In Pursuit of Beauty: Early Cosmetics

IT is no surprise that a people who loved colour and design in clothing and jewellry should also take some pains with their personal grooming. Pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon and Viking grave finds commonly include a host of toilet accessories buried with both men and women - combs ornately carved of bone, antler, wood, or ivory; tweezers for plucking out splinters and unwanted hairs; minute metal ear scoops like tiny spoons meant for cleaning the ear; and personal wash-basins were all frequent accompaniments to the after-life. (Alas, since Christianity forbade burial with grave goods, later toiletry finds are rare.)

In life, tree twigs were used to clean the teeth - and the Anglo-Saxons may have even used the abundant chalk of southern England to polish their teeth, as did the Romans. An interesting paper by anthropologist Caroline Arcini of the National Heritage Board of Lund, Sweden and first published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 2005 discusses her study of the skulls of 24 Viking-era men in Sweden and Denmark. Twenty-four of the men (amongst a total of 557 men and women at four burial sites) had horizontal grooves filed into their front teeth for decorative purposes, and possibly as a sign of admittance into a special social or trade group. These grooves, which would have been most noticeable when the men were smiling or laughing, may have been filled with mineral based colours in black or red for even more decorative effect.

Whole body bathing was certainly not a frequent occurrence amongst our Anglo-Saxon forbears, but hands, feet, and face were washed daily, and hands washed prior to eating. The prosperous enjoyed rubbing scented oils into their skin and hair, but even the poorest cottar girl could pluck aromatic flowers and herbs and release their cleansing scent by crushing them in her hands.

Long hair was an important beauty accessory for women, and we can surmise from King Ælfred's Law Code that men too found longer length hair and beards to accentuate male beauty, for a costly fine was imposed for robbing a man of same. Men typically wore their hair past the ear or shoulder- length; a close-cropped head was the sign of a slave (or a Norman). Anglo-Saxon men must have greatly valued their long hair, for the following law occurs in the Law Code of King Ælfred (b. 849-d. 899 CE):

If someone restrains a free man...(and) as a humiliation...he shaves (his head) like a priest's, without binding him, let him pay compensation of thirty shillings. If he shaves off his beard, let him pay compensation of twenty shillings. If he ties him up and then shaves his head like a priest's, let him pay compensation of sixty shillings. (extracted from Law 35, translated by Bill Griffiths)

If you consider that the penalty for cutting off a man's leg (Law 72) or arm (Law 66) was eighty shillings, you will understand that the steep sixty shilling fine for a forced haircut (hair being a resource which after all will grow back) was exacted as it struck at the notion of a man's dignity.

Soothing and comforting emollients, oftentimes compounded with herbal matter, were created in every household and used on man and beast to relieve chapping and chaffing, and undoubtedly to help soften and beautify the skin. Wool-wax, butter, or vegetable and nut oils served as a base.

But what about true cosmetics? Firm narrative or archaeological evidence for their use amongst the Anglo-Saxons is lacking, but the ease of preparation of such enhancers, coupled with the cultural desire that all surfaces be made as beautiful and vivid as possible, might allow some prudent conjecture.

Colourants for the skin and hair have always formed the largest category of cosmetics. Their herbal sources - walnuts and chestnuts for dark dyes, soft-bodied fruits such as berries and the skins of plums for reds and pinks, chamomile blossom heads for yellow, the flowers of baptisia and leaves of common woad (isatis tinctoria) for blues - were readily abundant throughout England. (And such colourants can not only make one beautiful, but fearsome, too: The Britons who fought against the Roman legions during the wars of Claudius are said to have stained their bodies blue with the herb woad. Naked, blue-bodied, and with their hair fixed with yellow clay in spiky quills and standing straight out from their heads, they horrified the Roman regulars.)

Certainly any dyestuff that would colour linen or wool would also impart its hue to human skin - at least temporarily; the dusky-stained hands of the village dyer showed that. A mouth reddened by the eating of berries is a charming sight, and we cannot hope to guess how many girls and women may have purposely tinted lips and cheeks with juice pressed from raspberries and cherries.

We do know that at least some Vikings knew the sting of vanity, for we have the reliable account of the Arab traveler Ibrahim Al-Tartushi, who visited the Viking trading hub of Hedeby (in modern northern Germany) about 950, and recorded many facets of everyday life there, noting that both men and women used cosmetics:

There is also an artificial make-up for the eyes: when they use it beauty never fades; on the contrary, it increases in men and women as well.

Ibrahim was likely observing the ancient blackening agent kohl, made from antimony (the mineral stibnite) or soot. Kohl can be rubbed directly onto the eye lashes as well as lined under and over both lids to deepen and intensify the eye.

The final form of cosmetic enhancement available to beauty-seekers in the ninth century is one I have employed in The Circle of Ceridwen; that is, tattooing. The Danes Sidroc and Yrling both sport elaborate blue and red tattoos on their bodies. Tattoos, of course, have been used around the world since remotest antiquity as indicators of social standing, tribal affiliation, and magical significance, as well as for their purely decorative value. Tattoos such as those worn by Sidroc and Yrling were likely accomplished by means of piercing the skin with a sharpened goose quill filled with powdered vegetable dyestuff. The process was neither quick nor painless, but the result quite impressive.

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

Octavia Randolph is the author of The Circle of Ceridwen Saga.  Young women with courage. Swords with names. Vikings with tattoos. Warfare. Passion. Survival. Sheep. And Other Good Things...

Family Feuds: A Cause of War

by Nancy Kelley

Edward III

Edward III made a mistake. It’s an easy one to make, really, but it still had far-reaching consequences for his kingdom. His mistake? Too many of his sons survived to adulthood.

Richard II

When I watched The Royal Shakespeare Company perform Richard II last fall, I realized three of the principle characters were first cousins: Richard, son of Edward’s eldest son, Edward the Black Prince; Henry Bolingbroke, son of Edward’s middle son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and the Duke of Aumerle, son of Edward’s fourth son, the Duke of York. The action of the play follows the final few years of Richard’s life, from the funeral of his youngest uncle, the Duke of Gloucester (who history strongly indicates Richard had a hand in killing), through his deposition at the hands of Bolingbroke, and finally his own murder.

And we all know what followed: Henry Bolingbroke became Henry IV, his son Henry V, and etc. But was Bolingbroke truly the next in line to the throne?

You might have noticed I only mentioned four of Edward III’s five sons. The second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, did not have a surfeit of sons as his father did. However, he did have two grandsons. The elder, Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March, was by the laws of primogeniture the heir presumptive to the English throne. When he died in 1398, that passed, presumably, to his own son, Edmund.

And yet it was not Edmund who became king when Richard was deposed. His uncle Edmund (who should have been second in line to the throne) supported Bolingbroke’s claim. And so Henry Bolingbroke, who by the standard understanding of succession was fourth in line, took the throne.

So what, Nancy? What does that have to do with Edward III having too many sons?

Ah, but a deposition and usurpation of the crown from its rightful heir set a pattern for what happened three more times in the next one hundred years of English history. When Henry V’s son, Henry VI, proved to be mentally unstable, a distant cousin deposed him and took the throne, usurping the title from Henry’s son and rightful heir. Despite the fact that Edward was only a boy, stepping in when there was an heir apparent instead of just an heir presumptive, as Edmund had been, was a much bolder move.

Edward, Duke of York, was the great-great-grandson of Edward III, descended from both the second and fourth sons. His claim to the throne was on a similar level to Bolingbrokes: legitimate, except for the fact that he skipped over several people in line to become king.

Understandably, the Lancastrian family took a fairly dim view on these events, and there we have the beginning of the War of the Roses, known at the time as The Cousins’ War. In the next thirty years, two more kings would be removed from the throne by a relative—first the young Edward V by his uncle, Richard III (the fate of young Edward after Richard took the throne is still a mystery), and then Richard himself by a very distant cousin, Henry Tudor.

Four kings removed from power. Three cousins and one uncle taking the crown instead. Four usurpations, with each new king skipping over the next in line to rule.

Had Edward III not had quite so many sons, there would not have been room for all the bickering over who got to be king next. The offspring of those royal princes turned the next century of English history in a large family squabble about who deserved to have the largest portion of the inheritance. Laws of succession get harder to enforce when there are multiple heirs with strong claims to the throne. It’s even more difficult when one farther down has a larger army than the true heir.

It was an easy mistake to make, on Edward’s part. Who knew those five sons would all survive to adulthood? In those days, it paid to have at least an heir and a spare. But Edward’s stock proved heartier than most, and that simple fact set the stage for the Wars of the Roses.

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

Nancy Kelley majored in psychology for three semesters. Her favorite course was family systems, the study of how family patterns can be passed down and relationships within a family.

However, she decided that as much as she loved psychology, she would rather analyze historical figures and fictional characters. She changed her degree and now writes historical romance. Her first three novels, His Good Opinion, Loving Miss Darcy, and Against His Will, are all companions to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

You can find Nancy at nancykelleywrites.com, on indiejane.org and on Twitter @Nancy_Kelley.

All paintings are in the public domain in the United States because they were published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.

Celebrating Teen and Young Adult Historical Fiction

by Deborah Swift

I have recently been working on a teen novel  so thought I would share with you some of the challenges of writing for younger readers. Most of my adult novels are set in the seventeenth century, and they tend to be long. My last one was 500 pages, though I hope it did not feel that long to the reader!

Of course adults' and teenagers' reading habits cannot be confined to a box - as a teenager I read all sorts of adult fiction, and adults are often tempted by books marketed as 'teen' titles - I know I am.

I am reliably informed by internet articles (which are of course always right) that teenagers and young adults favour shorter fiction, so that was the first challenge - to condense a story into a much shorter space. But how to do that without losing the vital historical detail that brings the period to life - well, there's a question. I suppose my answer was in the vein of  'don't tell me about the moon, but show me it glinting on snow' or in my case, on the moving wheels of a 17thC carriage. I had to sneak information into the text by adding a single word here, an evocative verb there. The initial draft of my teen novel came in at 60,000 words, less than half the length of my adult books.

And then there is 'voice.' A typical dialogue of a teenager today might be, 'OMG No! He's a total loser!' In seventeenth century speak, that might be, 'By my troth, nay! He's an arrant beggar and a knave!' (or something similar) But somehow this does not end up sounding like a teenager, but just like a very stilted and badly-written pastiche. The key elements here are the tendency to exaggeration and semi-shocked delight, so these are qualities I could aim for in my dialogue. Teenagers tend to act first, think later, so this impetuosity could be a way in to a teenage character too.


In historical fiction this is a lot easier in lower class characters, who actually have more freedom to move about (within their milieu) than royalty or the upper classes. A good example of this is The Quietness by Alison Rattle. This gripping novel is set in the Victorian underworld - think 'Sweeney Todd' or 'Oliver', and contrasts an upper class girl with her working class counterpart. This is a beautifully handled book, full of murky depths and insight.

Somehow it is easier to get away with exclamations with a maid than with a genteel member of the upper strata of society. Alison Rattle conveys Ellen's more privileged life by concentrating on her dreams of a different less rigidly-enforced existence. As teenagers, we often want to inhabit the realm where anything seems possible, where we can be exactly who we wish to be as a grown-up.

I hope the Anglophiles amongst you will forgive me for my excursion to France. Thirteenth century France is the setting for Troubadour by Mary Hoffman, which manages to both educate and entertain with her tale of Cathars, Crusades and courtly love. A book dense with information and history, Hoffman keeps the action flowing by breaking up the narrative into quite short chunks, often less than a double page long. Each section is separated by an illustration which makes the pages seem less daunting. This book tells the story of Elinor who is in love with a troubadour, Bertram in dangerous times. A glossary is provided at the back to help with the terminology. (Another good idea).

If you can't tear yourself away from the Tudors, try Witchstruck by Victoria Lamb. The young witch, Meg Lytton, gets teenage attention through the fascination for all things 'yuk' by starting the book with a gruesome spell, and the author keeps the narrative fast-paced and in the first person. This is a great tip, to tap into the genuinely gruesome details that are absent from today's more sanitised existence. Keeping a close narrative distance is something recommended as one of the eight highly effective habits of teen authors in this article, and something that Victoria Lamb does extremely well.




For an examination of the teenage psyche and how it has changed over time, you can't do better than this article by Eliza Graham on Historical Fiction Connection.

Her new indie novel, Blitz Kid, set in World War II is the first of a series. Teen readers love to read series because they come to know the characters, and it's a bit like getting to know your own private gang, acting out scenes in your head. This novel deals with the black market and espionage, and coming of age romance.

For more recommendations of books for Young Adults/Teen readers, try Books Back in Time

For many excellent articles on writing teen fiction try
http://writingteennovels.com/

More about my adult books and my blogs can be found on my website
www.deborahswift.com

Of Tartan, Celts and Long-dead Mummies

by Anna Belfrage

Say “tartan”, and people will immediately think of Scotland – and of kilts. The word conjures up images of stalwart warriors, dressed in skirts as they charge the English soldiers of centuries long gone by. From what one can read on the internet, the combination of a tartan skirt and a hairy male knee is about as close to heaven as one can get, and while having nothing against kilt-wearing men – I find them both handsome and ruggedly male, as they walk about in their heavy swinging garments with God knows what on underneath – I do not necessarily consider hairy knees to be a “die-for” vision.

Neither here nor there, as this post is supposed to be about tartan – or plaid, as some Americans say. Tartan is not a Scottish invention. Nor is it an Irish invention, which would otherwise be a logical conclusion, as the Scots originated in Ireland. Ancient Celts – from which both the Irish and, by association, the Scots, are descended – were known for their love of tartan, further borne out by the finds in Hallstatt, Austria. This is believed to have been the heartland of the Celtic culture back in the 8th century B.C., and the prehistoric burial grounds, as well as the old salt mines, have turned up quite a number of bits and pieces in tartan – skilfully woven twill cloth with horizontal and vertical stripes of different colours.

For us modern people, it is difficult to fully comprehend the effort that went into making clothes in the past. Most of us wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a plain weave or a twill weave, we never consider the work that has gone into the garments we so casually pull off the rack to wear.

For the truly ancient people, clothes weren’t much of an issue. The cave dwellers used skins to cover themselves with, and given the general conditions in which they lived, this was a smart choice. But I bet you that already back then, someone was decorating their leather covering with whatever they could find, transforming a shapeless garment into an individual fashion statement.

Millennia rolled by, and people learnt to farm. In Egypt arose cultures where clothes were definitely of importance, but given the heat, the thinner the better, and so the Egyptians concentrated on linen and cotton, on light colours to reflect the glare of the sun. I am sure the skilled Egyptian weavers would now and then decorate the products from their looms with a contrasting line in red, or blue, but to go as far as a colourful tartan, that they did not.

While our Ancient Egyptians were experimenting with monumental architecture and innovative farming, an entirely different way of life existed on the large Eurasian steppe, that endless roll of grasslands that extends from modern day Ukraine to China. Here people had for generations lived as herdsmen, leading their flocks from one new grazing ground to the other. Being a herdsman was being a nomad. Belongings were transported in carts, entire tribes travelling together as their flocks moved south or west or east. Home was not a permanent residence, home was what you could carry with you, and so fabrics became important, the quality of your textiles shouting to the world just how successful you were.

Textiles don’t do well over time. They rot, they get degraded to rags, end up thrown in the fire. As a consequence, only rarely do we find any remnants of the clothes worn by people who died thousands of years ago – unless they were buried in very dry conditions, such as the Andean altiplano or the Tarim basin in Central Asia, home to the Taklamakan desert, the most arid place on earth. And it is to this rather inhospitable area that we must go to find the oldest known tartan specimens in the world. Asia, you say, having major problems envisioning a Japanese kimono in Black Watch tartan. Yup, Asia.

For very many years, the Eurasian Steppe was considered a one-way street. The Huns, for example, came from the east and moved west, causing destructing and chaos as they went. Some centuries later, and it was Djingis Khan, leading his Mongol Horde from east to west. Only recently have we begun to realise that some migrants went the other way, travelling from west to east. Some of them apparently ended up in the Tarim basin, developed a flourishing culture that survived for several centuries before they disappeared, floating off without leaving much of a trace – except for two things; documents in a now extinct language, and the Ürümchi  mummies.

Some of the Ürümchi mummies are old. Very old, well over 3 000 years. They are also remarkably well-preserved, having been buried in almost perfect conditions from a preservation perspective. Astoundingly, the mummies seem to be Caucasian – very strange in Chinese Turkestan, where the predominant population is either Chinese or Mongol. But the mummies have blond hair, they are tall (very tall) and fair-skinned, they have high-bridged noses and round eyes. Interestingly enough, this tallies with descriptions in ancient Chinese texts, referring to a neighbouring people of great height, with fair or red hair and deep-set blue eyes. These Nordic hunks hung around in one form or other until somewhere midway through the first millennia A.D. They were the Tokharian.

From "The Mummies of Ürümchi" by E.W.Barber

Although the mummies have been found in various locations within the basin, and vary in age, they all share one further common feature; the high quality of the woven textiles they were buried with, many of them with a tartan pattern. Even more intriguing, the tartan patterns uncovered in Chinese Turkestan resemble not only those of the old Hallstatt culture (bi-coloured twill weave or three coloured plain weave) but also those of Scottish tartans (multi-coloured twill), which are not found anywhere else. So, are we looking at very ancient Scottish emigrants? Or are these people the ancestors of present days Scots?

Let us take a step back. Tartan patterns are generally restricted to woollen textiles. To make wool, one needs sheep, an animal that was domesticated well over 8 000 years ago. At the time, the sheep wasn’t woolly, it was hairy, more like a goat. It was bred for its meat, but with the passing of years and a conscious breeding effort, the hairy sheep became a woolly one, so that about 4 000 B.C. we had our classical white fluffy animal (and those of you with a more than passing acquaintance with sheep will know that rarely are they fluffy – or white).

Suddenly, there was a lot of wool. Spindles were invented, and looms were adapted to handle this new material, rather different from flaxen thread/yarn. Plain weave was replaced – or complemented – with twill weave (in which two threads of the warp are looped together by the weft, with an offset between the rows, thereby creating a diagonal pattern that runs through the fabric). Twill had the advantage of allowing for a tighter weave, thereby making the resulting cloth warmer. All of this seems to have happened in present day Turkey or thereabouts, a remnant of twill having been found in a 3 000 B.C. grave in central Turkey.

At the time, Anatolia and the Caucasus was a veritable melting pot for humanity. Innovations were made at an impressive speed: domesticated horses, carts, sheep, woollen textiles. All these novelties were shared between the peoples, probably using some sort of proto Indo-European language. And then, for whatever reasons – maybe they fell out, or maybe the grazing became restricted, or maybe some of them just wanted to see the world – began the exodus from the Caucasian heartlands, with some going east while the majority went west.

Tokharian princes

Our Ürümchi mummies – or their ancestors – obviously went east, leaving most of their tribe to go the other way. Maybe they went to Hallstatt, Austria and the salt mines, where they would develop into the people we call the Celts. Our voyagers on the eastern road carried with them an Indo-European language. (As late as in the 6th century A.D., a people in the Tarim basin spoke Tokharian, an Indo-European language that has a clear resemblance to the Celtic languages.) Those long-dead travellers also took along a love for their tribal tartan patterns, a love so strong that it would survive the long, slow trek across the endless Eurasian steppe. While none of this is conclusive evidence, I believe the mummies of Ürümchi were, in fact, a side-branch on the Celtic tree.

So where does tartan comes from? I guess it sprang out of love for colour and textile, a silent ode to the world that surrounded the weaver. Maybe she had her eyes captured by the spectacular colour of a winter sunrise, when the muted purplish grey of the receding night is shot through with strands of glowing pink. Maybe she was trying to capture all those elusive colours that lie trapped in the soft caress of an evening breeze - or maybe she was foresighted enough to realise, that somewhere down the line, men would look good wearing a kilt.

If you want to read more about the Ürümchi mummies and their fascinating textiles, I strongly recommend “The Mummies of Ürümchi” by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

Anna Belfrage is the author of four published books, A Rip in the Veil , Like Chaff in the Wind, The Prodigal Son and her latest release, A Newfound Land.  Set in seventeenth century Scotland and Virginia/Maryland, the books tell the story of Matthew and Alex, two people who should never have met – not when she was born three hundred years after him. For more information about Anna and her books, please visit her website or her blog.

Clothing as a Map to the Past

By Philippa Jane Keyworth

Richard Grassby wrote in his article ‘Material Culture and Cultural History’ in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, that ‘Clothes in a draw have no meaning, but when worn they become a uniform with social and moral implications.’

I am a woman, and I love clothes. What a stereotype – except that if you continued to talk to me about them, you would see that I have an obsession with clothes of bygone ages rather than what’s in high-street stores right now.

As an amateur historian, I am coming to the firm conclusion that to assume people just wore certain clothes because they liked them is missing a much broader range of motivations. There were many reasons individuals in the past chose to wear what they wore.

Many previous historians have given the main motivation, when people were choosing what to wear, as ‘social emulation’. The basic meaning of this being to dress like your betters and hope to rise through society’s ranks. Of course that is a just consideration. It is clear from eighteenth century accounts of working and middle class people that they would dress like their betters in order to enhance their job prospects and to feed their social aspirations. How many people have bought Ugg boots in the last few years because everyone else has a pair?

The idea I would like to present to you is one that sees a host of other motivations as well, and that these motivations often reflected the contemporary social, economic and political events of the day. ‘I’m confused!’ you say – but have no fear, I wish to give some examples to better explain my theory!

Whilst studying the medieval period, I was astonished to find that there were such things as sumptuary laws. These laws were designed to govern the wearing of sumptuous dress, restricting certain clothing to the rich and certain clothing to the poor. This way, if someone were to look at someone else on the street, they would be able to determine their rank within society immediately. This is much like a football player wearing his team colours.

The clearest example of these laws is in furs. Rich people were allowed to wear furs such as ermine, whilst poor people were confined to furs such as squirrel. If the poor were to don ermine they would be breaking the law. So, in this case, the type of clothing worn gives a map of the social hierarchy in society at the time which can be viewed in documents and through art.

Jumping forward, Elizabeth I’s motivations when choosing the clothing she was portrayed wearing in her portraits reflects the political and gender mindsets of her time. Roy Strong’s book Gloriana explains her use of ermine was a signifier of purity, establishing her as the Virgin Queen and reinforcing her claim of marriage to her country. Equally, the fact that she chose to dress in similar clothes to her father with the masculine broad shoulders and puffy sleeves shows her legitimising her claim to the throne both by associating herself with her father Henry VIII and asserting her authority to rule in spite of her sex. Elizabeth’s choice of clothing reflected her political tools and from it you can deduce the challenges to her rule i.e. not marrying, the questioning of her claim to the throne and her sex.

And what can the eighteenth century tell us? Oh, the wide-pannier court dresses and the lavish wigs! It was all pomp and splendour and what for? The obvious answer is to display wealth. When materials were expensive and there was no mass production available, dresses using yards and yards of the stuff were the perfect way to display wealth, importance and power. The same goes for those astronomical wigs. The larger the wig, the more expensive – I hear that’s where the term ‘big-wigs’ comes from, the wearing of big wigs by the rich and powerful.

Then on to the Regency, that most elegant of ages, what were the motivations for dressing in tight buckskin breeches and flimsy muslin dresses, (not at the same time I hasten to add)? I agree with Christopher Breward in his book The Culture of Fashion, that after the violence of 1789, the English aristocracy wanted to distance themselves from the indulgences of their French equivalents. They discarded embroidered frock coats in favour of plain jackets reminiscent of the middling classes. Then there was also the harking back to neo-classical philosophies in the previous century. The Enlightenment had brought with it ideas of equality and appreciation of antiquity. Surely that had something to do with those muslin dresses that looked so much like the clothing of caryatids? Not to mention influencing the wearing of tight buckskin breeches that Ian Kelly in Beau Brummel, said were to show the nudity of ancient statues in the everyday dress of men.

Finally, a friend pointed out something to me I did not know about the large 1950s skirts that women wore. We were watching Grace Kelly in Rear Window (a great film if you’ve never seen it), and were admiring Kelly’s beautiful dresses. My friend remarked upon the fact that the reason pencil skirts were so popular in the 1940s was because of fabric rationing due to the war, and when this rationing was lifted, full-bodied skirts came into fashion. Right there, a little passing comment made me realise that from two different designs of skirt the international relations and economy of countries was alluded to.

I hope that by touching upon a few highlights of bygone fashions you are starting to see clothes as I do. They can provide a map to view beliefs and attitudes in the past. They can echo the current economy, social situation, governmental changes and individual’s desires. They really do provide us amateur historians with a map to the past.

In writing all this, I do not want people to think I am completely discarding the idea of people choosing a dress or jacket simply because they like the design. I am sure they did, but along with that desire, there were lots of underlying motivations, either conscious or subconscious, that can be discovered and unpacked when looking at clothing. Next time you are looking at historical attire, why not see what it can tell you about the past?

References:

Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I by Roy Strong

The Culture of Fashion: A history of Fashionable Dress by Christopher Breward

‘Material Culture and Cultural History’ by Richard Grassby in Journal of Interdisciplinary History

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

Philippa Jane Keyworth, known to her friends as Pip, has been writing since she was twelve in every notebook she could find. Whilst she dabbles in a variety of genres, it was the encouragement of a friend to watch a film adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice that would start the beginning of her love affair with the British Regency. Her debut novel, The Widow's Redeemer (Madison Street Publishing, 2012), is a traditional Regency romance bringing to life the romance between a young widow with an indomitable spirit and a wealthy viscount with an unsavory reputation.

The Widow's Redeemer @ Amazon UK

The Widow's Redeemer @ Amazon USA

Catharine Macaulay – a dangerous woman writer in a scandalous marriage

by Diane Scott Lewis

Catharine Macaulay, (née Sawbridge), born in Kent in 1731—and an early advocate for women’s rights—has been discredited and disregarded for years due to her damaged reputation, a woman’s most important asset in the eighteenth century.

Educated by a governess, Catharine later described herself as "a thoughtless girl till she was twenty, at which time she contracted a taste for books and knowledge by reading an odd volume of some history, which she picked up in a window of her father's house."

A female contemporary, after conversing with Macaulay, remarked that she was "more deeply learned than becomes a fine lady."

In 1760 she married a Scottish physician, George Macaulay, and they moved to St. James’ Place in London. Six years later, and after one child, George—almost twenty years her senior—died.

Between 1763 and 1783 Macaulay wrote, in eight volumes, The History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line. She believed that the Anglo-Saxons had possessed freedom and equality that was lost at the Norman Conquest. To her the history of the English was the struggle to win back their rights that were crushed by the "Norman yoke."  Whigs welcomed the first volumes as a Whig answer to David Hume's "Tory" History of England. In 1768 relations between Macaulay and the Whigs cooled. Volume four of the history was published, which dealt with the trial and execution of King Charles I. Macaulay thought Charles's execution was justified, praised the following Commonwealth and showed republican sympathies. This caused her to be abandoned by the Rockingham Whigs.

Macaulay with the Bluestockings

Macaulay remained one of the leading political activists of her day. She was closely associated with the radical Society for the Supporters of the Bill of Rights. Her final important pamphlet, the 1790 Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France, in a Letter to the Earl of Stanhope, supported the French Revolution and its demands for liberty and equality. Her works were critically acclaimed, financially successful and politically influential in her own period—highly unusual for a woman.

She wrote in 1790 in her Letters on Education, as Mary Wollstonecraft (who was tremendously influenced by Macaulay’s work) did in 1792, that the apparent weakness of women was due to their lack of quality education.

Her Letters on Education also dealt with morality, non-violence, and the treatment of children, slaves, and the poor, and she’s remembered as one of the earliest advocates for gender equality and co-education.

In 1778, at the ripe old age of forty-seven, she married William Graham, the younger brother of a close friend. Graham was only twenty-one. The marriage, as well as the increasingly radical nature of her writings—her attacks on the government—damaged her reputation in Britain. She was accused of marrying a man of inferior status, and too many years her junior. The marriage, however, seemed to have been a happy one.

Still popular in America, (she’d criticized the policy of the British Government in the lead up to the American War of Independence) she was associated with the leading Revolutionaries there, even visiting with George Washington at Mount Vernon in Virginia.

Plagued by increasingly ill-health, she died in Berkshire in 1791.

Unfortunately, Macaulay’s status as a scandalous woman writer with a damaged reputation (according to the mores of her time) has allowed her to be disregarded by later historians of eighteenth-century literature and politics. Recently, her significance as a writer and political thinker has been recognized. Her work is thankfully the focus of a growing number of studies.

For further reading on Macauley's writings: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/catharinemacaulay/#ThoProLibEdu

See more on Diane Scott Lewis.
 

Planning a Research Trip

by Tim Carrington

A few of you may know that I live on a boat in the Mediterranean with my dog ‘Jack Sparrow’. For the last few winters I have based myself in La Maddalena islands off the NE coast of Sardinia and only fifteen miles from Corsica. It is a great area to sail throughout the year.

About this time of year I can be found finalizing my sailing programme for the coming Spring, Summer and Autumn. It was while I was doing my nautical research for 2014 that I realized that even this far away from the British Isles we have, at times, had a hand in its history.

The Forgotten War and Freedom Fries

La Maddalena archipelago comprises about a dozen islands and has been an important naval base for centuries. In the late 18th or early 19th century the U.S.A. asked if they could establish a naval base here because their merchant ships were frequently being attacked by ‘pirates’. And who were those pirates? The British Navy! Sardinia was at that time part of Piedmont and their King said no!

But why were the British Navy attacking U.S. ships? Well because the British were supporting the French Royalty in their struggle to maintain their position while the U.S.A. where supporting the French revolution.

From what I have read, when a U.S. ship was captured its crew were treated as long lost cousins by the Brits. Apparently it reached a point that the U.S. government told the British government that if one more ship was seized then they would declare war on Britain.

It is a fact that you won’t find much on this subject and it has been described as ‘the forgotten war’. But a reminder of this was in the film ‘Master and Commander’ where the British were chasing a French ship. Well, if you read the book you will find that the British were chasing an American ship. But at the time the film was made France had refused to ally itself with the U.S.A. and Britain over invading Iraq so Holywood made the French the bad guys.

Nelson & Hood

Nelson was no stranger to La Maddalena as he was at anchor here with his fleet for over a year waiting for the French to ‘come out and play’. During his time at anchor he never once stepped ashore as to do so would have broken the neutrality of Sardinia. I guess he didn’t have a dog on board. Now I can’t swear on this but I am sure I have read or heard that he had a local mistress to keep him amused. It is a fact that Lady Hamilton never visited him here. But whether true or not, it would make a good story!

Nelson and the British Navy were also involved quite a lot in Corsica in the late 18th century. At that time Corsica was French after its brief independence under the leadership of Pasqual Paoli, and the British were determined to see him reinstated and create an Anglo-Corsican kingdom.

Corsica had two great defensive positions, Bonifacio and Calvi. Both have massive citadels on the cliffs which meant that their guns had a greater range than those who were attacking. But Nelson had a plan! He sailed south but only a few miles so that he was out of sight then he had guns removed from his ships, dragged up to the top of a hill the same height as the citadel and started a bombardment.

During the four week siege 11,000 rounds of shot and 3,000 shells were fired by the British and every round and every shot, as well as their guns had to be manhandled by sailors and marines from their ships to the shore and then up into the hills. The logistics of this are mind-blowing. I am not sure whether the name of the place he landed came afterwards but he landed at what is now called ‘Agro Bay’. 11,000 rounds of shot is definitely agro! Oh and it was here that Nelson lost his eye. I did have a look for it but I couldn’t find it.

Meanwhile, a few miles further north, Lord Hood was attaching Saint Florent. But before we come to that, I must tell you that all along the coast of Corsica are Genoese towers built some 150 years earlier. They are simple in design, built on solid rock and comprising a single room about twenty feet above ground level which can only be accessed by ladder. They were in effect a series of watch towers, each one in view of the next. They were a simple and effective early warning system against pirates.

Martello Tower 60, Leyland Road, Pevensey Bay
This tower is in a pretty good condition.
It is a private residence and obviously quite well cared for.
Photo by Kevin Gordon, Wikimedia Commons

Now back to Admiral Hood who had no difficulty in taking Saint Florent but the handful of defenders in the nearest Genoese Tower refused to surrender so Hood ordered his ships to start firing at the tower only to find that his shells simply bounced off it. Eventually it was taken by a strong force of marines but Hood was so impressed with how the tower had withstood his bombardment that he ordered his engineers to detail its construction, and on his return to Britain he recommended that a series of similar towers be built along the south coast of England. They can still be seen in places in England and are called Martello Towers (after the place in Corsica). Ironically they were built to thwart the ambitions of the Corsican born Napoleon Bonaparte.

The English (and Americans) Abroad

From Corsica I will be sailing to mainland France and my first stop will be Nice which actually used to be part of Italy and is where Garibaldi was born. What has he got to do with British history? Well, not a lot except that we named a biscuit after him. Whereas in New York the house where he once lived is a national monument. Oh, by the way, did you know while he was in New York he lodged with an Italian candle-maker who invented the telephone?

It was also here that tourism started! Well, not exactly, but in 1763 Tobias Smollett (what a lovely English name – sounds like a Dickens character) rented a ground-floor apartment in Nice from where he would walk every day to bathe in the sea. So strange was this practice that the locals are said to have gathered in crowds to watch! Times have changed. In the summer there is an aircraft landing at Nice airport almost every minute with tourists.

But it isn’t just Nice that the British had an effect on. To the east is Menton were the air is said to be most beneficial to those with chest complaints. In fact in the old cemetery there are as many English people there as there are French. It was here that Katherine Mansfield spent her last few years before dying at an early age from tuberculosis. She wrote the following in a letter knowing that her days were numbered.

"… I’ve just been for a walk on my small boulevard and looking down below at the houses all bright in the sun and the housewives washing their linen in great tubs of glittering water and flinging it over the orange trees to dry. Perhaps all human activity is beautiful in the sunlight. Certainly these women lifting their arms, turning to the sun to shake out the wet clothes were supremely beautiful. I couldn’t help feeling – and after they have lived they will die and it won’t matter. It will be alright……… Wander with me 10 years, will you darling? Ten years in the sun. It’s not long – only 10 springs."

Then there is Juan Les Pins famous for, amongst other things, the riotous parties in the 1920’s and 30’s by such summer residents as Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

A little further west is Cannes famous for its film festival. But back in the early 19th century Cannes was nothing but a small fishing village and it might still be if it wasn’t for Lord Brougham, the Lord Chancellor of England. He had been on his way to the Italian Riviera with his sick daughter but was turned back at the River Var, which was then the border between France and Italy, because of a cholera epidemic. He was so taken by the small village that he decided to build a villa which he called Villa Eleonore Louise after his daughter who sadly died before it was completed.

Lord Brougham became an annual visitor where he would spend time writing books on politics, philosophy and history, and analyzing the habits of bees. He so loved the place that he encouraged other influential English people to build villas. Such was his influence that the population increased from 3,000 to 10,000 before he died.

Twenty Saints and a Prisoner

Between Juan les Pins and Cannes are two islands with only a tenuous British connection but worthy of mention for anyone interested in medieval and earlier history. The two islands are Ile Sainte Marguerite and Ile Saint Fereol.

On the latter stands a monastery founded in the 4th century by Saint Honorat who actually went there to live a life of solitude but such was his influence that his followers flocked after him to such an extent that 20 saints and 600 bishops are products of his teachings here, and one of them was St. Patrick the Welshman who became the patron saint of Ireland. It is still a monastery and has been almost continually for 16 centuries.

But people of a different ilk lived on Ile Sainte Marguerite as this is where Fort Royal is. Now there is no English connection but I mention this simply because it is an historical novel begging to be written! Fort Royal was a prison and its most famous prisoner was ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’. Yes there was such a prisoner and I have even seen his cell, although it is said that he didn’t wear an iron mask, he simply had to keep his face covered so no one would recognize him.

But who was he? Well, he could have been illegitimate son of Louis XIV, or Louis’ twin brother born several hours later or even the doctor who performed an autopsy on Louis XIII and found him incapable of producing offspring. But my favourite story about this mystery man is the one of him fathering a son with a female prisoner. When the child was born he was whisked away to foster parents in Corsica. To be ‘entrusted’ in this way is ‘remis de bonne part’ in French and ‘di buonna parte’ in Italian. Could this be the great-grandfather of Napoleon Bonaparte?

La Napoule Castle, Mandelieu la Napoule
Christophe.Finot

Further west is Mandelieu La Napoule – and another story waiting to be written but this time it is an American who must take the credit. The 14th century castle here is much restored to a point that it has been described as Romanesque and Disney-esque. The man who is to be credited is Henry Clews, son of a New York banker who fell in love with the place at the end of WWI and remained there until his death in 1937. But the story in the making is that of his wife, a New York society woman who remained there all through WWII. Her identity as an American was kept secret from the Germans and she was actively involved in helping the French underground. What a lady, and I don’t even know her name.

Eventually I will arrive at Port St. Louis where I will take the mast down and then spend four months in the French canals as far as Paris and back. Again, not English but of importance to many historical novelists is Avignon. Yes famous for its bridge but more famous in historical terms because it was here that the Vatican relocated to when Rome fell. Other than that, and the fact that there are some magnificent buildings, I know little about it, but I am looking forward to finding out.

So that’s going to be my ‘research trip’ from the end of March until August. All that history to explore, all those vineyards to visit and all those miles and miles of tranquil canals. Care to join me? I have spare cabins available.

Tim Carrington
www.tim-carrington.co.uk

How Research Illuminates Story

by Wendy J. Dunn

There are so many times I find myself thinking that writing fiction constructed from history is a far more difficult challenge than constructing fiction inspired by our everyday experience of life. Writers write fiction because they have a story to tell; to tell a story filtered through history challenges writers to construct fiction through a context not their own.

While historical fiction writers don’t need to be historians, I believe it is necessary for writers to have a deep understanding of the history that forms the context for their writing. That means historical fiction writers research history.

Historical research not only deepens my well of knowledge, but also takes me from the threshold of conceiving my first idea into constructing and peopling a world through imagination, imagination continually fuelled by my knowledge of history and the historical personages I am writing about.

All through writing my first draft I am committed to research, simply because the writing of historical fiction will always lead me to more questions that cry out for answers. Research, deepening my well of knowledge, is then necessary to achieve a fictional work that will hopefully allow my reader to see my imaginings of another time and place.

But, for me, there comes a time during the writing of that first draft when I know I have done all the important research necessary to complete my work of fiction. Because this is what I write: fiction. The construction of my first draft illuminates my story. Once I know that, research gets put on the backburner while I focus on crafting that story.

What now follows is how the journey of research ignited the story of my new novel, The Light in the Labyrinth, now scheduled for publication with Metropolis Ink in 2014. It will be my second published novel set in the time of the Tudors. This time I have targeted my work to the young adult reader by giving voice to the teenage Katherine Carey, the daughter of Mary Boleyn.

Most historians today paint Mary as Anne Boleyn’s younger sister, but my own research sways me to believe, or perhaps I should say imagine, otherwise. Mary Boleyn appears to have been Henry VIII’s mistress for several years – possibly before her first marriage in 1520 to William Carey, a courtier close to the king, until possibly 1525. This period was also significantly marked by gifts of royal grants to William Carey (Ives 2004, p. 16), which spurred my imagination to construct the Carey marriage as a way to deal with Henry VIII’s involvement with Mary Boleyn.

Henry Carey

Research also stoked my imagination by providing evidence that many of his contemporaries believed Henry VIII fathered Mary Boleyn’s two eldest children, Katherine and Henry Carey. John Hales, Vicar of Isleworth, pointed out Henry Carey, then a child of ten, as the King's bastard (Ives 2004, p. 200). I can believe it. Henry Carey’s portrait shows a strong resemblance to Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII’s grandmother, as well as his father, Henry VII.

Henry VII

Margaret Beaufort

Katherine was the eldest of these two children, and another historical figure whose birth date is lost to us, but historians put forward both 1522 and 1524 as strong possibilities for her year of birth. Henry VIII was still sexually involved with Mary Boleyn in the early 1520’s, which is why we are presented with this possibility that the King sired Katherine, rather than William Carey.

That possibility set my imagination afire – the fire blazed even brighter when I tossed at it what if? What if my Kate had no idea about her true parentage when I bring her to court in late November 1535?

I yearned to believe she was fourteen at her aunt’s execution, and that Henry VIII was her father. But I needed to feel utterly convinced that Kate was indeed fourteen before moving forward with my new novel. Only by research would my imagination be free to construct a fictional Kate by using the building blocks of believable history.

My next step was to study closely the paintings of Henry VIII, Mary Boleyn and Katherine Carey, trying to decide if there is enough physical evidence for me to present Katherine Carey as the daughter of Henry VIII.

Henry VIII by Hans Holbein, the younger.

Reputed to be Catherine Carey

When I looked at paintings of Katherine Carey and Henry VIII, I was struck by the similarity of the eyes. Katherine’s eyes are so much like the King’s I could not help feeling that I was gazing at a female version of him. I also studied another painting, often identified as the very fertile (she bore at least sixteen babies during her lifetime) Katherine Carey.

The painting’s inscription has the sitter in her thirty-eighth year in 1562. Calculating a birth year of 1524, I groaned. We know from Sir Francis’s dictionary, which recorded all his children’s births, that Katherine was pregnant with their son Dudley in that year. But could this painting be of an earlier pregnancy, and 1562 a recording of the year the painting was completed? Would this painting help me, or hinder me?

Supported by the sitter’s resemblance to Katherine Knolls’s effigy with its similar jewelled-breast pendant, this painting “provides the first contemporary evidence to support the identification of a portrait known as ‘Probably Catherine, Lady Knolls’” (Varlow 2007, p. 9). Big bellied with child, the redhead woman in this portrait looks out at us with a regal gaze reminiscent of Elizabeth Tudor. Indeed, the subject of the painting is so like the Queen it could be her own sister. The Queen’s own sister...

Weir’s Elizabeth the Queen, Starkey’s Elizabeth and Somerset’s Ladies-in-Waiting all underline how important of Katherine Carey was to Elizabeth, even long before she became Queen. When Katherine and her husband, both of them Puritan, went into exile in 1553, during the reign of Mary Tudor, Elizabeth wrote a farewell letter to Catherine “signed ‘cor rotto’ (broken heart)’ (Varlow 2007, p.8).

Providing more evidence of their close relationship, after Elizabeth succeeded her sister in 1558, she overlooked the fact her cousin Katherine was a Puritan – a member of an extremist sector of the Anglican Church, which Elizabeth disliked (Somerset 1984, p. 65), and placed her as chief lady of the Queen’s bedchamber.

Available night and day, the women of the bedchamber were often drawn from the Queen’s own kin, and expected to put aside the needs of their families for the Queen’s (Weir 1998, p. 258). As one of this close knit group and positioned as the Queen’s chief lady, it is very likely Kate was with Elizabeth when she was crowned on a snowy, January day in 1559.

Katherine died on the fifteenth of January, 1569 – the anniversary of Elizabeth’s crowning ten years before, leaving Elizabeth grief-stricken (Weir 1998, p. 257). She died not at home with her husband, surrounded by her large family, but while at Hampton Court, serving the queen.

This unidentified painting, added to Kate’s similarity to Henry VIII, provided to me more evidence of Kate’s closer kinship to Elizabeth than that of simply cousins. I decided then to forgo its suggestion either early in 1523 or early 1524 for her birth year and (as a writer of fiction) to embrace 1522.

What Kate might remember as fourteen-year-old presented me with exciting possibilities, starting from her memories of her supposed father, William Carey. If born in 1522, my fictional Kate would have been five when he died.

William Carey

While he was a court official and spent much of his time attending to the King, surely Kate would have been aware of him as her father. Could his absences have built up in her mind a too golden impression of her father? Five is a very impressionable age. Losing a parent at any age strikes deep, but for a five-year-old? I suspect that loss would imprint upon their psyche to be carried to their dying day.

Reflecting about this, I came back to one of my most important themes I explore through writing – how identity is constructed. I thought again about the creation of my fourteen-year-old character. Kate was at a very important age, stepping towards adulthood. No doubt, the life changing events of 1536 would impact significantly on that. Scenes opening up in my imagination, I considered one other important memory that my fourteen-year-old Kate may have had – Anne Boleyn’s coronation, almost three years before Anne’s execution.

I thought about that, wondering how to use that in my novel. I wondered about many things. I especially wondered about Kate, my Kate – a young girl who comes to the court of her aunt, the Queen of England. Stepping from the threshold of research to my imagined Tudor world, I saw my Kate. An unhappy girl, she wanted to escape her home to be with Queen Anne, the aunt she idolised. She did not realise that by taking up her place as one of the Queen’s women she would also face her own destiny.

But while there was so much that my imagined Kate didn’t know, not yet, not until I finished my novel, I also saw a challenging and exciting narrative scope opening up before me. I saw her story, the story that will now be published sometime in 2014, in The Light in the Labyrinth.

References:

Ives, E. W. 2004. The life and death of Anne Boleyn: ‘the most happy’. Malden, MA, Blackwell Pub.

Somerset, A. 2004. Ladies in Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day. Edition. Booksales.

Varlow, S. (2007). ‘Sir Francis Knollys’s Latin dictionary: new evidence for Katherine Carey’. Historical Research 80 (209): 315-323.

Weir, A. 1998. Elizabeth The Queen. Jonathan Cape.

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

Wendy J. Dunn is an Australian writer obsessed by Tudor History and Medieval Castile. The author of the award-winning novel Dear Heart, How Like You This?, Wendy is working on her PhD in Writing.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, she is married and the mother of three sons and one daughter—named after a certain Tudor queen. Wendy is a literature support teacher at Eltham North Primary and also tutors at Swinburne University in their Master of Arts (Writing) program.

Saint Ursula: A Story of Courage

By Kim Rendfeld

Most of what we know about Saint Ursula is from legend. Actually, legends, plural, with many fantastic elements. But I suspect there is truth buried within this story of courage. Virgins were martyred in Cologne, Germany, and they might have come from Britain.

Glorification of St. Ursula and Her Companions,
Vittore Carpaccio, 1491

The oldest version, a fifth-century Latin inscription in a Cologne church bearing Saint Ursula’s name, provides only a hint: “Often admonished by divine visions and by the consideration of the majesty of the martyrdom of the holy virgins who appeared to him, Clematius, a nobleman of the East, according to vow, thoroughly restored this basilica on his own estate and at his own expense (translation from Golden Hours by J. Jackson Wray).” A ninth-century addendum gives a dire warning: “But if anyone, notwithstanding the majesty of the place where the holy virgins shed their blood for the name of Christ, should dare to bury any person here, let him know that he shall be punished by the eternal fire of hell.”

The century of the virgins’ martyrdom is unclear; it could be third, fourth, or fifth. In earlier versions of the story, who is leading the group changes, but later versions settle on Ursula. And the number of Ursula’s companions was closer to 10 than 11,000, the latter number appearing by the ninth century.

Dream of St.Ursula, Vittore Carpaccio, 1495

The legend is more fleshed out in the 11th century. Ursula and the pagan Aetherius are betrothed. Having pledged herself to Christ, Ursula seeks to delay the marriage by going on a pilgrimage. She takes 10 attendants, and each woman has 1,000 companions. They sail on the Rhine and stop at Cologne, where an angel tells Ursula they will be martyred on their return visit to the city.

Undeterred, Ursula and her companions continue their journey. At Basel, they pick up the local bishop and go all the way to Rome. There, the remaining pagans, including Aetherius, are baptized. Moved by a vision of an army of martyrs, the British-born Pope Cyriacus abdicates, so that he can share their martyrdom. (Conspiracy theorists explain you can’t find any mention of this pope in the records because the powers in Rome were so mad they erased his name.)

From The Reliquary of St. Ursula,
Hans Memling, 1489

The group returns to Cologne, where they are indeed slaughtered with arrows by Huns in hatred of the faith. Then the army of martyrs drives the Huns away.

In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fictionalized history of Britain, Ursula is the daughter of Dianotus, king of Cornwell, and she and her companions are being sent to Armorica (Brittany) to provide conquering soldiers with wives. After being shipwrecked, the women are slaughtered by - you guessed it - the Huns, angry at being rebuffed by the beautiful ladies. No mention of vows of chastity or dying for Christ.

Regardless of what is accurate about the legend, the martyrs existed and their story of courage has inspired generations of believers.

About 1,000 years after the virgins’ deaths, their story was included in The Golden Legend, a book read to St. Angela de Merici when she was a child. Ursula’s legend must have stayed with her throughout her life. In 1535, the 61-year-old Angela founded an order under the patronage of Saint Ursula. The Ursulines are best known for educating girls, founding communities and schools throughout the world.

Public domain images via Wikimedia Commons

Sources

Golden Hours, J. Jackson Wray

“St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins,” Albert Poncelet. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15.

"St. Angela Merici," Michael Ott. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1.

The British History of Geoffrey of Monmouth

Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne: Relics, Reliquaries and the Visual Culture of Group Sanctity in Late Medieval Europe, Scott B. Montogomery

Sisters of the Irish Ursuline Union


Kim Rendfeld’s novels take place in eighth-century Francia, where Saint Ursula's relics were revered in Cologne. She is the author of The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press) and  The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (forthcoming, Fireship Press). For more about Kim and her fiction, visit kimrendfeld.com or her blog, Outtakes. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

The Animals of Cottage and Castle: Chickens

by Katherine Ashe

Silkie

What could be found in the poorest of cottages and the richest of manors? Chickens of course. The poor cottager might have only three or four hens, a manor with a large household and frequent guests might have two-hundred. But the number would not be stable as older hens past their careers as egg layers would go to the soup pot, and the young cockerels hatched would be roasted before they could become trouble makers for the resident cocks.

Chickens have been domesticated for at least five thousand years. Interestingly, the wild progenitor of domestic chickens, the Red Jungle Fowl, is still going strong in the forests of Thailand, India and Indonesia.

Golden Sebright Cock

And there are modern breeds that look very much like them, though plumper, and given to more frequent egg laying or more determined fighting. These birds have been bred for sport for as long, and possibly longer, than they’ve been bred for food. The cock can be an utterly fearless adversary, yet extraordinarily gallant toward his hens – an apt model of chivalry well recognized from ancient to modern times.

If chickens had not reached England before the Roman invasion, they certainly would have come with the legions, for all their uses. Breeding for beauty, meatiness and flavor, prodigious year-around egg laying and combat-readiness was pursued by the Romans. Augustus’ reign particularly focused on encouraging virtuous agrarian interests, perhaps to dislodge the patrician class from city life in hope of converting decadent pastimes to more constructive ones.

Virgil’s Georgics canvases country life from the fertility of soil to the care of livestock – and does it in a long, long poem. He influenced not only the Romans of his own times, but Latin readers in monasteries and lordly manors ever since. In far more detail, the Roman writer Columella’s De Re Rustica provides instructions on the raising of chickens that is still apt for the non-industrial flock.

Derbyshire Redcap Cock

Let’s look at the chickens of cottage and castle – and the home farm to this day. In this age-old domesticated life-style the chicken ideally lives in a community of four or five hens per cock if a high rate of chick-hatching is the aim. But one cock for the whole flock will suffice, which is, in my observation, what the hens prefer. Most hens flee screaming from amorous advances; the cock is only successful if he can grab one by the neck feathers and pin her down. But then there is the flirtatious hen who will stamp her feet, press her breast to the ground and raise her tail if she thinks the cock might be looking her way.

And some cocks are more popular with their hens than others are. Gallantry. It’s a common behavior of cocks, on discovering the arrival of food, to crow a summons to the hens then stand aside and let them eat first. The cock of my flock could count his hens as they came into the barn in the evening. I thought this was absurd until, one evening, a hen was missing. (I hadn’t missed her and had closed the barn’s side door.) The cock went up the steps opposite the door, flew at the door feet first, swung the door open, flumped on the ground outside, picked himself up and went searching for his missing hen. In a few minutes he was back, herding her along ahead of him.

Jungle Fowl

Hens, for the most part, are prudent creatures with a sense of proprieties. Is it anthropomorphizing when behaviors similar to humans are considered fictions – false ascriptions to animals a deliberateness that is proper only to mankind – or is not an example of mankind’s arrogance to refuse the truth of intentional animal behavior when we see it is like our own?

I refer to chickens in their natural domestic habitat, not the hen who provided your store-bought breakfast egg or the cockerel in your chicken sandwich. Those are the closest thing to animals reduced by breeding and experience to mere machines. The hen lives isolated in an individual cage in which she cannot stand up. The cockerel grew to slaughtering size in a pen with fifty to several hundred of his age-fellows – a pen that had plenty of room when all were chicks but which, by the time his last day arrived, was so crowded he could barely move.

But we’re considering the chicken of the cottage and the castle.

Hens observe a social order of precedence (the much documented “pecking order”) and will peck the hen who presumes to eat before her betters, or to push or use the favored nesting box to which her status does not entitle her. Age is a major factor in precedence, but dignified and justified aggressiveness will be the selecting factor among age mates. The over aggressive hen aren’t popular. And a hen may move up socially if the hens above her rank permit her to stand beside them – to “hang out” with them, if you will.

Japanese Bantam

Vegetable kitchen scraps and bread crumbs would augment the flock’s diet of seeds, grass, weeds and insects most of the year. In the medieval three-field system the spring field of oats, peas, beans and barley provided dried feed for the winter, and tattered cabbage leaves would bring joy to the flock as each hen grabbed her leaf and ran off with it waving like a flag.

In winter’s harsh weather the flock would be confined to the byre, the barn or, in the case of the cottage, to a small hen house and fenced run. With the early warmth of spring the flock would be released to peck insects and sprouting weeds, and the hens would be so giddy that they wouldn’t return to their nests but would lay eggs wherever they happened to be – which no doubt gives rise to the Easter egg hunt as a custom of springtime.

An average flock of a dozen hens will have at least four nesting boxes where anyone may lay her eggs. Triumphant cackling follows the depositing of an egg, and the laying process is far from instantaneous, the hen looking thoughtfully constipated until the egg is out. Modern breeds can lay as much as an egg per day, but the hen of olden days was doing well to lay once every two or three days, and less in the winter. Columella recommends giving hens grape marc to get them through cold weather comfortably. My hens got a tablespoon of Scotch or Courvoisier in five gallons of water and seemed quite happy.

At an egg every two or three days it can take several weeks for a hen to accumulate the dozen eggs that inspire her to brood – that is sitting, warming on the eggs to hatch them. Eggs remain viable for at least three weeks and don’t start cell division until brooding begins. So much for anxiety about eggs being very fresh. Once a hen broods she’ll move from the nest only rarely and briefly: to eat, drink and defecate (a proper hen keeps her nest immaculate.) She’ll remain on the nest for at least twenty-one days.

Scotts Grey

The spot of fertility, a white dot with a white circle around it on the side of the yolk, will quickly divide in that time until the chick has absorbed all the yolk and the white of the egg. Terribly cramped in the shell, it will move its head, causing its beak to come in firmer and firmer contact with the shell until a hole is made, a bit of breathing space. Then, apparently encouraged, after a rest the chick will struggle to break the shell away and will emerge wet but warm, snuggled under its mother’s feathers. Not until all the eggs have hatched, or the hen has determined that some are never going to hatch, does she leave the nesting box, with her chicks following. The first to hatch will have lived for two or three days with no food other than what’s stored in their bodies from the egg.

Unlike wild birds, chickens are able to feed themselves and to drink from the moment they have their feet on the ground. Their mother need not even show them how, although they’ll still follow her and nestle beneath her whenever they’re not feeding or exploring their world. Do chicks play? Well, they appear to play King of the Mountain, perching atop a feeder until somebody knocks them off and takes their place. This is probably training for the “pecking order.”

Although the Romans cultivated breeds of chickens, it seems that in the Middle Ages not much attention was paid to the perfecting of chickens through selective breeding. It was not until the late 18th and 19th centuries that, in England, the craze for breeding clubs for everything from dogs to cattle and hogs and fowl took hold, creating most of the pure breeds known today.

There are a few breeds with ancient lineage. The Dorking claims a long lineage, as does the Derbyshire Redcap. Notice the comb on the Redcap, like a frilly bonnet or a fingery red sea anemone. It’s thicker and less prone to frost bite than the more usual thin comb. The comb, like the knight’s plume, is a matter of considerable pride to a cock. Hens usually have tiny combs that barely emerge from their head feathers. A dish of cocks’ combs was a delicacy in the Middle Ages.

Dorking Cock

When Edward in Sense and Sensibility remarks that his ambition is to be a curate, live a retired country life and raise chickens, he’s actually very much in fashion. While the rougher sorts of country gentlemen were perfecting their fighting cocks, aesthetes were creating, importing and improving works of art on two feet. While some look like extreme versions of chickens, some don’t look like chickens at all. The Silkie is favored as a pet, as well as for its willingness to sit on other hens’ eggs and hatch them. These are very docile creatures – a woman I know dresses hers in a vest and pantaloons, of which he seems very proud.

If all of this has inspired you to raise your own chickens, know that chicks are readily available through the mail – those three days of fasting-ability directly after hatching make this possible. But they’re usually shipped in quantities of a dozen – so they can keep each other warm.

A caution, large breeds can be very large, a cock can be two and a half feet tall and have five inch long spikes on his ankles -- and he’ll know how to use them. Fighting breeds, even bantams, can be very aggressive toward people – a Sebright of mine, about seven inches tall and just as pretty as the fellow pictured below, took up residence on the steps of a house a mile from home and terrorized the residence for several hours until I came and trapped him in a basket.

In the U.S. the firm I’ve dealt with, always happily, is the Murray McMurray Hatchery at mcmurrayhattchery.com.

The above pictured Silkie comes from the breeder below: http://www.mypetchicken.com/catalog/Day-Old-Baby-Chicks/White-Silkie-Bantam-p250.aspx?gclid=CPbMpuOkkroCFQqe4Aodu0EA3g

In the UK start perhaps with a visit to: http://www,backyardchickens.com/products/category/chicken-breeds

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

Katherine Ashe is the author of Montfort, the four volume historical novel on Simon de Montfort and the thirteenth century.