What Happened to Lord Camelford’s Body? Was He Set Up to Die?

by Lisa Chaplin

“The Half-Mad Lord.”[1] That was how Thomas Pitt, 2^nd Baron Camelford, was known in his own lifetime. The man who killed a lieutenant for insubordination; the man who caned his former captain on the street; the man who mourned the peace, and was beaten by a furious mob for it; the man who paid watchmen to beat them up; the man who tried to kill Napoleon twice, and failed; the man who publicly accused several gentlemen of treason; the man who died at the hand of a close friend, at the instigation of his mistress. Even after his death, he was the source of amusement and speculation, and his unburied casket (the casket eccentric in its own right) in a plain London church became a new tourist destination – until his body seemed to have vanished[2].

Where did it go? Why were the remains of this lord, cousin to one of the greatest British prime ministers ever known, brother-in-law to one of the most powerful lords in the country, left in a London church for tourists to laugh at? Why were his last wishes disrespected and ignored? And in all the juicy gossip and salacious wit about this “half-mad lord”, why were his actions in the final months of his life overlooked in favour of his more outrageous acts as a younger man, and the ridiculous manner of his death? After his cousin Prime Minister Pitt the Younger’s untimely death in 1806, many of his papers were burned (thanks for the info, Jacqui Reiter). Since the truth may never be known, as with so much of history, it becomes an investigation of the documents we have, reading between the lines of what’s been left unsaid.

Thomas Pitt, 2^nd Baron Camelford, has been described thus: “In his twenty-nine years, which is only nine years of manhood, he assassinated an unresisting man, and set off to invade a great and warlike nation, single-handed; wrenched off many London door-knockers; beat many constables; fought a mob single-handed, with a bludgeon, and was cudgeled and rolled in the gutter without uttering a howl; mauled a gentleman without provocation, and had £500 to pay; relieved the necessities of many, and administered black eyes to many. He was studious and reckless; scientific and hare-brained; tender hearted, benevolent, and barbarous; unreasonably vindictive and singularly forgiving. He lived a humorous ruffian, with flashes of virtue, and died a hero, a martyr, and a Christian.[3]” He lived his early years on a Cornish estate while his parents lived in London, and was sent away to school in Switzerland at the tender age of eleven.[4] For three years he never came home even for holidays.[5] Who would leave their only son and heir alone for years on end, never even visiting him? Why did his parents abandon a child of eleven in a foreign country, allowing strangers to complete his upbringing? Some have thought that the madness was showing even then. The infamous “Vancouver Affair”, in which Camelford challenged his former captain to a duel, and eventually caned him half to death on a London street, has been pointed out to show his ungovernable temper, his sense of superiority to most of the world.[6]

In The Caneing in Conduit Street (1796), James Gillray caricatured Pitt's street corner assault on George Vancouver.

I find it difficult to believe a baby could show such clear signs of madness – and if he did, upper class families normally hid the madness of a relative, especially one as prominent as the Pitts. So if they knew he was mad, how could they allow the boy to join the navy, the only son and heir to the new Camelford title? The boy, then plain Thomas Pitt, became a hero by the age of sixteen[7], helping save a crippled ship and staying on board until it made port in South Africa – but within a few years he’d killed his first man for insubordination, a lieutenant under his new command.

So why did his family, who’d paid off the lieutenant’s family[8], not bring Camelford home to live under quiet house arrest, as many did with their unstable relatives? Never forget William Pitt was prime minister at the time – and as the youngest prime minister in history, vulnerable to family scandals that could down his government. It would have been easy for him to arrange for sailors to drug the boy –twenty at the time – and have him brought home on another ship. So why was this “half-mad lord” allowed to continue a public life, even after he was drummed out of the navy?

Camelford’s exploits after killing the lieutenant and caning the captain are well known. He is said to have flogged a man over a small dispute over a length of rope for his ship. He had a habit of “Boxing the Watch” – beating up the men keeping order on the streets before the first London Police Force. He publicly announced his intention to kill Napoleon and failed, being quietly deported (until it hit the news reports). He returned to France by mysterious means within months, after being banned from ever returning. He was imprisoned in France, but was released, again within a few months for being “a tiresome eccentric”[9]. Despite his vow to kill Napoleon, he never returned, but began causing as much trouble as possible in London: boxing the Watch, accusing men of being Napoleon’s spies, and forcing duels on other gentlemen for nebulous reasons[10].

Then Camelford took up with Mrs. Symons, a woman who went out of her way to gain his interest. Within a short time Camelford forced a quarrel onto his close friend Mr. Best, who was a famous crack shot. Within days he was dead.

Why did Camelford do it? Some believe it was his madness. But Mrs. Symons, the former mistress of Mr. Best, told Camelford that Best had publicly ridiculed him. Why did Mrs. Symons start the furore in the first place?[11]

The solution could seem easy: a woman scorned seeking vengeance against Best. But she’d taken a step up in gaining Camelford’s protection; and by all accounts, she and Mr. Best had parted on amicable terms. So why did she do it?

The mystery grew deeper.

What were the “several commissions” he asked of known spy Sir Sidney Smith in a letter he wrote while he was dying? Why would he believe the word of this woman over a close friend, who right up until the hour of the duel protested his innocence to Camelford?[12] If Camelford did believe his mistress, why did he take the trouble of writing to the king before his death, absolving Best of all guilt?

Perhaps strangest of all, why was his last wish, a desire to be buried in Berne in Switzerland (where he said he spent his happiest years – at school) ignored? His sister Lady Grenville, wife to the former and future Foreign Minister, was known to be fiercely protective of Camelford, her little brother. Prime Minister Pitt had spent considerable amounts he didn’t have in buying off Camelford’s victims to stop his cousin from being hanged or transported. Pitt, certainly sick at the time with the illness that killed him two years later, might have been excused in not sending the body to Berne in a time of war. But why would this prominent political family put his remains in a fisherman’s casket[13] in a church in Soho, neither frequented by the aristocracy or Camelford himself? Why was the body left for years on end for the common folk to giggle over? Why not inter him at the family home, and let the scandal die a natural death?

In a time where the aristocracy couldn’t bear open scorn, and his relatives, in the most public of all careers, could ill afford ridicule, why was Lord Camelford allowed to become a public mockery in life and in death?

For a writer of historical espionage, the questions nagged at me. The “what could have happened” left unwritten in the annals of the Pitts’ history, or perhaps the facts burned after Prime Minister Pitt’s death. Why was he left unrestrained so long? What was he doing in the months leading up to his death that made Camelford’s becoming a slapstick fool, entertainment for the British reading masses and an embarrassment to his family, a necessary evil?

The undeniable facts I kept returning to were these. His cousin Prime Minister Pitt helped found the Alien Office, the forerunner of MI5. His other cousins, the Smiths, were also Alien Office agents, and Sir Sidney Smith “his colleague” both in the navy and in espionage matters[14]. His brother-in-law Lord Grenville certainly had a hand in running the Alien Office. His cousin Lady Hester Stanhope (who also later became known for her eccentricity) was earlier known as a brilliant political hostess who cared for her uncle Prime Minister Pitt until his death, and almost certainly had to know some of the maneuverings behind the scenes.

And finally: Mrs. Symons almost certainly set Camelford up for his death in a manner that made his death as publicly ridiculous as his life. And judging by his absolution of Best the night before the duel, Camelford must have allowed the drama to play out, right to his death.

Again, as with so much of Camelford’s life, the question is why? There are many inconsistencies in Camelford’s being allowed to run rampant until his death, given the way the haut ton lived back then, so fearful of any scandal – especially the political families.

My conclusion came on reading several sources on what was happening between Britain and France, and in Berne, Switzerland, at the time. In my first historical novel[15] I show the French invasion fleet found in the nick of time by British spies, and sabotaged by means still secret; the secret two-nation obsession over the inventions of American Robert Fulton; and the setting up of a plot to kill Bonaparte being only one of many, all of which were backed by an unholy union of rich French royalists, British politicians and the deposed French spymaster, Joseph Fouché. Camelford was taken by Napoleon and imprisoned. All of this was based on truth, with much reading between the lines. I did know why Camelford was arrested: he was trying to become a British hero again instead of a laughing-stock. He swore to kill the ‘upstart’ Napoleon for daring to lead France, despite the Corsican’s middle class origins (and probably more so for leading France both out of debt and into a semblance of economic and political order, and this within two years). Like many, the thought of Revolution coming to Britain, with all its possible class equality, was horrifying to Camelford. The comfortable status quo for the rich and titled, “those born and bred to rule”, must remain. This time has been nicknamed “The Terror” in Britain.[16]

Camelford was far from alone in his desire to kill Napoleon. The French Royalists found many sympathetic ears among the British upper classes. From 1796-1811, France tried to invade Britain no less than 11 times – but the alliance of Royalist, British and Fouché tried to assassinate Napoleon as many times, at no time more so than in the years between 1800-1805[17]. During that time, Napoleon bragged that there were more of his spies in Britain than there were loyal British citizens – many of them British-born. The terror of Revolution coming to Britain was very real at this time, none more so than from within: an uprising of the folk banned from leaving their class by those above them. Some were breaking out, such as Nelson in the navy, or James Watt or Richard Trevithick for brilliant inventions; but for a nation built on shaky foundations of union, to the early 19^th century British government the Revolution, and Napoleon raising men of talent from any walk of life, represented all that was terrifying.

Greek mythology states that if one chops off the head, and the monster dies. When the first and second assassination attempts on Napoleon were unsuccessful, they decided to have another ready the moment one failed. In 1803-4 “The Grand Conspiracy” (a Royalist plot led by French Generals Cadoudal, Moreau and Pichegru) failed; but the British had a backup plan using British agents alone. They were planning to have the conspiracy led by former spymaster William Wickham, who had left the Agency after a crisis of conscience[18]. The plan went into action as soon they realised The Grand Conspiracy would fail (partly through the indiscretion of the de Polignac brothers, who told all their friends in London they were off to kill Napoleon[19]).

Where were the headquarters of this new plot? In Berne[20]…

In research for my second novel in the series, I looked deeper into Napoleon’s brag that there were more British-born spies in his pay than there were British spies in France. There were some very strange decisions made by the Admiralty, including to blockade the French fleet at Brest after Captain Wright informed them the fleet there was crippled (not to mention that the people in Brest were starving. The roads and canals into Brest were all incomplete or too damaged to travel on)[21]. The seaworthy ships were anchored at the coast around Boulogne-sur-Mer and in Flushing, Holland – but they weren’t blockaded[22]. Also thanks to the admirals’ decision to use only traditional (slow) shipbuilders when half the depleted navy was either being used as prison hulks, fighting piracy in the Caribbean, or transporting people to New South Wales[23]. Finally, and telling to me, many admirals held ongoing animosity to the Alien Office and to espionage in any form. They deliberately ignored advice from their own men who were also affiliated with the Alien Office, and even terminated the employment of Rear Admiral Montagu, replacing him with a man who did as they told him[24].

Combine all the foregoing facts with Camelford’s accusing “certain gentlemen” of being in Napoleon’s pay – essentially, treason, then a hanging offence – and this during a time when Britain was undergoing a “patriotic paroxysm”[25] in reaction to fear of Napoleon’s invading Britain and bringing Revolution and the guillotine to the streets of London…

It seemed to me there was an undeniable recipe for conspiracy and murder by the hand of another. Camelford had obviously come too close to someone’s truth. What better way to shut the mouth of a man who would by blood and marriage have the ears of some of the most influential men in Britain than to discredit him publicly, pay a pretty woman to distract and bed him, and then set him up for death via the hand of her former lover, a crack shot? Madness indeed – and the perfect plan worked. Two hundred and eleven years later, “the half-mad lord” still isn’t given the credit he sought in the final months of his life.

But why was the poor man not even given the burial he’d asked for? Why was a lord’s remains left in a fisherman’s casket for strangers to laugh at, rather than given a quiet, dignified burial at home? The answer seemed obvious to me: given the fame he’d attracted in life, and his rather bizarre request for a burial between two trees overlooking a lake, they couldn’t afford to draw such attention to Berne. With the new conspiracy moving forward, his cousin Pitt and his brother-in-law Grenville chose to use his remains as a distraction, even a joke. They chose to honour Camelford’s desire to kill Bonaparte and end the Revolution, possibly hoping he’d have understood. And by the time that conspiracy too failed, Pitt was Prime Minister again, deep in the war, and fighting the illness that would soon kill him. Getting his cousin’s remains to Berne must have seemed unnecessary.

But why put him in a fisherman’s casket “long enough to house a shark”?[26] Was it, too, a distraction? Make everyone laugh at poor mad Camelford, and minimise anything he might have got right – like a certain admiral’s name, perhaps? In late 1803 to early 1804, the Prince of Wales himself had stepped in to put an end to any investigation into ‘his’ admirals. The Duke of York was unhappy. And after that, the strange decisions the Admiralty made came to an end.

But after the war was done, a solicitor made enquiries about Camelford’s last request of burial. He was told, “Preparations were actually made to carry out Camelford's wishes as to the disposal of his remains. He was embalmed and packed up for transportation. But at that very nick of time war was proclaimed again, and the body, which was then deposited, pro tempore, in St. Anne's Church, Soho, remained there, awaiting better times.”

The solicitor seemed to accept this explanation. He didn’t even question the casual pointing-out of the fisherman’s casket with Camelford’s apparent remains. The trouble with all this was that war was declared May 18, 1803, and Camelford died almost a year later: a fact any intelligent solicitor would have known.

By the end of the war, it would have been an easy matter for his sister and brother-in-law, still living, to honour his final request.

They did not. Why? I can only guess that perhaps, with Britain ever prepared to “war with the ancient foe”, France, Grenville couldn’t afford for any actions on his part – or Camelford’s – to haunt the future.

St. Anne’s Church in Soho claims to have the interred remains of Camelford[27]. Perhaps they are; but when the casket was opened, it was found to be empty.

Perhaps a quiet burial took place for Camelford’s sister’s sake. I like to think so. But the bizarre life and death of Thomas Pitt, the second and last Baron Camelford, continues to raise more questions than can be answered, two hundred and eleven years on.

---

[1] “The Half Mad Lord” by Nikolai Tolstoy Published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1979)

ISBN 10: 003047261X / ISBN 13: 9780030472619

[2] “What Has Become of Lord Camelford’s Body?” by Charles Reade, 1874, From “Jilt and Other Stories” – http://jr.digitalpixels.org/cr/body.html

[3] ibid.

[4] – “The Vancouver/Camelford Affair” - https://gvpl.ca/using-the-library/our-collection/local-history/tales-from-the-vault/the-vancouver-camelford-affair

[5] “What Has Become of Lord Camelford’s Body?” by Charles Reade, 1874, from “Jilt and Other Stories” – http://jr.digitalpixels.org/cr/body.html; “Eccentric Biography, or Lives of Extraordinary Characters” by Thomas Tegg, Griffin & Co, Glasgow, 1826

[6] “Even as a child it was he who had given the orders, and had grown up completely undisciplined. Moreover, he had a wild, vengeful nature, nursing grievances against any who offended him. He was not willing to forgive and forget.” –“What Has Become of Lord Camelford’s Body?” by Charles Reade, 1874

[7] ibid

[8] “The Life, Adventures and Eccentricities of the Late Lord Camelford, Genuine Extracts of His Will”, R. Mace, W. Williams, Printer, Chancery Lane, London - https://archive.org/stream/cihm_18284#page/n15/mode/2up

[9] “The Terror Before Trafalgar”, by Tom Pocock, John Murray Publishers, 2002, pg 44-5

[10] “The Life, Adventures and Eccentricities of the Late Lord Camelford, Genuine Extracts of His Will”, R. Mace, W. Williams, Printer, Chancery Lane, London - https://archive.org/stream/cihm_18284#page/n15/mode/2up

[11] “The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine”, 1838, Part III, Henry Colburn, London

[12] “What Has Become of Lord Camelford’s Body?” by Charles Reade, 1874, From “Jilt and Other Stories” – http://jr.digitalpixels.org/cr/body.html; “Eccentric Biography, or Lives of Extraordinary Characters” by Thomas Tegg, Griffin & Co, Glasgow, 1826

[13] ibid.

[14] “Secret Service – British Agents in France 1792-1815” by Elizabeth Sparrow, The Boydell Press, 1999, pg 184

[15] The Tide Watchers by Lisa Chaplin, William Morrow Books US/HarperCollins UK, Australia and New Zealand, 2015

[16] The Terror Before Trafalgar by Tom Pocock, John Murray Books, 2002, preface

[17] ibid, p 67-8

[18] Durey, Michael. William Wickham, Master Spy: The Secret War against the French Revolution. London: Pickering & Chatto Ltd., 2009, p146-50

[19] “The Plot to Kill Napoleon”, The Napoleonic Society -http://www.napoleonicsociety.com/english/Life_Nap_Chap28.htm

[20] Elizabeth Sparrow (1992). The Swiss and Swabian Agencies, 1795–1801. The Historical Journal, 35, pp 861-884. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00026194.

[21] “Histoire de Brest”, by Marie-Thérèse Cloître, Universite de Bretagne Occidentale, 2000, translated by Collete Vlérick

[22] ibid.

[23] “The Terror Before Trafalgar” by Tom Pocock, John Murray Publishers, p 106-110

[24] ibid.

[25] “A History of Britain” by Simon Schama, Vol III, Miramax Books, p 126

[26]  “What Has Become of Lord Camelford’s Body?” by Charles Reade, 1874 – http://jr.digitalpixels.org/cr/body.html

[27] http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols33-4/pp256-277

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

Lisa Chaplin began writing in 1991. In 1997 she took an agent's advice to write romance novels for editing discipline and three years later became published with Harlequin. As Melissa James she sold 1.5 million books in 25 countries, with The Stolen Generation, PTSD, and families with challenges as storylines. On a day playing tour guide to American friends in 2006, she found a Napoleonic history text with a passing reference to a sabotaged French invasion fleet that reignited her lifelong love affair with history. Researching that one reference in a history text, she found the untold story she had to write. In 2007 she moved to Switzerland, which made it easier to travel to France for research and imbibe the landscape, the local customs, the history told by local experts. In 2011 she returned to Australia and quit romance to write historical fiction fulltime. In 2013 she attended the 5-day Popular Fiction Master Class run by bestselling fantasy and historical author Fiona McIntosh. Seven months later her dream to sell her beloved historical fiction was realised. The Tide Watchers sold to William Morrow, a US imprint of HarperCollins. It was released in the US in June 2015 and in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Canada and the UK in July 2015.

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Tudor and Stuart Energy Crisis - Coal

by Deborah Swift

In the period 1500 - 1700 England made the transition from a wood-burning nation to a coal burning nation. This transition affected almost everything about domestic and manufacturing life.

The poulation of England and Wales had nearly doubled between the years of 1500 and 1690. Immense pressure was put on the woodlands to provide wood for building, for manufacture, for the new printing industry - paper and books - and for fuel.

London, one of the largest cities in Europe, was a boom town and multiplied eight-fold, from 60,000 people in 1534 to 530,000 in 1696, so that although only one in ten was a town dweller in the early sixteenth century, one in four were by the end of the seventeenth century. The timber to build new dwellings (mostly wood-framed in this period) and their necessary winter fires for cooking and heating put even greater strain on the forests, until deforestation was a real issue.

In places where coal seams were near the surface and occurred naturally, coal was burnt and had been ever since Roman times, but the idea of collecting it and sending it elsewhere was not considered until Tudor times. This was because the idea of taking earth or minerals away was not part of the medieval mind-set. Mining was regarded as rape of the land. Unlike ploughing or sowing the land, taking parts of it away were seen as robbing the local people of their subsistence - land being equated to wealth and food production.

Tudor Mining Coat

This idea changed with Agricola's publication of a book on mining, which equated mining to opening a fruit to see the goodness within. However, this idea only applied to metals such as tin and copper ore, and not to coal. It took a dose of inflation plus a shortage of wood to make people turn to coal as a last resort.

Coal produces smoke and fumes and whilst there was wood, it was considered too dirty and overlooked as a source of fuel. In Tudor times coal began to be shipped short distances and used by the poor as an alternative to wood, but by the early 17th century, the shortage of decent timber for shipbuilding seemed to threaten Britain's existence, and coal became the only viable alternative for heating and manufacture. A royal proclamation of 1615 laments the former wealth of 'Wood and Timber,' but by then mines had begun to provide employment, and there were even railways with horse-drawn carriages to bring the coal to the docks.

Stuart Mining Machinery

By the time of the English Civil War (1640's) Londoners were dependent on 'sea coal' to keep warm. The surviving records of the customs officials at Newcastle-upon-Tyne show a continuous and rapid growth in the shipments of coal between 1550 and 1700. Ten thousand men worked the colliery at Newcastle, either underground or on the four hundred or so vessels moored in the Tyne river to ferry the coal around England.

Imports to London grew even faster, probably more than thirtyfold. A contemporary of John Evelyn, the diarist, described the London smog:

Such a cloud of sea-coal, as if there be a resemblance of hell upon earth, it is in this volcano in a foggy day; this pestilent smoak, which corrodes the very yron and spoils all the movables, leaving a soot on all things that it lights; and so fatally seizing on the lungs of the inhabitants, that cough and consumption spare no man.

New technology was necessary in the wake of this new fuel which burned so hot. Methods of firing glass and pottery had to be developed to protect the products from direct contact with the burning coals. After about 1610 glass began to be manufactured with mineral fuel, followed by the cementation process for converting wrought iron into steel and a method of baking bricks for building. Further advances occurred in the brewing industry, where coal fires were used to dry malt, and by the late seventeenth century it became possible to smelt the lead, copper and tin ores of Britain with coal.

I find this historical background fascinating - how the introduction of new fuel produces such a far-reaching effect on a population, in a similar way to the advent of electricity in a later era.

Links:
John Adair - By The Sword Divided 

Peter Ackroyd - London: The Biography
Paper on Coal: John U. Nef - Scientific American http://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Nef_1977.pdf
Tudor Mining Coat: http://www.leics.gov.uk/revealed_objects_tudorminingcoat.htm
Stuart Mining Machinery: http://cookit.e2bn.org/historycookbook/33-340-Life-in-stuarts.html

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

My 17th century novels set in the earliest Industrial Revolution (the coal rather than steam powered one!) can be found on my website www.deborahswift.com

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Bedchamber Ladies and Maids of Honour at the Late Stuart Court

by Margaret Porter

Readers of historical novels set in a royal court will be familiar with the terms “lady of the bedchamber” and “maid of honour.” But what were the responsibilities required of these positions, their advantages and disadvantages?

Fans of Tudor history and fiction know that several ladies-in-waiting became Queen of England. Anne Boleyn served Queen Katherine of Aragon, as did Jane Seymour—who was also Anne's lady-in-waiting when King Henry began to fancy her. And her successor, Anne of Cleves, had flighty Catherine Howard as a maid of honour. 

The Stuarts preferred marrying royalty, but their princes and kings routinely slept with female members of the royal household. Stuart queens had their favourites as well. But royalty were nothing if not fickle, and deep affection could sometimes transform into enmity.

A bedchamber lady who rose high & fell far

Aristocratic ladies and gentry women of the late 17^th century coveted a position at court for many reasons. Proximity to eligible gentlemen—the rich, the powerful, the landed—meant they might marry well, gaining wealth or a title or both. It was a means of promoting family interests, and quite a few courtiers inherited positions held by their parents or grandparents. Often a member of a queen’s retinue became the king’s pampered mistress. By giving birth to a royal bastard, she ensured financial support for her lifetime. Another reason court service was a desirable career for a well-born woman—it ensured an annual salary, room and board, and sometimes even a generous dowry. She wore pretty clothes and received ample attention from male courtiers. She also gained material goods—gifts from the sovereign might include jewellery, lace, clothing, and valuable mementos. On the death of a queen, her clothing and possessions were distributed to those who had served her.

The disadvantages were just as numerous. Salaries and stipends came irregularly and were often in arrears. Providing the monarch with aristocratic companionship was an arduous duty. One had to stand for hours on end, attain perfection in dancing and manners, assist at the royal toilette and robing, determine which visitors were welcome and properly introduce them. Those who had no taste for dalliance fended off libertines intent on seduction. Those who dallied with courtiers ran the risk of an unwanted pregnancy—an ordinary bastard hadn’t the cachet of a royal one. Miss Trevor, said to be the prettiest of the Duchess of York’s maids of honour, abruptly left the court before delivering her bastard child. According to one intimately familiar with Charles II’s household, “the Queen’s and Duchess’s maids of honour…bestow their favours to the right and left, and not the least notice is taken of their conduct.”

Ladies-in-waiting and maids of honour served on a rotating basis, one week at a time. They had lodgings in each royal residence. At the top of the hierarchy was the Groom of the Stole, responsible for all the bedchamber staff, and was sometimes also styled First Lady of the Bedchamber. In addition to the ladies and the maids, there were bedchamber women or dressers, of lowlier status, who performed more menial bedchamber tasks.

Charles II

His was the golden age of the bedchamber lady as royal mistress—or vice versa. Upon his marriage, the King foisted his mistress Barbara Palmer, neé Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, upon his Portuguese bride, sparking a domestic crisis. Later he chased after the beautiful and elusive Frances Stewart, who returned to the Queen's service after marrying the Duke of Richmond. Even the actress Nell Gwyn, “the indiscreetest and wildest creature that was ever in a court” was given a nominal position in the Queen’s service as a Lady of the Privy Chamber. Her French rival Louise de Kerouaille began as a maid of honour to Charles’s sister, Henriette, Duchess of Orleans, at the French court. Later, as the English king’s mistress, she was assured of a place as a Lady of the Bedchamber, although the Queen would not let her enter it. Her apartments at Whitehall were grander than Her Majesty’s.

The "golden" Jane, Mrs Myddelton, in gold

It was, in a sense, the beginning of the “professional beauty,” whose portrait was painted to hang in royal palaces, and adorned humbler abodes in the form of an engraving. Jane Myddelton, described as “all white and golden,” and “the most beautiful woman in England, and the most amiable,” falls into that category. Frances Jennings, sister of the future Duchess of Marlborough, inspired Anthony Hamilton to write, “Her face reminded me of the dawn, or of some Goddess of the Spring.” On one occasion she and her fellow maid of honour Goditha Price, disguised as orange girls, sold fruit at the theatre. They went unrecognised by the male courtiers who accosted them, or their mistress the Duchess of York.

Diarist Samuel Pepys is a rich source of information on the exploits and amours of ladies of the court, several of whom fired his admiration and his secret passion.

James II

A Catholic convert, James’s devotion to his religion never inhibited him from sleeping with ladies of the court. As Duke of York, he preyed upon the ladies who served his first and second wives, such loose-moralled creatures as Diana Kirke, Lady Denham, and many others. Arabella Churchill, who served his first duchess, bore him four children.

The wild and witty Catherine Sedley

Catherine Sedley, his most famous mistress, resisted all attempts to dislodge her from his court and his bed, much to the consternation of Mary of Modena, his jealous young queen. Despite the fact that Catherine was Protestant and claimed to be far cleverer than he, James would not set her aside, no matter how his wife and priests urged him. Lord Dorset addressed these lines to her: “Dorinda’s sparkling wit, and Eyes/United, cast too fierce a Light.”

Mary II

When Mary and her husband William succeeded her de-throned father, they imposed a new sedateness and propriety upon the court. Her bedchamber ladies and maids of honour were faithful, respectable wives and chaste young maidens. The Countess of Derby, as Groom of the Stole, received £800, with a further £400 as Mistress of the Robes, for a total annual salary of £1200—no mean sum in those days. Her five Ladies of the Bedchamber were paid £500 per year, and usually there were six maids of honour, receiving £200 per year.

Mary, Countess of Dorset

Mary commissioned Godfrey Kneller to paint a series of portraits of the loveliest and most virtuous ladies, known as the Hampton Court Beauties. Among them was the Countess of Dorset, her favourite Lady of the Bedchamber, who died soon after sitting to Kneller. Another attendant, Lady Diana de Vere, whose Hampton Court portrait graces my novel’s cover, bore Mary’s train at her coronation and became the bride of Nell Gwyn’s son Charles, 1st Duke of St Albans. At their marriage, the Queen granted the couple an annuity of £2000.

At the palace, Mary’s ladies joined her in needlework (her favourite occupation), escorted her to chapel prayers, and read aloud to her. In public they accompanied her to the theatre, on walks and promenades, and even to St. James’s Fair, their identities concealed by black vizard masks.

Queen Anne


Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, wearing her
gold key of office

On assuming England’s throne, Anne designated her longtime companion and confidante Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Groom of the Stole and Keeper of the Privy Purse. It was this all-powerful aristocrat who “prepared a list of ye ladies of ye best quality, ye nearest ye Queen in age and most suited to her temper to be Ladies of the Bedchamber.” In addition to Sarah there were ten—two of them, not surprisingly, were her own daughters. Each received a salary of £1000. The six maids of honour had a stipend of £300 per annum. The Queen was a firm Tory and Sarah strongly Whig, thus the party affiliation of Her Majesty’s attendants was balanced. By the last years of the reign, the number of bedchamber ladies had dropped to eight.

The royal account books reveal that in 1707, the Master of the Great Wardrobe was given £24 10s to purchase “umbrellas for the Maids of Honour.”

Perhaps in no other reign was the relationship of the bedchamber ladies and the monarch so closely scrutinised, or their political powers—real or presumed—so discussed. Sarah, through her firm—some might even say bullying—management of the Queen, soon put herself out of favour. And it was her own cousin Abigail Masham, neé Hill, who supplanted her as Anne’s caretaker and Keeper of the Privy Purse. But because she was a mere “Mrs,” and of a lower class, she couldn’t have Sarah’s position of Groom of the Stole. It was bestowed upon the extremely aristocratic Duchess of Somerset, who had served at court for many a year and whom Anne greatly respected.

Sarah embarked on her long career at court in the 1670s as a maid of honour to Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, and it lasted till her dismissal in the early days of 1711. Her history demonstrates the heights to which a determined female could climb—and also how she could descend, on losing the royal favour.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~

Margaret Porter is the award-winning and bestselling author of twelve period novels, nonfiction and poetry. Lady Diana de Vere's association with Queen Mary's court is featured in A Pledge of Better Times, her highly acclaimed novel of 17th century courtiers the 1st Duke and Duchess of St. Albans (available in trade paperback and ebook). Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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Tinker Tailor

by Richard Denning

"Tinker Tailor" is a traditional children’s counting game, nursery rhyme and fortune telling song which originated in the British Isles. An example might be counting cherry stones, buttons, daisy petals and other items to tell you what job you might get.  It was also once a popular way young ladies were supposed to be able to tell what their husband will be like, what type of clothes they would wear etc.

Many versions of the rhyme have existed.

In the UK the most common modern form is:

Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Sailor,
Rich Man, Poor Man,
Beggar Man, Thief.

Whilst I believe a common American version is:

Rich Man, Poor Man,
Beggar Man, Thief,
Doctor, Lawyer,
Indian Chief.

The first mention of a similar rhyme has been noted in William Caxton's, The Game and Playe of the Chesse (c. 1475), in which pawns are named: "Labourer, Smith, Clerk, Merchant, Physician, Taverner, Guard and Ribald."

The first record of the opening four professions being grouped together is in William Congreve's Love for Love (1695), which has the line: “A Soldier and a Sailor, a Tinker and a Taylor, Had once a doubtful strife, sir.”

It was during the 19^th century that we see the modern lyrics – or something close – emerging in the USA.

A. A. Milne's  Now we are Six incorporated a much longer version of the rymme by way of a counting game

The rhymme has of course become associated with the John Le Carre Novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but has appeared in other works of fiction such as the Ellery Queen Novel Double Double, a Tom Clancy book and even the title of a Marvel Comic.

Richard Denning 

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

Richard Denning is a historical fiction author whose main period of interest is the Early Anglo-Saxon Era. On this particular occasion however Richard is departing from mentioning his books here to drop in a mention of a card game he has produced called, oddly enough "Tinker Tailor". In one of his other lives Richard is an occasional game designer. Find out more about Tinker Tailor and his other games on his website:

www.medusagames.co.uk

Radicals and Reactionaries - The Making of Modern Britain

by Jemahl Evans

It shattered a unified society forever; ever since then we have had essentially some kind of two party system. The division of Roundhead and Cavalier got perpetuated in many ways into Whig and Tory, Liberal and Conservative, Conservative and Socialist. (Prof Ronald Hutton)

Hutton’s words on the English Civil War emphasise the long shadow that it has cast. Even today, modern Britain is defined by the political divisions of the English Civil War - the radical revolutionaries and conservative (with a small c) reactionaries. The leaders of our two main political parties (at the time of writing Jeremy Corbyn is favourite for the Labour Leadership) demonstrate the point.

David Cameron's official portrait
from the 10 Downing Street website

David Cameron: Eton educated, related to the Queen, the latest politician in a family line that stretches back to the Seventeenth Century. Cameron’s eight times great grandfather was Sir Robert Sawyer, Attorney General and Speaker of the House after the Restoration. Robert Sawyer’s father Sir Edmund was expelled from the House of Commons in 1628 and declared unfit to ever return after pressuring witnesses to lie to a committee of the House. He had been involved in raising extra, illegal taxes for the King. He later persuaded King Charles I to indemnify him against prosecution after swindling a widow out of £500 (about £120,000 in today’s terms).

Jeremy Corbyn
Courtesy of Garry Knight
via Creative Commons

Jeremy Corbyn’s family lineage may not be so, shall we say, illustrious? However, today he is as much a part of the revolutionary radicalism born in the 1640s as Cameron is of the conservative reactionary. Corbyn’s parents, a maths teacher and electrical engineer, were peace campaigners that met during the Spanish Civil War. Corbyn’s own political history as a trade unionist, socialist, supporter of CND, and Stop The War Coalition is very much in the grand tradition of the Left in British politics, if not always as radical as some might think.

John Lilburne

The radicalism of the English Civil War that fired the ideals of Levellers like John Lillburne, overthrew the monarchy, and also threatened Cromwell’s dictatorship seemed extinguished in 1660. The widespread relief that accompanied Charles II's early years earned him the moniker Merry with some justification - just ask Nell Gwyn. Charles (with more political nous than his father ever managed) was careful with his early Parliaments and benefited from the overwhelmingly Royalist makeup of the members. His second Parliament was known as the Cavalier Parliament and lasted from 1661 - 1679, the longest in our history that actually sat. The Long Parliament only lasted from 1640 - 1648, although it made a comeback to dissolve itself and bring back the King in 1659 - 60.

Charles II was not so lucky with his later Parliaments. His suspected Catholic sentiments and his brother’s open conversion to Catholicism in 1673 reignited the embers of puritan radicalism. In 1679, Charles saw Parliament introduce the Habeas Corpus Act to enshrine the law against arbitrary imprisonment. The fear of an over mighty Catholic King terrified the Protestant commons. Charles’ lack of legitimate heirs, his brother James’ likely ascension to the throne, and the example of Louis XIV across the channel in France brought back the ‘Good Old Cause’ against monarchist tyranny.

James II

The atmosphere was whipped into a frenzy by the fabricated Popish Plot and subsequent Exclusion Crisis where successive Parliaments tried to remove James from the line of succession. It was in the divisions of the 1680s that the two parties took the names Whig and Tory that would dominate the next century and a half of British politics. Tory from the Gaelic, originally meaning bandit, and Whig from the Scots Whigamoor, meaning cattle driver. The attempt to exclude James failed in the face of Royal power. Charles merely dissolved Parliament and borrowed money from his cousin Louis XIV (an option not open to his father in the 1640s). James Duke of York was crowned King in 1685, but the battle lines had been drawn.

As James II, he showed all his father’s cunning and political vision. He was deposed in 1689 by the Whigs and deserted by his most faithful supporters (including Winston Spencer Churchill’s ancestor John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough and victor of Blenheim). James fled the country and in a fit of petulance threw the Great Seal into the Thames to stop Government business. Parliament simply had a new one made and invited the Dutch William of Orange to be king - with conditions. William, and later Queen Anne, were careful to include both Tory and Whig in their governments (although Anne would lean to Tory in her later years). The Hanoverians were different, always associating the Tories with the failed Stuart cause. The Tory party would remain out of power from 1715 until 1774 and Lord North’s disastrous government.

The Whig ascendancy accompanied one of the most rapid periods of technological and social change in Britain. New farming methods saw the end of famine, and involvement in the slave trade and colonies saw wealth pouring into Britain at an undreamed rate. There is a dark irony that capital which would fund the Industrial Revolution and drive the radical movements of the nineteenth century that opposed it was gained at the expense of African slaves under ‘radical’ Whiggish direction.

Charles Fox

English radicalism had by then been exported. The cry of "no taxation without representation" would have been recognised by the protestors against Ship Money in the 1630s. The revolution in the American colonies was countered by a conservative reaction in Britain. In opposition, Charles Fox the great Whig orator would speak out in favour of the American cause and later The French Revolution. Such a position was not popular as The French Revolution descended into the chaos of The Terror and then Bonaparte’s dictatorship. The Tory party was re-elected, almost continuously, from the 1770s onwards with the aim of suppressing any hint of revolution at home.

During the Napoleonic Wars (as in the carnage of World War 2) political radicalism was buried in the national interest. Napoleon cast as great a threat to European peace and stability as Nazi Germany would. Afterwards, in spite of the government’s best attempts, changing social conditions of the early industrial period caused the pendulum to swing back once again. In 1830, the Whigs were finally returned to power. They completed the abolition of slavery and began a process of extending the franchise with the 1832 Reform Act.

The Peterloo Massacre, Tolpuddle Martyrs, Chartists, Newport Rising, Rebecca Riots; a list of battles between the Left and Right of British politics. The terms Left and Right were born in the positions the delegates in the National Assembly had taken during the French Revolution, but soon attached to the newly named Liberal and Conservative parties in Britain. During the second half of the Nineteenth Century, the two parties swapped power more regularly, the ‘radical’ Liberals periodically extending the franchise, just a pinch, in the face of ‘reactionary’ Conservative attempts to retain the status quo.

Benjamin Disraeli

There was of course one notable exception to that process in Benjamin Disraeli, who, despite his adherence to the Conservative Party, was more in the radical reforming tradition of his opponents. Disraeli brought in laws that protected industrial workers, allowed for peaceful picketing, and extended the franchise even further. Such was the impact of Disraeli’s changes that Liberal/Labour MP Alexander Macdonald remarked in 1879: The Conservative Party have done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in fifty. Disraeli’s concept of One Nation Conservatism would dominate the thinking on the right of British Politics until the 1970s.

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, Labour was the new insurgency on the Left. The slow reform process that had defined Liberalism was challenged on its own ground by the growth of radical Labour. The Liberals were dragged to the left in their last government, bringing in Old Age Pensions, Sick Pay, Labour Exchanges, Free School Meals and National Insurance with support from the few Labour MPs in the House. Conservative reaction was extreme, culminating in the 1910 budget crisis and only ending when the King filled the House of Lords with Liberal peers. The Parliament Act 1911 was brought in to stop the conservative Lords ever challenging the supremacy of the Commons again. It was the Liberals last hurrah as a radical force in British politics.

The explosion of World War One and the impact of the Russian Revolution both invigorated and discredited the radicalism of the Left, just as the French Revolution had done to the Whigs a century before. David Lloyd George, the radical of 1906, was kept in power by Tory support to maintain the status quo. This he did with aplomb, handing out titles like confetti to his friends and donors and failing in his promise to deliver a land fit for heroes.

The interwar years were dominated by conservative governments determined that the red menace would not succeed in Britain, and Labour failed to establish a clear mandate to rule. The nine day General Strike in 1926 and the forged Zinoviev letter appalled the middle classes, so vital to revolution in the 1640s and the Liberal reformers of 1906. Even Ramsay Macdonald - the first Labour Prime Minister - deserted his radicalism in the face of the Great Depression, remaining in power only with Tory support and imposing crushing austerity.

Attlee with George VI

War, as Trotsky said, is the locomotive of history. By 1945, two world wars had transformed British society. The post-war Labour government led by Clement Atlee was one of the most radical in our history, establishing a political consensus that would last thirty years. A massive rebuilding programme, the NHS, and nationalisation of essential services - all defined the social change that continued in the white heat of technology until the end of the 1960s.

Margaret Thatcher
Courtesy Rob Bogaerts / Anefo
Creative Commons

Like Benjamin Disraeli a century before, Margaret Thatcher was a radical reformer more in the tradition of John Lillburne or even Atlee. First, she challenged Disraeli’s concept of One Nation Conservatism, then the established social consensus was ripped apart by her governments of the 1980s and 90s. In opposition to that change was the potential new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. His vision of Social Democracy that seems so radical to some today was the post-war consensus that Thatcher destroyed.

Still the pendulum swings and History rhymes if it does not repeat. Tony Blair’s New Labour accepted the Thatcherite vision of society just as Macmillan’s Conservatives adhered to the post-war consensus. The financial crisis of the 1630s and 40s gave birth to the idea of radical reform in society; the financial crisis since 2008 has seen the rise of their successors in British politics. The SNP, The Green Party, and the enthusiasm in the Labour membership (if not the Parliamentary Party) for Jeremy Corbyn’s ideas, even UKIP, all point to a periodic radical shift in British politics that has happened every thirty years or so since the English Civil War.

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

Jemahl Evans is the author of The Last Roundhead published by Holland House Books. He started writing The Last Roundhead in 2013, and early revisions won awards on the British Arts Council site YouWriteOn and Harper Collins Authonomy. The novel was released in August 2015 and nominated as one of Netgalley’s top ten UK books of the month. His interest in the English Civil War was sparked as a child after reading Simon by Rosemary Sutcliff, which is probably why his sympathies lie with Parliament! You can follow him on Twitter @Temulkar.

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A Player's Walk through Elizabethan Theatre

by Dean Hamilton

What were Elizabethan theatres really like?

It seems strange, but the boisterous, bustling, familiar precincts of London that Shakespeare trod have mostly vanished from sight. The Great Fire that devastated London in 1666 swept the core of the City into ash and ruin. Almost every building or church of note that lay west of the Tower, with the exceptions of the areas around Bishopsgate and Aldgate, were laid to waste. From the Tower to the Fleet, Tudor London was mostly devastation. The London we see today was built on its bones.

To understand the London of the playing troupes, you must first seek the roots of the city, the ebb and flow of its tides, particularly the torrent of change that was engulfing it throughout the reign of the Tudors....and what London meant for players, playwrights and theatre.

Rooted in commerce & trade, fed by the river Thames, inculcated with a sense of purpose and centrality and commercial drive, London was the dominant metropolis of Britain. 400 years later Disraeli coined it well when he described the City as "that great cesspool into which all the loungers of the Empire are irresistibly drained”.

Prior to the 15th century London had not been a large or overly populous city in a thousand years. London in the Tudor era had a dense, noisome population estimated between 160,000 and 200,000 people, all crammed into a few square miles of buildings. This density of population achieved during the Tudor era opened up the opportunity for a more robust and permanent situated forms of entertainment rather than the opportunistic and transactional formats previously used. In short, an audience was now waiting.

Dominated by the Tower to the east and the impressive bulk of St. Paul's Cathedral to the west, London proper was surrounded by the London Wall, a protective fortification originally built by the Romans, pierced by seven gates: Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate and Moorgate. Suburbs spilled out along major roadways and gates – Holburn, Smithfield, Shoreditch, Aldgate and, most infamously, Southwark which sprawled along the Thames at the southern end of London Bridge.

The suburbs were crucial to the development of London theatre because they were outside the jurisdiction of the London Court of Aldermen that governed the city. Plays were widely considered to be immoral, degenerate and depraved. This is partially due to their roots in the traditional Catholic “mystery cycles”, a series of religious moral motifs and pageants held in many market towns on religious holidays and feast days. These performances were decried by many ardent Protestant supporters and were banned in 1534, although they continued in many rural locations for many years after. London’s Court of Aldermen in the Elizabethan era was of a notoriously Puritan bent. The immorality and sinfulness of theatrical entertainment would continue to be a Puritan rallying cry until all the London theatres were finally closed and banned in 1642.

Plays were widely seen as being potential flashpoints for plague, crime, riots and political or religious dissent. Closures of inn yards and playing houses were frequent. It was the banning of inn yard performances in London in 1572 and the subsequent “banning” of actors in 1575 that spurred the eventual development of the first permanent theatres.

Sir John Spencer, Lord Mayor of London in 1594 described the theatres as "places of meeting for all vagrant persons and maisterles men that hang about the Citie, theeves, horsestealers, whoremoongers, coozeners, connycatching persones, practizers of treason and other such lyke."

Philip Stubbs, author of Anatomie of Abuses published in 1583, was one of the more ardent critics of playgoing:“if you will learn to condemn God and all his laws, to care neither for heaven nor hell, and to commit all kind of sin and mischief, you need to go to no other school, for all these good examples may you see panted before your eyes in interludes and plays.”

Even Anthony Munday, an actor, playwright and sometime provocateur who informed on the Catholic exile community, had little good to say about London’s theatres, describing them as having "no want of young ruffians, nor lack of harlots utterly past all shame, who press to the fore-front of the scaffolds to the end to show their impudency and to be as an object to all men's eyes".

The first permanent theatre in London was The Theatre, which opened in Shoreditch in 1576 on property from the dissolved Holywell priory. Several previous attempts at creating a permanent theatre (notably The Red Lion, which was a converted farm, located in Whitechapel) had foundered. The Theatre, built by James Burbage and John Brayne, was a polygonal timber and plaster building, with three high inward-facing galleries surrounding a yard with a stage, a design that borrowed heavily from both the general architectural design of inn yards and more established bearbaiting rings. By 1577, a second theatre had opened nearby, The Curtain, similar in design.

The Swan

By 1587, the Rose Theatre, the first of a number of newer playhouses, had sprouted up in Southwark. It was followed by the Swan and, most famously, by the Globe, which was constructed partially out of the disassembly of The Theatre when a property dispute arose and forced the shareholders to move.

Southwark was a particularly opportune locale for the playhouses. The area lay outside of London proper, yet was easily accessible to playgoers via London Bridge or a quick boat-ride across the Thames. Southwark was a notorious collection of inns, gaming houses, brothels, bear-baiting and, of course, theatre. The majority of the land fell under the ownership and ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop of Winchester, making one of London’s most powerful figures the nominal landlord for the dense, vice-ridden, pox-infested stews and brothels that lay at the southern end of London Bridge. “Wincester geese” was a nickname for the whores that plied their trade in Southwark.

The Globe's interior

At its height, London had almost a dozen playhouses and inn yards actively performing. Playgoing was a broad and common entertainment with each theatre showing an estimated twenty to thirty plays per year. For example, The Lord Admiral’s Men performed 38 plays in 1594-95. The Globe was estimated to hold almost 2,000 people per performance, so the economic scale of the theatre industry in Elizabethan London was considerable. Additional private performances for the Queen, the Court, leading nobility and wealthy merchants were also common. Elizabethan theatre was a great leveler within society, in the sense that it was popular and frequently enjoyed by a wide range of social classes and peoples.

Performances were daytime activities, running six days a week except on religious holidays or when forced to shut down due to plague. Playgoers had the option of gallery seating or to stand in the open yard with the “groundlings”. Wealthier attendees could reserve a gallery box or even a choice seat onstage. Crowds were dense, noisy and often impatient, with catcalls and shouts at the play-actors being a common motif. The theatres had a reputation for pickpockets, lewd behavior (with prostitutes sometimes working the audience) and thievery. As with today’s multiplexes, snacks were available, in the form of hawkers selling apples, nuts, beer, ale, and oranges to attendees.

Plays themselves had evolved from the moralizing, scripture-based mystery cycles into a much more robust secular content focused on historical and moral themes. Tragedies and comedies were also popular. Popular staples could be repeated and resurrected, however the majority of the plays being performed were often new. 21 out of the 38 plays The Lord Admiral’s Men performed in 1594-95 were new plays. They rarely performed the same plays in a row.

Playing companies varied in size and capabilities, depending on their patronage and connections. Patronage of the nobility was a necessity. Play-actors were generally regarded as slightly lower than vagabonds, and performers without the protections and permissions that came from patronage soon found themselves in difficulty. The death of patrons, shifting allegiances and politics often threw things askew. The Admiral’s Men eventually became Prince Henry’s Men, while the Lord Chamberlain’s Men evolved into the King’s Men with the advent of King James I.

Most troupes consisted of sharers - players with an ownership stake in either the theatre or the troupe - and hired actors, who may have had longer term roles as permanent members or on a for-hire basis. Given the frequent turnover of plays, the workload around mastering lines for actors must have been tremendous. Women were not permitted to perform in plays until 1660, so female roles were performed by male actors, often younger boys.

Likely William Shakespeare

It has been noted that the while the Renaissance in Italy was expressed in art, the Renaissance in England found its true expression and greatness in the literary explosion of the theatre. This article has provided only the briefest of overviews of the extent of Elizabethan theatre, I recommend you read on!

“As in a theatre, the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next…” – William Shakespeare, Richard II

For more information I recommend the following:

• Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London, Liza Picard. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003
• Shakespeare: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd. Chatto & Windus, 2005
• Shakespeare’s England: Life in Elizabethan & Jacobean Times, R.E. Pritchard, Editor. Sutton Publishing, 1999
• Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate. Random House, 2009
• The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century, Ian Mortimer, Touchstone Press, 2011
• Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt. W.M Norton & Co. 2004

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

Dean Hamilton was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He spent the first half of his childhood chasing around the prairies and western Canada before relocating to Toronto, Ontario. He has three degrees (BA, MA & MBA), reads an unhealthy amount of history, works as a marketing professional by day and prowls the imaginary alleyways of the Elizabethan era in his off-hours. Much of his winter is spent hanging around hockey arenas and shouting at referees.

He is married with a son, a dog, four cats and a turtle named Tortuga. THE JESUIT LETTER is his first novel of a planned series THE TYBURN FOLIOS.

Books: THE JESUIT LETTER
BLACK DOG (novella)
BLOG
Twitter: @Tyburn__Tree
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THE JESUIT LETTER: Ex-soldier turned play-actor Christopher Tyburn thought he had left bloodshed and violence behind him when he abandoned the war against the Spanish in Flanders, but fate has different and far bloodier plans waiting.

When Tyburn accidentally intercepts a coded latter from a hidden Jesuit priest in Warwickshire, he is entangled in a murderous and deadly conspiracy. Stalked by unknown enemies, he must race to uncover the conspiracy and hunt down the Jesuit to clear his name. . . or die a traitor's death.

BLACK DOG: London, 1574. Hangings were always a good draw. When the Earl of Worcester’s Men take advantage of the crowds drawn to a mass execution, they hoped for a strong turn-out and a fat payday. They didn’t expect to run afoul of London’s most notorious prison rooker, the Black Dog. Now with one of the troupe facing slow death in gaol or penury in the face of the Black Dog’s threats, the troupe must turn to its newest member for help. Christopher Tyburn, ex-soldier turned play-actor, must dive into cesspool of London’s back-alleys, pursuing the Black Dog’s secrets in order to turn the tables on the deadly blackmailer.

But you don’t stalk the Black Dog without consequences….

Tolkien, the Battle of Finnsburg and Hengest

by Richard Denning

Battle of Finnsburg c445 A.D

Tolkien the Scholar

The Hobbit and The Lords of the Rings have quite rightly made Tolkien famous as the creator of Middle Earth. Indeed, to many those books far exceed his achievements as a Scholar.

Yet of course Tolkien was in fact a Professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies at Oxford for many years, and in that time he contributed extensively to the study of the period before and after the Anglo-Saxon (the English) race migrated across the North Sea to create a land that would one day be called England.

He would often lecture on the Battle of Finnsburg and pieces of epic poetry which are called The Fragment and the Episode. His argument was that these stories were not fiction but related to actual historical events: a real battle somewhere in what is now Holland, one of whose participants was Hengest, who, legend has it, led the first Anglo-Saxons across the sea to Kent.

Battle of Finnsburg: Background

The Battle of Finnsburgh may have taken place in the court of Finn—one of the Kings of the Frisians (a tribe that lived in what is now Holland).

Finn had a body of Jutes in exile in his land and serving him.  The battle happened when the Jutes blood enemies, the Danes, arrived.

Jutes - A Tribe from Jutland, North Denmark. One of the 3 main Anglo-Saxon Tribes that would migrate to Britain.

Danes - invaders who maybe conquered Jutland sending some into exile, creating the basis for a blood feud.

The theory Tolkien put forward was that Finn, King of the Frisians had married Hildburh the sister of Hnaef, a Danish Prince and son of Hoc the Danish King.

Hnaef went to visit his sister in Frisia and was invited to sleep in the main hall. One of Hnaef’s chief followers was an Angle (another Anglo-Saxon tribe originally from Denmark) called Hengest.

Finn had by then employed some exiled Jutes as warriors. The Jutes hated the Danes who had conquered their land.

The Jutes attacked the Danes in the hall and after a long siege broke in and killed Hnaef. Finn was obliged to back up the Jutes, but most of his warriors died.

Hengest agreed to a truce with Finn but was eventually reminded of his oath to avenge Hnaef’s death and renewed the fighting, killing Finn and destroying Finnsburgh, then taking Hnaef's sister home to her people.

Soon after this Hengest and his brother Horsa were invited into Britain as mercenaries—according to legend, the first of the English. Did this battle win him fame or notoriety and so lead to the invitation to go to Kent?

Battle of Finnsburg: The Evidence

Evidence for the Battle of Finnsburg come primarily from two pieces of Anglo-Saxon text called The Fragment and The Episode

The Fragment

This is a short, 50 line long section of epic poetry that was discovered in 1705 in  Lambeth Palace.  It starts abruptly in the middle of the action and ends also abruptly.  Yet it gives us a description of a conflict that has already burst into bloodshed.

The fragment  describes a young prince called Hnæf who along with around sixty of his men is besieged within a great hall. It goes on to name some of the participants and some of the actions in  the ensuing battle including talking about one of the attackers who is killed.  It specifically mentions that the attacker is from Frisia.

The Episode

The greatest and also one of the earliest of the epic poems in Old English is of course Beowulf which tells the story of a legendary hero who fights the monster Grendel and his mother as well as a dragon.

At one point in the epic a bard, scop or court poet  relates the tales of the Battle of Finnsburg. The language use implies that the listener would already know something of the battle—meaning that to a 7th or 8th century audience the battle was familiar.

The scop's story  starts with Hildeburh, daughter of the Danish King Hoc and brother to Hnaef lamenting the loss of her brother and her son through Finn, King of the Frisians who was also killed in the fighting.

The picture given is that of a battle between Danes on one side and Jutes and Frisians on the other and where there are heavy losses on both sides. It is this tale from which we hear of the peace deal struck between Hengest (left in charge of the Danes after Hnaef is killed) and Finn. Later a warrior places a sword on Hengest’s lap. The sword may have been that upon which Hengest swore fealty to Hnaef. The implication was that Hengetst was duty bound to renew the fighting to avenge Hnaef.

In the ensuing fighting Finn and his entire remaining force are destroyed in what is called the Frisian slaughter. After this the Danes return home led by Hengest

The same man?

Tolkien and other scholars have speculated that Hengest of the Battle of Finnsburg is the same as the Hengest who led his men across the sea to Kent, the first of all the Anglo Saxons (according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry below).

A.D. 449. This year ...Hengest and Horsa, invited by Vortigern, King of the Britons to his assistance, landed in Britain in a place that is called Ipwinesfleet, first of all to support the Britons, but they afterwards fought against them. …. They then sent to the Angles and desired them to send more assistance. They described the worthlessness of the Britons and the richness of the land.  (Anglo –Saxon Chronicle)

For most people these poems are obscure references to legendary times, but to Tolkien and other scholars The Fragment and the Episode are part of the earliest history of England, relating to the background of one of the founders of the earliest English Kingdom, Kent.

Many scholars will say that we have little evidence of Hengest and Horsa and really cant be sure of any of this, but in the accounts of the battle of Finnsburg I believe you see part of what led Hengest to go to England. Did he make his name in this fight? Did he make enemies to avoid? Did he loose face at the Danish court and choose to gamble all on an adventure across the sea?

The Fragments and the Episode tease and suggest answers but don't quite tell enough. But we can have fun speculating.

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Richard Denning is a historical fiction author whose main period of interest is the Early Anglo-Saxon Era. His Northern Crown series explores the late 6th and early 7th centuries through the eyes of a young Saxon lord.

Explore the darkest years of the dark ages with Cerdic.
www.richarddenning.co.uk
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For Whom the Bell Tolls- Early Tudor Way of Death

by Carol McGrath

Imagine a silent, sombre procession moving slowly through the streets of London from the deceased's home to the local Parish church. The bells toll, and the funeral bier is covered with black cloth. The year is 1512. King Henry has been on the throne for three years. He is young, a golden Renaissance prince, and, as yet, there is no hint of Reformation in England. In fact Henry VIII was conservative. He was Catholic as far as the Church liturgy was concerned all his life. Funerals during his reign remained traditional, no different to those of Medieval times. Even during the Elizabethan era many features of medieval funerals for the wealthy, middling or poor remained the same.

Queen Elizabeth I 's funeral cortege

If the deceased was wealthy, this procession would be led by servants bearing banners and coats of arms. There would be attendants clad in black gowns carrying black staves. Black was provided to invited mourners. Generally there were no flowers. Mourners carried herbs. Sprigs of rosemary for remembrance would be worn in the hat, pinned to the sleeves and onlookers might wear mourning rings showing skeletons or crosses.

The bell's tolling would summon attendants to the graveside and bring comfort, not only to the living, but to the dead. People were prompted to prayer by the tolling bells. These helped the soul on its journey. If one was superstitious, one might believe that tolling bells would chase off any evil spirits that could molest the soul. After the Reformation in the mid sixteenth century, bell tolling was limited. The bells would ring 'moderately' at funerals. It was no longer an official belief that they were beneficial to the passage of the dead person's soul.

Bell tolling helped the passage of the soul

Winding and watching were important aspects of a death ritual. They were also a practical necessity. This work involved washing, winding the corpse in a shroud and watching over the candle lit corpse before it was carried in procession to the church for burial. A midwife could be employed for corpse washing duty! A shroud could be linen, but by the mid seventeenth century shrouds were woolen to give a flagging wool trade a boost. Although a box might occasionally be used, unless a person was wealthy he/ she was buried in the shroud. Generally, no more than two to three days would pass between death and burial. Infectious bodies were buried as soon as possible. Equally, the very wealthy might be embalmed to allow time for mourners to gather.

Watching the corpse involved sitting up all night with the dead body. It was a custom that continued after the Reformation. The body might be laid out on a floor covered with a sheet. The corpse was constantly attended and watched, a tradition similar to that of Celtic Wakes. It secured another mark of respect for the deceased's family. It safeguarded the body from tampering. Sometimes the watchers imagined that they saw visions. It could be frightening. Imagine the stories they whispered as they prayed for the safe passage of a soul.

Rosemary for Remembrance

Most bodies rested on biers and were not carried in coffins from the time they departed for the Church until they were placed in the grave. A bier was a frame with handles designed to transport and support the corpse. These were often supplied by the Parish, and they would be stored at the back of the Church. The Parish might also loan out a mortuary cloth, a pall, to cover the bier. Guilds supplied such trappings for the burial of guild members. The hearse was originally a frame to hold candles that were placed over the body during the funeral service. Eventually the meaning of hearse changed to include the whole ensemble whether bier or a coffin that transported the body to the grave.

Death was never far away. A Church wall painting

The poor of the Parish expected a funeral dole. In fact, it was the poor who were sometimes employed to accompany or carry the corpse. Funeral processions in Tudor London were often led by members of the poor dressed in mourning livery. Since black was the colour of Tudor mourning, the wealthy who could afford acres of black cloth would provide mourning cloaks for the guests, gowns, hangings, draperies, covers and gifts such as mourning rings or gloves. Thus, a mourner could easily be identified by apparel. Traditionally, the funerals of the well-to-do were accompanied by deeds of charity and acts of largesse.

Tudor Generosity!

Mourners who accompanied the body to the grave might be fortified with ale, wine or spirits. Guests would also be provided with refreshments later. Funeral meals were semi public occasions, and a large company could be expected. Vast amounts of food and drink were consumed after Tudor funerals. For the well to do, new middle class they became an occasion!

To find out more about Tudor and Stuart funerals read Birth, Marriage and Death, Ritual, Religion and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England by David Cressy, Oxford University Press.

My new novel in progress opens with a London funeral and is set in 1512.

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Carol McGrath

The Handfasted Wife published by Accent Press 2013
The Swan-Daughter published by Accent Press 2014
The Betrothed Sister published by Accent Press 2015

www.carolcmcgrath.co.uk