the-Lake"—or "Llyndin," an uncouth name in Latin ears, which the Romans called Londinium.

 **FenMaric, one of the main characters in my historic fantasy novel, Shadows In A Timeless Myth, was a member of the ninth legion who fought and died attempting to stop Boudicea.  He still exists to appear in Shadows because he was battle cursed by a Druid Priest to the same fate that the Druid Priests believed themselves fated for, soul transmigration...but with a vengefully, punishing twist!

Monarchy~ The Normans, William Rufus and Henry I

by Debra Brown

Monarchy Part I~ The Dark Ages House of Wessex
Monarchy Part II~ William the Conqueror

The Normans that followed the Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror, provide an interesting historical story. William left Normandy to his eldest, who he considered to be too generous and easy-going to manage England. England he left to his second son, William, called William Rufus for his red complexion. William was crowned on September 26, 1087.

Rufus came to be known as cruel, ruthless, greedy and crude. He was always looking for ways to obtain more money, and when he couldn't get it from the Norman barons or the English townsfolk, he taxed the Church heavily. When the Archbishop of Canterbury Lanfranc died, the irreligious Rufus did not replace him, but kept the revenues normally allotted to the post for himself. He did the same when other bishops and archbishops died. When fearing death, he finally replaced the Archbishop with a Benedictine monk, Anselm of Bec, but upon recovering, he exiled him to Rome and seized his assets. This was a very different rulership from his famously pious Norman predecessors as well as the English kings, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor.

Rufus built the Great Hall of Westminster according to his grand scale ambitions. It was the largest secular space north of the alps, used for feasting and entertainments. He would sit on an elevated plane, crowned, robed and enthroned. The choirs would sing in Latin, wishing him long life and victory. The gap between rich and poor increased, and those with money began to dress extravagantly. Men wore flamboyant, puffed up tunics and curved, pointy-toed shoes. Women wore more and more extravagant jewelry. Rufus himself, or William II, surrounded himself with "half-naked", long-haired young men according to contemporary accounts.

England's French-speaking barons often owned estates both in England and Normandy- thus, they owed some of their allegiance to William's older brother, Duke Robert. Robert was staking his claim to the English throne, and some of the barons united in his support just a year after William's coronation. William crushed the revolt, and in 1090, he invaded Normandy to subdue Robert. He also repelled attempts by Malcolm III of Scotland and an uprising by barons in Northumberland.

William, like his father, loved hunting. William I had taken over huge areas of countryside, 90,000 acres, for his own use; Rufus took 20,000 more and made the rules of the oppressive Forest Law even harsher. (You might be interested in Judith Arnopp's The Forest Dwellers, a fictional work about some of those who were expelled from their homes in the New Forest by these kings.) Killing a deer was punished by death. Men were maimed just for shooting at one. The punishment for simply disturbing a deer was blinding. These rules were considered un-English and were a constant reminder that William Rufus was a foreigner, ruling and oppressing England.

After only 13 years of rule, in a superstitious age, it appeared that Rufus received punishment for his ways. While out hunting deer in the New Forest with a party which included his younger brother, Henry, he took an arrow and died "without repentance". His body lay neglected for several hours, and it was finally carried to Winchester in a charcoal-burner's cart. He was buried there beneath the cathedral tower. Imagine the thoughts of the superstitious people who hated this king when a year later the tower came tumbling down!

Who killed William Rufus? It has never been proved. One account says that he accidentally killed himself. Others stated that a Norman lord named Walter Tirel shot him. Tirel fled the country and always maintained his innocence. Interestingly, as soon as the king was dead, Henry seized power with suspicious ease. He wasted no time in mourning his brother. He rushed to Winchester, seized the royal crown and rode off to London to have himself crowned. His claim to the throne was dubious. Rufus and his older brother Robert, still Duke of Normandy, had agreed to be heirs to each other. Robert was known to be on his way home from the Crusades with a reputation for chivalry and a young wife who could bear him sons. There was no time to waste.

Henry turned to the English people for support. He was "born in the purple", the only one of William the Conqueror's sons to be born in England and that while his father was the English king rather than just the Duke of Normandy. Unlike his father and brother, he could read, write and speak some English. Rather than just swear to rule justly, as was normal at a coronation, Henry had his promises written down and widely circulated. He promised to bring back the laws of Edward the Confessor. He would rule with consent, like an Anglo-Saxon king, and not with force and extortion. He vowed to remove the tyrannical rule of the oppressed people as his father and brother had practiced. He was crowned in Westminster Abbey on August 5th, 1100.

Henry's Charter of Liberty was followed by all the kings up until the Magna Carta, and was copied fairly closely therein. He also set up the Curia Regis, or King's Council, to settle disputes between the monarch and the people. He married a Scottish princess, Edith, who was descended directly from Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, which helped him to placate both the Scottish and Saxons to some degree. She did, however, adopt the Norman name Matilda, and their two children were named Matilda and William.

A problem arose. Galloping inflation set in when the silver money began to be mixed with tin. England's stable currency had been the envy of Europe for three centuries. Henry arrested the one hundred and fifty men who had worked in the mint and put them on trial. Ninety four of them were found guilty and were punished with barbaric severity. Even though these men were not Normans, but Englishmen of high status, the people were behind Henry in the matter. The coinage must be protected at any cost.

For Henry, the greatest problem of all was the death of his young heir, William, at age seventeen. William was returning to England from Normandy in a ship. It crashed against rocks because of the drinking on board, and though William was safely put into a boat, he insisted on returning to the area to save his sister. It was only his sister who survived, of the two. (My error. After comments below, I discussed this with Elizabeth. The only survivor was a butcher. William had an illegitimate sister aboard the ship who also died. His sister Matilda was, at the time, living as Empress Consort of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany.)

Henry was said to have never smiled again. He was now faced with the need to choose a new heir to the throne. His nephew Stephen had no Saxon blood, something that had been important to Henry for his heir, and he so chose instead his daughter, Matilda, a descendant of Alfred. We'll see how well that goes in the next post of the series!
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The Monarchy of Britain by Josephine Ross

The Complete Idiot's Guide to British Royalty by Richard Buskin

The Documentary "Monarchy" with David Starkey
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Debra Brown is the author of The Companion of Lady Holmeshire.

Website
Twitter: @kescah

The Peterloo Massacre

by Maggi Andersen

St Peter’s Field, Manchester, England.

In August 1819 on a cloudless, hot summer’s day, a peaceable crowd of some 60,000 to 80,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Field (an open piece of cleared land alongside Mount Street) to hear orator, Henry Hunt speak and to demand reform of parliamentary representation. What happened next was as unnecessary as it was shocking. Cavalry charged into the crowd with sabres drawn, and in the ensuring confusion, 15 people were killed and between 400 and 700 injured.

In March 1819, Joseph Johnson, John Knight and James Wroe formed the Manchester Patriotic Union Society. All the leading radicals in Manchester joined the organisation. Johnson was appointed secretary and Wroe became treasurer. The local magistrates were concerned that such a substantial gathering of reformers might end in a riot. The magistrates therefore decided to arrange for a large number of soldiers to be in Manchester on the day of the meeting. This included four squadrons of cavalry of the 15th Hussars (600 men), several hundred infantrymen, the Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry (400 men), a detachment of the Royal Horse Artillery and two six-pounder guns and the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry (120 men) and all Manchester's special constables (400 men).

At about 11.00 a.m. William Hulton, the chairman, and nine other magistrates met at Mr. Buxton's house in Mount Street that overlooked St. Peter's Field. Although there was no trouble, the magistrates became concerned by the growing size of the crowd. Estimations concerning the size of the crowd vary but Hulton came to the conclusion that there were at least 50,000 people in St. Peter's Field at midday. Hulton, therefore, took the decision to send Edward Clayton, the Boroughreeve and the special constables to clear a path through the crowd. The 400 special constables were therefore ordered to form two continuous lines between the hustings where the speeches were to take place, and Mr. Buxton's house where the magistrates were staying.

Shortly after the meeting began, local magistrates called on the military to arrest well-known radical orator, Henry Hunt who was asked to chair the meeting, and several others on the hustings with him, and to disperse the crowd. Arrested along with Hunt for inciting a riot and imprisoned was Samuel Bamford, who led a group from his native Middleton to St. Peter’s Field. Bamford emerged as a prominent voice for radical reform. Hunt became MP for Preston 1830-33.

To understand what happened in Manchester one must look at the period of economic upheaval between 1783 to 1846, when Britain shifted from being a predominantly agricultural and commercial society to being the world’s first industrial nation. Many of the most contentious political issues of the day, corn and currency laws for example, were really questions of whether government policy should be directed towards encouraging this shift, or trying to reverse it.

Accompanying the economic changes was the most sustained and dangerous cycle of revolutionary discontent and working-class protest in British history. This prompted a few political concessions on the part of the governing aristocracy, but more significant was the emergence of governmental machinery designed to maintain law and order, which in turn led unintentionally to the foundation of the modern centralized and bureaucratic state.

The power of the Crown declined significantly. Although George III (until he became incurably mad in 1810) George IV, William IV, Victoria, and her consort Albert, could all influence the course of political intrigue, the monarch’s power to control the policies of the state was severely reduced.

As the scope and scale of government business increased during the long French wars, less and less passed through the monarch’s hands. Except possibly where foreign policy was concerned, the Crown was being reduced to little more than a figurehead of state. Effective power remained in the hands of a territorial aristocracy, whose representatives still dominated both Houses of Parliament. They faced an active and vociferous radical movement, particularly strong in 1792 and in the economically depressed years after the end of the war in 1815, when a period of famine and chronic unemployment came into being, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws.

Postwar adjustment brought depression, with agrarian disturbances, machine-breaking and revival of popular reform agitation. Two meets at Spa Fields 1816 and an attack on the Prince Regent led to suspension of Habeas Corpus and restrictions on public meetings.

After the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century, Manchester began expanding at an astonishing rate in the 19th Century as part of a process of unplanned urbanization.

Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester one of the defining moments of its age. It left an enormous psychological scar on a polity which prided itself on its ability to contain discontents. Yet the aristocracy survived, largely because the middling ranks, terrified by the violence of the French Revolution, rejected any sort of revolutionary radicalism.

The Peterloo Massacre called on the Government in 1819 to pass what is known as the Six Acts which forbade training in arms and drilling, authorized seizure of arms, simplified prosecutions, forbade seditious assemblies, punished blasphemous libels and restricted the press.

Resource: The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland.
Author Website: http://www.maggiandersenauthor.com

A Strange Relationship ~ Mary Shelley and Frankenstein's Monster

by Gary Inbinder

“Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.”

That is the voice of the creature from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; it is not the grunting monster portrayed in most films. Moreover, it may be the cri de coeur of Frankenstein’s nineteen-year-old author.

At the time she wrote Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was involved in scandal, and the object of gossip and ridicule. At sixteen she had eloped to the continent with the then married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her teen-aged half-sister, Jane Claire Clairmont, joined them. Claire may have also been intimate with Shelley, and she later became Lord Byron’s mistress, bearing him a daughter whom Byron had placed in an orphanage where the girl, Allegra, died at age five.

At seventeen, Mary gave premature birth to an unnamed daughter who died within days. The following year, Mary’s other stepsister, Fanny Imlay, killed herself, and she too may have had an affair with Shelley. That same year, Shelley’s pregnant wife, Harriet, committed suicide by jumping from a bridge over the Serpentine in Hyde Park.

Mary was the daughter of famous parents. Her mother, who died shortly after giving birth, author and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, is considered among the first modern feminists. Mary Wollstonecraft’s husband, William Godwin, was a noted radical author and philosopher. Both of Mary Shelley’s parents advocated free love and questioned traditional marriage. Therefore, Mary was shocked, confused and deeply hurt when her father refused to speak to her for two years, until after the death of Shelley’s wife and Mary and Percy’s subsequent marriage. At the time she wrote Frankenstein, young Mary may have identified with her creature, despised and abandoned by its creator. And there is also evidence from her journals that she identified with pariahs she encountered in her reading, like Milton’s Satan and Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.

In my re-imagined sequel, Confessions of the Creature, Frankenstein’s monster narrates his heroic quest for love and honor while Napoleon rages across Europe. In the Arctic waters of the Barents Sea, the creature has taken the ultimate revenge on his creator, Frankenstein. He travels south to a forest outside the town of Yaroslavl, where a chance meeting with a witch who sees through his hideous exterior to his damaged spirit gives him the opportunity to overcome what he is, and perhaps become who he was meant to be.

Transformed by witchcraft into a normal looking man, but retaining his superhuman strength, the creature journeys to Moscow, where he becomes the protégé of the wealthy natural philosopher Baron Suvorin, and the lover of Suvorin's daughter, Sabrina Pavlovna. Taking the name Viktor Suvorin, the creature wins acclaim as a military hero.

An honored hero, happy with his family, Viktor faces a final challenge to his hard won humanity when tragedy strikes. Pursuit of an enemy returns Viktor to the Arctic, scene of his final struggle with his creator. There, on a frozen sea under the shimmering Northern Lights, the creature must confront the truth about himself and the meaning of his creation and his life.

There has been much speculation over the years concerning Mary Shelley’s identification with her creature. In my novel, a fictionalized Mary confronts the transformed monster who may have been her alter ego. And, like my character Viktor, Mary’s own life was transformed by the tragic realities of life, most notably the deaths of her husband and their son William. In her preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, she wrote nostalgically of the time of the novel’s creation, when both Percy and William were still living: “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words which found no true echo in my heart.”

I think her reference to the “true echo” of death and grief is telling. There was certainly “death and grief” in Mary Shelley’s life prior to the time she wrote Frankenstein, but the two greatest blows of misfortune were yet to come.