The Letters of Dorothy Osborne: What Price Loyalty to Love?

By Sally A. Moore

The English Civil War in the 1640’s fired many passions on both sides of the conflict, often making for strange bedfellows with shifting loyalties. Women were the displaced heroes, left to defend estates, protect their family’s possessions and honour, raise money for the cause, and mend the shattered fences of broken alliances. Letter writing filled the void left by absent loved ones, elevating communication in some instances to an art form.

Dorothy, Lady Temple by Gaspar Netscher
National Portrait Gallery NPG3813

Dorothy Osborne was the daughter of Sir Peter Osborne, Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Guernsey, a confirmed and passionate royalist. Charged by Charles I with defending the harbour fortress of Castle Cornet against the Parliamentarians who had seized the island, Sir Peter lost his fortune, his men, his estate, and the health of his wife carrying out this duty. In addition, two of his surviving four sons died in the Civil War conflict.

Chicksands Priory: Ashley3D via Visual hunt / CC BY-SA

A stalwart example to his youngest child, Dorothy, Sir Peter demonstrated the value of loyalty, even in the face of seemingly lost causes. Left behind at Chicksands, their country estate in Bedfordshire, Dorothy experienced the kind of loss to family and fortune that heavily impacts one’s formative years. She was just fifteen in 1642 when the war broke out, and by the time the conflict was over, her status and prospects had changed forever.

“I was so altered, from a cheerful humour that was always alike, never over merry, but always pleased, I was grown heavy, and sullen, forward and discomposed.” Dorothy Osborne

But against this tumultuous and ruinous background, Dorothy fell in love. Her choice was a good one, for he was a charming, intelligent, handsome and amiable young man who quickly fell for her as well.

“…as those romances are best which are likest true stories, so are those true stories which are likest romances.” William Temple to Dorothy Osborne

Dorothy Osborne met William Temple at the age of twenty-one in 1648 on progress to France with her youngest brother, Robin. The Royalist cause was a lost one and the Osborne estates forfeit to Parliament. Moving his family to France seemed like the only option for Sir Peter.

Sir William Temple
National Portrait Gallery NPG3812

William’s family had fought on the Parliamentary side, which had similarly depleted their resources. At twenty years old, he was on progress to Europe for his education, and found himself in the company of Dorothy and her brother Robin. Dorothy was immediately impressed with this captivating fellow traveller.

According to biographer Jane Dunn in her book, “His easy manners, interest in others and natural charm were so infectious that his sister Martha claimed that on a good day no one, male or female, could resist him.”

While William awaited departure by boat to France with Dorothy on the Isle of Wight, Dorothy’s brother Robin got into a bit of trouble. Infuriated by the imprisonment of King Charles I in Carisbrooke Castle, Robin ran back to their inn and etched an incendiary quotation in Latin into the windowpane, implying a reversal in current political circumstances. According to Dunn, the last line of the well-known quotation was, “Then was the King’s wrath pacified.”

Robin was arrested by Parliamentary officials and taken to trial in the name of Governor Robert Hammond. Dorothy came forward to claim the deed was hers, not Robin’s, hoping the officials would be more lenient with a woman. William, moved by Dorothy’s loyalty and love for her brother, spoke on her behalf, and since Governor Hammond was his cousin and son of the man who had educated William in his home as a boy, the officials relented and let the brother and sister go.

William, now falling in love with Dorothy, delayed his European tour to stay on with the Osborne family in St. Malo, France, where Sir Peter Osborne and his wife were exiled. After a month, however, William’s father, Sir John Temple, heard of his son’s delay and sternly ordered him by letter to depart on his tour. William obeyed, but his passion for Dorothy and hers for him was such that promises were made, and thereafter, Dorothy Osborne and William Temple were devoted to each other.

For the next seven years, Dorothy and William would fight familial duty, ardent suitors, an unfriendly regime, and family supporters to keep their pact to marry only each other. Their constancy in uncertain times and against such pressure is remarkable, and theirs is one of the truly great romances of the seventeenth century. The letters they shared over these years, coupled with infrequent and surreptitious meetings, served to maintain a dedicated bond that only grew stronger the more opposition they encountered. 

Once the extent of their attachment was discovered, William’s family forbade him to communicate with Dorothy, but he disobeyed them. Few of his letters to her have survived, as the couple promised to destroy all their letters to each other to avoid detection. He did write French-style romances for her, which he knew she admired, and told her to read them as letters from him.

“Madam, I count all that time but lost which I lived without knowing you . . . it is impossible to tell you how much I have died since I left you, for I have done it as often as I have thought of you, and thought of you as often as I have breathed.” Sir William Temple

Dorothy, in the face of abuse and histrionics from her possessive brother, Henry, who lived with her after the Osborne estates were restored at Chicksands, duly destroyed her precious letters, but her desperation to receive them was clear.

“O if you do not send me long letters then you are the cruellest person that can be. If you love me you will and if you do not I shall never love my self.”

William, blessed with more physical freedom from his disapproving father, could not bear to destroy her words, and so Dorothy’s letters to him were lovingly preserved.

At times, his devotion and terror at losing her shows in her response to his letters:

“I know your humour is strangely altered from what it was, and I am sorry for it,” she wrote. “Melancholy must needs do you more hurt . . . therefore if you loved me you would take heed of it. Can you believe that you are dearer to me than the whole world besides and yet neglect yourself?”

The couple, secretly pledged to each other but forbidden to wed, fended off a number of suitors brought forth by their families. Sir John Temple, determined that his only son and heir should marry well, grew increasingly impatient with his son’s stubborn attachment to an unsuitable woman from a disgraced family with no dowry.

Dorothy, a known beauty, fended off many suitors, some encouraged by her irate brother Henry, and some who sought Dorothy out on their own. These included such illustrious personages as her cousin, Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby and later 1st Duke of Leeds; Henry Cromwell, second son of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth Oliver Cromwell; and Justinian Isham, English scholar and royalist advisor. 

Justinian Isham by Peter Lely
[Public Domain] Wikimedia Commons

 Dorothy seems to have been on good terms with some of them, in spite of her arguments with her brother and ailing father over her constant refusals. Henry Cromwell remained a lifelong friend, and made a present of two Irish greyhounds she wanted. William, not to be undone, sent her another, charging her with loving this single devoted animal the most.

Dorothy was quick to reassure him:

“I have defended him from the envy and the malice of a troupe of greyhounds that used to be in favour with me, and he is so sensible of my care over him that he is pleased with nobody else and follows me as if we had been of long acquaintance.”

William’s fear that Dorothy would take a better offer and break their covenant stayed with him throughout their courtship, as he struggled to find the income and position that would allow him marry and support a family with the woman he loved.
William’s melancholy reached a fever in 1654, as Dorothy, nearing 28 years of age, began to hint that she might release him from their pact. Considering the waning fortunes of her family, her dwindling prospects on the marriage market with her many refusals, and William’s frustration that endangered his health, Dorothy may have been trying to do the right thing for them both.

William panicked and fell so despondent that Dorothy begged him to protect himself from his own nature, the “Violence of your passion.” She wrote:

“Let me beg then that you will leave off those dismal thoughts. I tremble at the desperate things you say in your letter.”

William’s father, seeing the suffering of his son, and the devotion of William’s heart, finally relented. He and Dorothy’s brother (her ailing father had passed away) wrangled over the terms, but the couple joyously made plans to marry in October of 1654, heedless of the settlement.

“Nothing can alter the resolution I have taken of setting my whole stock of happiness upon the affection of a person that is dear to me whose kindness I shall infinitely prefer before any other consideration whatsoever.” Dorothy Osborne to William Temple

Dorothy came to London with her aunt, Elizabeth Danvers, as chaperone, and the lovers were reunited. One can only imagine the soaring joy as they stood together, finally embraced in each other’s arms. Sadly, tragedy struck this long-suffering couple. Dorothy fell seriously ill with smallpox.

William stayed by her side, refusing to leave, and helped nurse his love. Her condition was dire, and she was expected to perish, but William would not give up. So strong was Dorothy’s determination to live and be joined with her love, that she stayed the course and through a terrible ordeal she fought for her life.

William rejoiced when her condition suddenly improved. “He was happy when he saw [her life] secure, his kindness having greater ties than that of her beauty,” his sister Martha, Lady Giffard, later recalled. “William had long recognised that Dorothy’s beauty sprang from a deeper source than an unblemished creamy skin.” (Jane Dunn, Read My Heart).

William and Dorothy were married on Christmas Day, 1654, and while their life together was fraught with challenges—her brother’s continued objections, financial difficulties due to the delayed settlement of her dowry and William’s inheritance, multiple miscarriages and infant deaths, and numerous separations with the changing political landscape—their love remained constant and unwavering.

After seven long years, the anguish and determination of two people desperately in love was rewarded, and is a testament to the true love and loyalty of William Temple and Dorothy Osborne. Most of us should be so lucky.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Sources:

The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple (1888) edited by Edward Abbott Parry

Dorothy Osborne’s 77 surviving letters (now held in the British Library ADD. MSS. 33975)

Read My Heart A Love Story in England’s Age of Revolution, by Jane Dunn, 2008, Harper Collins Publishers Ltd.

The Constant Desperado by Sir William Temple

Sally A. Moore is a freelance writer and an award-winning poet and novelist from Kingston, Ontario in Canada. Represented by The Rights Factory Literary Agency in Toronto, her writing credits include articles and creative fiction, as well as poetry prizes from the Ontario Poetry Society and the Montreal International Poetry Prize competition. Sally is Past President of the Writers’ Community of Durham Region (WCDR), a member of the Historical Novel Society, and the recipient of the Len Cullen Writing Scholarship. Sally holds certificates of achievement from Humber School for Writers and a diploma with Distinction in Commercial Communications. Excerpts of her historical fiction/fantasy trilogy, Legend of Three Crowns, a work in progress, can be seen on her web site. www.samoorewrites.com

Connect with Sally:
twitter: @SallyMoore11
LinkedIn: SallyMoore777
Writing Services Web Site: SaMooreWrites
Web Portal, Historical Fiction: LegendofThreeCrowns

King William IV - The 'Gap' Monarch

By MJ Neary

They nicknamed him "Silly Billy". A more flattering nickname was "The Sailor King". Sandwiched between such iconic monarchs as George IV, whose extravagant lifestyle defined the esthetics of the Regency Era, and his Queen Victoria, King William IV, former Duke of Clarence (1765-1837) easily gets lost. There is no label attached to his reign. One could call it either "post-Regency" or "pre-Victorian". That period is not covered in literature extensively. And yet, the time between 1830 and 1837 was a time of transition and transformation. The reforms put in place by William IV paved the road for Queen Victoria. He was the last king of the Hanoverian Dynasty and the oldest king to ascend the throne. It was a case of somewhat surprising late-in-life rise power.

Early years in the navy
William IV spent his early years in the Royal Navy, stationed in North America and the Caribbean. Apart from having a personal tutor present on board, William did not enjoy any privileges that would set him apart from the rest of the sailors. He did his share of heavy physical work. During the American War of Independence, he was stationed in New York. Allegedly, George Washington had attempted to kidnap him, knowing that the young man had a habit of walking out unescorted. Fortunately for William, the plot did not come to fruition. Decades later, William endeavored to repair the Anglo-American relations. His subsequent commanding officer, Horatio Nelson, praised him, "In his professional line, he is superior to two-thirds, I am sure, of the Naval list; and in attention to orders, and respect to his superior officer, I hardly know his equal." In 1789 William’s father, George III, made him Duke of Clarence and St. Andrews. Following an arm injury a year later, William was removed from active naval service. The Admiralty did not honor his requests for reinstatement. It must have been agonizing for William to stand on the sidelines during the Napoleonic Wars.

Domestic life
Being the third son, William assuming that his chances of becoming a king were very slim, so he did not feel the pressure to get married and produce legitimate children. So he cohabited with an Irish-born actress whose stage name was Mrs. Dorothea Jordan (1761-1816) known for her long and gorgeous legs. She was a few years older than William and had a track record of love affairs with some pretty high-profile individuals that had resulted in three out-of-wedlock births, so she did not exactly fit the image of a seduced and discarded ingenue. Their affair lasted for twenty years and produced ten children, all of whom took the surname of FitzClarence - a homage to Dorothea's Irish roots combined with William's title as the Duke of Clarence. His favorite daughter Sophia went on to marry Philip Sidney, a relative of the famous poet Percy Shelly. The rest of his daughters went on to marry lords and politicians. William and Dorothea enjoyed a surprisingly normal domestic life, but they ended up separating over financial disputes. Dorothea was given custody of her female children and a stipend on the condition that she would not return on stage. When she violated the stipulation and resumed acting in order to pay off some debt, William seized custody of the girls and withdrew his allowance. Dorothea ended up moving to France and dying in poverty - a distressing end for what had started as an illicit fairy-tale.

After parting with his long-time mistress, William embarked on a wife-hunt. After several years of looking for a suitable candidate, he married a 25-year old Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, who welcomed his illegitimate children but could not produce an heir - her own children all died in infancy. One positive thing that came out of William's marriage to Adelaide was that he became frugal and disciplined, which worked in his favor when he became monarch.

Taking the throne
Coronation was something that sneaked up on William. His older brother George IV died without leaving a legitimate heir, so William was next in line. His very coronation ceremony was marked by almost Spartan austerity. Unlike his pompous and flashy older brother, William was informal, modest and unassuming. People saw him as a definite improvement on his pretentious predecessor.

William’s relationship with his sons was strained by frequent quarrels over money and power. The boys seemed to be never satisfied with what their father bestowed on them. At the same time, his daughters proved to be real assets to the court.

Parliamentary reforms
The new monarch was keenly aware of the need to diversify the Parliament. He created 22 additional peer titles, thus reducing individual influence of each peer, and making the House of Lords easier to control. One of the first men to benefit from the policy was his own illegitimate son George FitzClarence, the 1st Earl of Munster.

Still, it was only the beginning. More changes would be made to the Parliamentary system. In 1832, the First Reform Act was passed, extending votes and redistributing Parliamentary seats on a more equitable basis.

Political xenophobia
Despite being worldly and well-traveled, William was wary of outsiders, particularly the French. His philosophy was isolationism. He was not comfortable in his role as a politician, especially when it came to foreign policy. He was a naval officer through and through.

Human rights legacy
William’s view of slavery changed over the years. As a young man, he actually opposed the abolitionist movement, claiming that the living standard among freemen in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland was worse than that among slaves in the West Indies. His colleagues in the Parliament were shocked by his conservative, almost cynical views, “The proponents of the abolition are either fanatics or hypocrites.” His views changed eventually. The Abolition Act was passed, banning slavery in the British colonies.

As England was entering the Industrial Revolution phase, William IV made considerable efforts to raise the standard of living for the working class. In 1833, the Factory Act was passed prohibiting children aged less than nine from work in factories, and reducing the working hours of women and older children. The Poor Law Act created a system of workhouses for the poor. A few years later Charles Dickens published Oliver Twist, drawing public attention to the poor. Dickens is considered an iconic Victorian author, yet his early experiences  took place under the reign of William IV, from whose reforms he benefit. In addition to his endeavors to alleviate the plight of the less fortunate subjects of the crown, William also worked hard to repair the Anglo-American relations. His experience in New York during the American War of Independence gave him a poignant insight into the relations between England and a former colony.

William in 1837 - by his favourite daughter Sofia

Conclusion
A drastic contrast to his predecessors, William IV knew when to exercise caution and when to show tenacity and firmness of character. Born into the same unfathomable privilege as the rest of the Hanover men, he had weathered many self-destructive temptations that devoured his father and older siblings.  Hopefully, the last Hanover monarch will receive due attention from historical novelists.


Illustrations are all in the Public domain


Marina Julia Neary spent her early years in Eastern Europe and came to the US at the age of thirteen. Her literary career revolves around depicting military and social disasters, from the Charge of the Light Brigade, to the Irish Famine, to the Easter Rising in Dublin, to the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl some thirty miles away from her home town.

Her debut thriller Wynfield's Kingdom was featured on the cover of the First Edition Magazine in the UK and earned the praise of the Neo-Victorian Studies Journal. After writing a series of novels dealing with the Anglo-Irish conflict, her recent releases include Trench Coat Pal (Crossroad Press) and The Gate of Dawn (Penmore Press)

All this week, until Sunday at midnight, Marina is giving away an e-book copy of her novel The Gate of Dawn. For a chance to win, leave a comment HERE

Giveaway - The Gate of Dawn by Marina J Neary

All this week (until midnight Central time Sunday 26th June) Marina J Neary is offering the chance to win a free e-book copy of The Gate of Dawn:

"Welcome to 1880s Vilnius, a volatile Northeastern metropolis where Balts, Germans, Poles, Russians, and Jews compete for a place in the sun. After sustaining fatal burns in a fire instigated by his rivals, textile magnate Hermann Lichtner spends his final days in a shabby infirmary. In a hasty and bizarre deathbed transaction he gives his fifteen-year-old daughter Renate in marriage to Thaddeus, a widowed Polish farmer who rejects social hierarchy and toils side by side with his peasants. 
Renate’s arrival quickly disrupts the bucolic flow of life and antagonizes every member of the household. During an excursion to the city, Renate rekindles an affair with a young Jewish painter who sells his watercolors outside the Gate of Dawn chapel. While her despairing husband might look the other way, his servants will not stand by and watch while their adored master is humiliated. 

Taking us from the cobblestone streets of old Vilnius, swarming with imperial gendarmes, to the misty bogs of rural Lithuania where pagan deities still rule, The Gate of Dawn is a folkloric tale of rivalry, conspiracy, and revenge."

For your chance to win, leave a comment below. Don't forget to leave your contact details!

Divine Companionship and Eternal Life: Mystery Cults in Roman Britain

By Mark Patton.

The official religions of ancient Greece and Rome were largely formalised affairs. Gods and goddesses such as Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo and Venus existed, and had to be propitiated, but people could expect little from them in return. They were simply too remote to take any interest in the affairs of mortals. Their temples were not arenas for communal worship, like modern churches, synagogues or mosques, but rather places that one approached to sacrifice, in a spirit of public duty. There were few emotional dimensions to such devotion and, specifically, they offered little prospect of life after death.

Greek and Roman conceptions of an afterlife, to the extent that they had such a concept at all, were fairly dismal by most modern standards. Even a great hero such as Achilles would find himself in a dull grey twilight of eternity, a pale reflection of an all-to-brief life. "...never try to console me for dying," his spirit says to Odysseus, in the eleventh book of Homer's Odyssey. "I would rather follow the plough as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted to him, and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead."

By the time that Britain became part of the Roman Empire, however, a new dimension to Roman religion had begun to emerge. Mystery cults, many of them centred on the worship of gods and goddesses from the fringes of the Roman world, spread rapidly across the Empire. Unlike the official religions, these cults were accessible only to initiates, and they offered a promise of ultimate resurrection, as a companion to a specific deity. Many of these were based on metaphors of death and rebirth drawn from elements of the natural world.

The oldest of these cults, The Mysteries of Eleusis, had grown up in ancient Greece, perhaps as early as 1500 BC, and persisted through the Second and Third Centuries AD, until they were suppressed by Christian emperors. Their focus was on Persephone, the daughter of the Goddess Demeter, who was abducted by Hades, the God of the Underworld, but rescued by her mother, and thereafter permitted to spend half the year above ground. Demeter and Persephone were associated with agrarian production, so the central metaphor concerned the growth, harvesting, re-planting and re-growth of wheat. By the beginning of the Second Century AD, however, The Mysteries of Eleusis had become one of the most exclusive clubs in the Roman world: few could afford the necessary pilgrimage to Greece, and the lengthy initiation ceremonies required to become an immortal companion of Persephone.

The "Ninnion Tablet," representing The Eleusinian Mysteries, 4th Century BC, found at Eleusis, Greece, National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Photo: Marsyas (licensed under GNU).

The cult of Mithras was, perhaps, the most widespread of the mystery religions in the Western Empire, not least because of its popularity within the Roman army. Originally a Persian deity, but much altered in the Roman context, the slaughtering of a bull by Mithras was the central motif, and it was through the redemptive blood of the bull that resurrection was believed to take place. Much about the cult and its rituals remains unknown, but initiation seems to have been available only to men: an odd conception of the afterlife - an eternity without women - but perhaps there was a secret twist that initiates took to their graves?

The Temple of Mithras in London. Mithras temples were underground, and represented the cave in which Mithras slew the sacred bull. Photo: Solar (licensed under CCA).

Figure of Mithras, from the London Mithraeum. Photo: Carole Raddato (licensed under CCA).

The cult of the Egyptian Goddess, Isis, seems to have been open to both men and women. In ancient Egyptian myth, her brother-husband, Osiris, was murdered, and chopped into pieces,by a treacherous rival. Isis gathered the pieces, bound them into the first "mummy," breathed new life into the body, and was then impregnated by the resurrected god, giving birth to a son, Horus. Like Mithras, she had a temple in London, although it has not been located (a flagon, found in Southwark, bears the inscription "Londini ad Fanum Isidis" - "at London by the Temple of Isis"). Her cult was closely linked to that of another Egyptian God, Serapis, who, like Demeter and Persephone, is associated with the grain harvest.

Bronze figurine of Isis, found in the Thames at London, Museum of London (image is in the Public Domain).

Figure of Serapis, from the London Mithraeum. Serapis was a Graeco-Egyptian god, closely associated with the cult of Isis. He brings together elements of the earlier Egyptian Gods, Horus (often portrayed with a falcon's head) and Apis (depicted as a bull) - the Greeks and Romans were uncomfortable with the animal attributes of Egyptian gods. His head-dress represents a grain measure. Photo: Udimu (licensed under GNU).

Inscription from Eboracum (York), recording the establishment of a Temple of Serapis by General Claudius Hieronymianus, Commander of the 6th Legion. He served at York from 190 to 212 AD, and may have inaugurated the temple to mark the visit of the Emperor Septimius Severus, known to be a devotee of the god. Hieronymianus later served as Governor of Cappadocia, where, Tertullian tells us, he was angered by his wife's conversion to Christianity. Some bodies in the Roman cemetery at York were buried encased in gypsum, probably an unsuccessful attempt to imitate Egyptian mummification practices. Photo: Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net), licensed under CCA. 

The cult of Bacchus seems, similarly, to have been open to men and women, and the rituals must surely have involved the consumption of much wine. The central metaphor of the cult was that of the annual cutting back of the vine in the autumn, followed by its regeneration in the spring, and the new harvest at the end of the summer. The god himself was symbolically reborn, and, with him, his male and female companions, wine taking the place of blood as the fluid by means of which resurrection is made possible.

Fourth Century figure of Bacchus, with his drinking companions, Silenus and Pan, and a female devotee, from the London Mithraeum, which was ultimately re-dedicated to Bacchus. Museum of London. The inscription reads "Hominibus Vagis Vitam" ("You give life to wandering mortals"). Photo: Zde (licensed under CCA).

Sarcophagus and lead coffin from a cemetery at Smithfield, London, Museum of London. The coffin contained the remains of a young woman of the highest social class, born in Rome, thus possibly a daughter or sister of the Governor. Some of the motifs on the coffin suggest that she may have been a devotee of Bacchus. Photo: Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net), licensed under CCA.

Christianity was, in the Second and Third Centuries AD, just another mystery cult, with Jesus as the latest heroic, divine figure, who was born; nurtured by a mother; shed his blood; died; and was resurrected; enabling his human companions to follow him into an eternal afterlife, free from all of the pains and indignities of life on Earth. Early depictions of him often resemble portrayals of Mithras, Bacchus or Horus, and his cult was especially popular with the lower classes, including slaves, excluded from many of the other cults. It was only with the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, by the Emperor Constantine in the Fourth Century AD that its character changed: ancient philosophical traditions were harnessed to the cause of theology, and the other cults were variously suppressed, or simply faded away.

Third Century depiction of Christ from a Roman villa at Hinton Saint Mary. Another room in the same villa included Pagan imagery, so were the family hedging their bets, or did members of the same family follow different religions? Photo: JMiall (licensed under CCA).

Isis suckling Horus, figurine in The Louvre. Such depictions, widespread throughout the Roman World, are believed to have influenced early Christian depictions of the Virgin Mary suckling the infant Christ. Photo: Guillaume Blanchard (licensed under CCA).

The mystery religions of the Second and Third Centuries AD were many and varied, but they drew on one another, and were often intertwined. Most of them offered hope in an afterlife that was absent from the official cults, and this was often in the context of a personal relationship with a deity that few (even emperors) could hope to have with Jupiter, Minerva or Venus. Many were based around similar metaphors: grain and bread; wine and blood; death and resurrection; and these metaphors, in their Christian variant, survived through the Middle Ages into our own times.

Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. His novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.

Editor's Weekly Round Up: June 19, 2016

by the EHFA Editors

In case you missed any of the articles posted on the blog, here is our weekly round up.

A Little-known Glimpse into the Court of George III

By Jacqueline Reiter

Playing the Provinces: 18th Century Actors on the Move, Part 2 (York, Bristol & Bath)

By Margaret Porter

Your Weight in Gold - the Problem of Tudor and Stuart Money

By Deborah Swift

Hessians: Reluctant Soldiers
By Kim Rendfeld

Edmund Beaufort, a Mover and a Shaker in the Wars of the Roses
By Derek Birks

The Attack on Llangorse, 19th June AD916 

By Annie Whitehead

The English Historical Fiction Authors blog has also been running a Giveaway this week. Annie Whitehead is giving away a signed paperback of To Be A Queen. You can find the details below. Entries are open until Midnight (Pacific Time), Sunday June 19 2016.

Giveaway - To Be A Queen

The Attack on Llangorse 19th June AD916

By Annie Whitehead

It is not often that the early medieval chroniclers provide us with specific dates. And of a period about which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is almost silent - Aethelflaed's 'reign’ - we are incredibly lucky to have not one date, but two, while the second date enables us to identify a third. The Chronicle tells us that she died on June 12th, 918. But the third, implied, date is the one that interests me today: June 19th, two years before her death, and exactly 1100 years tomorrow.

The 'C' Chronicle of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, incorporating the annals known as The Mercian Register, tells us:

"In this year before midsummer, on 16th June, the day of the festival of St Quiricus the Martyr, abbot Ecgberht, who had done nothing to deserve it, was slain together with his companions. Three days later Aethelflaed sent an army into Wales and stormed Brecenanmere [at Llangorse lake near Brecon] and there captured the wife of the king and thirty-three other persons."

We cannot know much about the unfortunate abbot, (a search of the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England [PASE] reveals only that single mention of him) save that he was sufficiently dear to Aethelflaed that she was prepared to avenge his life in such a forceful manner.

So what can we discover about Brecenanmere, and the unnamed king, whose wife was captured?

In his book, The Making of Mercia, Ian Walker says that the Mercian Register "... records the destruction of the royal crannog of Tewdr, king of Brycheiniog, on Llangorse lake in Brecon and the capture of his queen."

PASE lists two kings named Tewdwr. One of them is the father of Elise and both of these men are mentioned in Asser's Life of Alfred [1] as having submitted to Alfred. Alfred died in 899 so either of these men could, in theory, have still been alive and militarily active in 916.

The other Tewdwr is listed as Tewdwr ap Griffi ab Elise, who, as Teowdor, Subregulus, witnessed a charter of King Athelstan in 934. [2] The Welsh system of patronymics suggests that he must have been the grandson of Elise, although Kari Maund names him as Tewdwr ab Elise, suggesting a closer consanguineal relationship [3]

We cannot know why this abbot was killed, or why a king who had submitted to Alfred the Great chose to anger Alfred’s daughter in this way. Perhaps he fancied his chances against a weak female ruler. At this time, the king of Wessex was Alfred’s son, Aethelflaed’s brother, Edward the Elder. He and his sister were engaged in an active campaign of building fortified towns, such as the fortress at Chirbury (on the Welsh/English border, in 915) and perhaps there were hostilities between the English and the Welsh which have gone unrecorded.

In 916 Edward is recorded as being engaged in Essex, building a fortress at Maldon. Is it possible that this King Tewdwr thought that Aethelflaed, a mere woman, would do little in retribution while her brother was busy elsewhere? We cannot know, because as previously mentioned, we have few specific dates and only know that Edward was in Essex in ‘the summer.’ Tempting as it is to join these two facts together, we cannot be certain.

There can be no doubt, though, that Edward was busy, and that he trusted his sister with power and authority. Her husband, Ethelred of Mercia, had died in 911 but had, for some years before that, been incapacitated in some form. Edward, whilst minting Mercian coins in his name, had allowed Aethelflaed to lead Mercia during her husband’s prolonged illness and in 911, although Edward took control of London and Oxford, previously handed to Mercia by Alfred, he left his sister as nominal head of Mercia.

Brother and sister worked as a team in 917: while Edward built fortresses at Towcester and Wigingamere (unidentified), and received the submission of ‘Viking’ armies of Northampton, East Anglia, and Cambridge, Aethelflaed took the borough of Derby, one of the prized ‘five boroughs’ which Edward had vowed to prise back out of the invaders’ hands. [4] In 907, Chester had been ‘restored’ [5] although no mention is made of the person who led the army which starved the occupying Vikings out. Professor Simon Keynes confirmed my suspicion that it is safe to assume that Ethelred was, by this point, unwell, and that in all likelihood it was Aetheflaed who took the fight to the walls of Chester.

We have therefore, enough evidence, however scant in detail, from 907 and 917, to be comfortable with the notion that she led an army into Wales. What would she have found there?

The ‘crannog’ mentioned above probably looked something like this:

Credit - Garnet Davies (Llangorselake.co.uk - Lakeside Bar/Caravan Park)

It seems likely that this was the only crannog in Wales and the museumwales website [6] has this to say:

“The crannog was carefully constructed of brushwood and sandstone boulders, reinforced and surrounded by several lines of oak plank palisade. Tree-ring dating of the well-preserved timbers has established that they were felled between AD889 and AD893. The site seems to have been influenced by Irish building techniques, and was possibly constructed with the assistance of an Irish master craftsman.

The kings of Brycheiniog claimed to be descended from a part-Irish dynasty, and their use of such an unusual and impressive construction may have enhanced their political standing and strengthened their claims to Irish ancestry.”

Of Aethelflaed’s attack, the site says: “This record of an attack probably refers to the crannog, and the capture of the wife of king Tewdwr ap Elisedd. During excavation, a charred, burnt layer was uncovered - probably representing this attack.”

If this was indeed the structure which Aethelflaed attacked, and where she took a queen prisoner, then this place was being used at a royal ‘llys’, a high status secular site. Tewdwr himself obviously survived this battle, but of course we cannot be sure if he was even in residence on the day in question. The only information we have is that his wife and thirty three other persons were captured. Conjecture is the preserve of the novelist, and I had a lot of fun filling in the gaps of this particular incident, but the historian cannot afford such luxuries.

Map of medieval Wales showing Brycheiniog

What we can infer, though, is that retribution was swift but relatively merciful. The Chronicle mentions the killing of the abbot, but no revenge killings of any high-status Welsh. Aethelflaed had no further trouble from beyond the border. As we have seen, she went on to retake Derby (although the chronicle laments the loss of “four of her thanes, who were dear to her.”)

Early in 918, she obtained control of Leicester (another of the five boroughs and, later in the year, the second battle of Corbridge, involving Ragnall against the Scots with the English Northumbrians, seems to have brought the people of York, wishing for a strong southern ally against Ragnall and his Norse Vikings, to Aethelflaed’s court, seeking her assistance.

What at first glance seems an unlikely entry in an 1100-year old chronicle, that a woman marched into another country to avenge a death of a friend, seems more plausible when we piece together all we know of Aetheflaed’s life. However few those facts are, they add up to one - that she was indeed, a remarkable woman.

[1] Asser Vit.Alfredi 80
[2] Charter S425 King Athelstan to Ælfwald, minister; grant of 12 hides (cassatae) at Derantune. (probably Durrington, Sussex)
[3] The Welsh Kings - Kari Maund (Tempus)
[4] the five boroughs: Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford.
[5] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
[6] http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/
(all images in the public domain, unless credited)

Annie Whitehead is a history graduate and prize-winning author. Her first novel, To Be A Queen, is the story of Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, who came to be known as the Lady of the Mercians. It was long-listed for the Historical Novel Society’s Indie Book of the Year 2016. It has recently also been awarded an indieBRAG medallion. Her new release, Alvar the Kingmaker, which tells the story of Aelfhere of Mercia, a nobleman in the time of King Edgar, is available now, and is the story of one man’s battle to keep the monarchy strong and the country at peace, when successive kings die young. 

Find her on her author page HERE
Buy Alvar the Kingmaker
Buy To Be A Queen

All this week I have been running a giveaway of a signed copy of To Be A Queen. There is still time to add your name - go to the link HERE

Edmund Beaufort, a mover and shaker in the Wars of the Roses

by Derek Birks

First of all, it is important to remember that there were at least four Beaufort Dukes of Somerset populating the period and two of them were called Edmund. Get over it. This is the Wars of the Roses and it was never simple.

The Edmund Beaufort I’m writing about here was the grandson of John of Gaunt, one of the many sons of Edward III.  Both Edmund and his king, Henry VI, therefore had Lancastrian royal blood in their veins, but the Beauforts by law could not inherit the throne. Their line of descent came from an illegitimate liaison between John and Katherine Swynford. Though they were later legitimised, Henry IV barred them from the succession by letters patent.

Edmund was the younger brother of John Beaufort and became Duke of Somerset after his brother’s death.

Alright, so why do we care? What part does he play in all the carnage?

Well, if you were to regard the Wars of the Roses as a barrel of gunpowder, Edmund Beaufort was the fuse – completely harmless of course, until…

Why Did Somerset Become a Problem?

King Henry VI was well-disposed towards the Beauforts in the 1440s at a time when Henry’s government was dominated by William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk.

Edmund was appointed to a command in France where he replaced Richard, Duke of York. York did not take it well, resenting Somerset’s rise. His annoyance was compounded by the fact that Somerset was not a very competent commander. His resentment was further fuelled by the fact that Somerset was promised £25,000 to fund his campaign whereas York had received nothing and was owed many thousands. York was then sent to rule Ireland – far from the centre of power.

Why Was the Rivalry Between York and Somerset a Problem?

Richard, Duke of York

In 1450 a wave of popular unrest caused several attacks against Suffolk’s corrupt government, culminating in the murder of several members of the king’s inner circle, including Suffolk. This left a void at the heart of the government. Whatever happened next there would be a new regime.

York was an obvious candidate for advancement since he was the most prominent nobleman and, if King Henry were to die childless, then York was the heir presumptive. York, keen to take what he saw as his rightful place, returned from Ireland unbidden and began a propaganda campaign against the king’s corrupt councillors, especially Somerset.

Undoubtedly Henry preferred Somerset and recalled him from France, where the war was going badly, to bring him back to the centre of his government. He could of course, if he wished, remove the legal impediment to Somerset inheriting the throne. If he did so then Somerset, not York, could be seen as the heir presumptive.

York feared exactly that. He posed as a seeker after justice and had notable support in the House of Commons. Henry’s response in May 1451 was to dissolve parliament. In the end, the only opinion that mattered was Henry VI’s.

Meanwhile Somerset was appointed Captain of Calais, a prestigious post reserved for trusted men. So Henry trusted Somerset where he did not seem to trust York, possibly because he feared that York wanted the throne.

Somerset’s new appointment and dominance incensed York. Once more he embarked on an extensive campaign against government corruption, hoping to rise on a tide of popular support. He raised troops and marched to London intending to remove Somerset by force if necessary.

Henry VI

The king and Somerset rallied some support too and their small army also camped outside the city.
Few nobles supported York. Most had no stomach for taking up arms, even against Somerset. So negotiations followed and the councillors agreed that if York dissolved his army, then Somerset would be imprisoned and tried for his poor conduct of the French war. It seemed that the king agreed to this but after York sent his men away, he found that Somerset was still there by the king’s side. Instead York was treated like a prisoner – after all, what he had done certainly amounted to treason.

In the end though, Henry VI let him go and York retired from London to lick his wounds for royal service had beggared him. Later in the year Somerset could not resist rubbing York’s nose in his failure when he presided over the trial of some of York’s followers at Ludlow in the very heart of York’s powerbase. Somerset now had the king in the palm of his hand.

What went wrong then for Somerset?

It started in June 1453 when the king gave Somerset some estates in south Wales. Somerset was desperate for landed income since the Beaufort family did not have much. His income came otherwise from the various royal pensions and grants he received from the king and the profits from any offices he held.

Unfortunately, the lands Henry gave him belonged to Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. When it came to land grabbing, Warwick was up there with the best and he strongly resented losing estates in an area where he was keen to build up influence. From then on, Somerset was a legitimate target as far as Warwick was concerned, but poor Somerset carried on oblivious to his peril.

Edmund in France (Rouen)

The really bad news though was to come in July 1453 when the French war – always the elephant in Henry VI’s chamber – took a turn for the worse. A military catastrophe occurred when the heroic John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, was defeated and killed at Castillon. England’s last significant army in France, apart from the Calais garrison, was destroyed.

Even worse was to follow. The king suffered a debilitating breakdown which left him immobile. Whether it was brought on by the news from France is not clear, but England now lacked a king at the helm. For the queen, soon to give birth to a male heir, and Somerset, it made government almost impossible. For a few months Somerset muddled through by putting off matters upon which only the king could decide. But by October the king’s council agreed that someone must be appointed with authority to rule for the king.

They recalled York from the political wasteland to re-join the council. There, for various reasons, not least the little matter of estates in south Wales, York found support from the powerful Neville family. Somerset suddenly found himself confined to the Tower whilst the council argued over who should rule. The queen, worried for her new son if York should take charge, tried to have herself declared regent, but the council refused and in 1454 chose York as Protector of the Realm.

How then did Somerset extricate himself from the Tower?

The start of the Wars of the Roses. York picks white
flowers, Somerset red (Henry Arthur Payne)

It was quite simple really: the king recovered – at least enough to tell the difference between York and Somerset. By February 1455, York had to step down. Somerset was released from the Tower and at once contrived to forge an alliance with all those who were rivals of the Nevilles and York. The rivalry between York and Somerset, if left to continue, would destroy the kingdom; something had to give. York and his allies left London in haste to prepare for war.

Somerset and the queen were of one mind: York had to go. A Great Council was summoned to meet at Leicester on 21st May, 1455. It was hand-picked and the hand didn’t pick York or any of his allies because, of course, the purpose of this Council was to condemn them. The Council, however, never met.

Somerset was a poor strategist – as his French exploits had proven. Thus, he was slow to react when York left London and only began to muster troops when York was already on his way south with an army.

On 21st May, Somerset and the king set off for St Albans to await the arrival of the retinues they had summoned. They spent the night of 21st at Watford. Overnight there was an exchange of messages with York. The latter stressed his loyalty and desire for a council without Somerset in it. Early on the morning of 22nd May a final message came from York. It said little new but the king summoned his council to discuss what to do.

Somerset, surprised by the speed of York’s advance, advised waiting at Watford until they had gathered more strength. A more moderate councillor, the Duke of Buckingham, proposed continuing to St Albans, arguing that York was merely exerting pressure and would not push for a fight. Henry took Buckingham’s advice not Somerset’s and continued to St Albans, arriving about 9am. York and the Neville lords were already camped in the fields on the outskirts of the town but King Henry continued into the town centre.

What happened at St Albans?

Many of those with Henry assumed that, after all the posturing, there would be negotiations and the matter would be settled peacefully. Heralds were sent to and fro to see if such a process could be started. This was normal procedure – a sort of last ditch effort to avoid actual fighting. But even whilst the heralds were still working, the skirmishing began and by 10am York was on the attack. He did not find it easy though to break through the town’s defences. His men toiled for an hour or so to no avail.

York had got nowhere but Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, was a little more creative in his tactics. Driven on by his desire to resolve his differences with Somerset by force, he broke through some gardens and houses of the town, taking the King’s household by surprise. Many were not even wearing armour and they scattered across the town seeking refuge wherever they could. The Duke of Buckingham fled to the abbey and Somerset dived into the Castle Inn. York’s men now broke into the town and, once victory was achieved, he ensured the safety of the wounded king who was hiding in a tanner’s cottage.

The Duke of Somerset, trapped in the inn, knew very well that York and Warwick would not let him live. So, with his loyal retinue, he tried to fight his way out. It is said that Somerset killed four men before he himself was hacked to death.

The events of 22nd May 1455 are sometimes referred to as the First Battle of St. Albans. Some have argued over the term “battle” suggesting it was only a skirmish. Casualties probably amounted to less than a hundred, but York’s objective was achieved: Somerset and the northern rivals of the Neville lords, Northumberland and Clifford, were not just removed but killed.

This was a coup d’etat more than a battle and soon after a bill passed through parliament blaming Somerset for causing the affray.

What then was Somerset’s contribution to the Wars of the Roses?

Few nobles were especially enamoured with either Somerset or York as individuals. Most accepted that factions in a king’s council were inevitable. A strong king might have dealt more even-handedly with York and not showered so many honours upon Somerset. Was that Somerset’s fault? Not really for he, like York, was playing his hand in the game as all nobles did.

Somerset’s government was corrupt and he was a poor war leader but, by killing him, York changed the rules of the game. It appeared that on Henry VI’s watch, it was alright to use force of arms to gain political advantage – NB. Political advantage, not the throne, because in 1455 it was not yet a “Game of Thrones.” Not yet.

All images in the Public Domain via Wikipedia

~~~~~~~~~~~

Derek Birks was born in Hampshire in England but spent his teenage years in Auckland, New Zealand, where he still has strong family ties. For many years he taught history in a secondary school but took early retirement to concentrate on writing. Apart from his writing, he spends his time gardening, travelling, walking and taking part in archaeological digs at a Roman villa.

Derek is interested in a wide range of historical themes but his particular favourite is the late medieval period. He writes action-packed fiction which is rooted in accurate history.

His debut historical novel, Feud, is set in the period of the Wars of the Roses and is the first of a series entitled Rebels & Brothers which follows the fortunes of the fictional Elder family.
The fourth and final book of the series, The Last Shroud, was published in the summer of 2015.

Find out more about Derek on his website, on his blog, or on his Amazon page.

Hessians: Reluctant Soldiers

By Kim Rendfeld

The Hessian soldiers who fought for the British in the American Revolution did not come to the New World of their own free will.

The troops comprised conscripts—school dropouts, servants without masters, bankrupts, idlers, drunkards, the unemployed, troublemakers, and any other "expendable" man who was healthy and under 60. Their societies saw them as anything but the best and brightest.

"Hessian" is catch-all term for soldiers rented out to the British by Frederick II, the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, and five other German rulers. In Hesse-Kassel, the fee was the equivalent of 13 years of tax revenue, and Landgrave Frederick used it for the public good. He left a full treasury, founded museums and schools, and had a taste for expensive buildings.

About 30,000 soldiers crossed the Atlantic between 1776 and 1783. At first, they were well trained and well equipped. As the war dragged on, it became harder to find men who would make good soldiers.

Although the soldiers received wages, military service was dreaded, and sometimes recruitment was really kidnapping. Once the recruit was pressed into service, the officer needed to get him to the garrison. Desertion at this stage was common enough that the officer had his charge under constant guard and followed complicated procedures such as avoiding large towns and places where the recruit had previously served.

The officer was armed with a sword and gun and might have had a dog. He kept his captive in front of him and warned that a misstep would cost him his life—the captor would be excused for a dead recruit but not a living deserter. If the pair stayed at an inn along the way, the officer chose an innkeeper he knew was on his side. When conscript and guard retired for the night, both of them undressed, and the guard's weapons were stored in a different room so that the conscript wouldn't use them against his captor.

The local populace might sympathize with a captive, but they paid a high price if they helped him. If the conscript escaped in a certain village, its inhabitants would be forced to hand over one of their own as tall as the deserter or they might be extorted to pay a fine. Anyone caught assisting a deserter lost their civil rights and faced death or prison and flogging.

Once part of an army, soldiers were subject to harsh discipline. Thirty lashes was the most common punishment. A man guilty of a more serious offense, like participating in a failed mutiny, was forced to run through a gauntlet and be pummeled with cudgels—repeatedly. Ringleaders of such a plot were hanged, unless the prince showed mercy and imprisoned them indefinitely.

The months-long crossing of the Atlantic could be horrific. Johann Gottfried Seume, conscripted after leaving theology school, vividly describes soldiers being packed like herring, with the taller men unable to stand upright. They were served rotten pork and biscuits with maggots, and their drinking water stank and had filaments.

Among the Hessians, there might have been varying attitudes. They probably didn't know what the Americans and British were fighting about. The officers might have believed anti-American propaganda and thought Congress to be despotic. Common soldiers might have seen their stint in the New World as job to do on behalf of their country. Others might have wondered why they were fighting in a war that had nothing to do with them. Frederick of Prussia, also known as Frederick the Great, said as much to his nephew, Margrave Charles Alexander of Anspach, when refusing to let troops pass through his lands: "My astonishment increases when I remember in ancient history the wise and general aversion of our ancestors to wasting German blood for the defense of foreign rights, which even became a law in the German state."

Perhaps, my ancestor Johann Gebel, a common soldier, shared Frederick of Prussia's sentiments. Born in the Principality of Waldeck, he turned 20 the same year the colonies declared their independence. If I am to believe family lore, Johann didn't want to fight.

We don't know for certain what happened to him while he was a soldier, but he likely deserted when he was a prisoner of war, especially if he was offered land in addition to his freedom. This also was a chance to escape the beatings in the military and not to endure another crossing of the Atlantic. In America, he had an opportunity to be a respectable citizen in a German-speaking community, quite a contrast to an expendable conscript.

Whatever his reasons, Johann was among the Hessians who decided to make their home in postwar America--where people who once fought each other had to learn to live together.

Images are by Charles M. Lefferts (1873-1923) and are in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources
"Hessians" by David Head, George Washington's Mount Vernon

The Hessians and the Other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War by Edward J. Lowell

"The Hessians" by Russell Yost, The History Junkie

Kim Rendfeld is the author of two novels set in early medieval Francia and is working on a third. In The Cross and the Dragon, Alda, a young Frankish noblewoman, must contend with a vengeful jilted suitor and the fear of losing her husband in battle. In The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar, Saxon peasant Leova will go to great lengths to protect her children after she's lost everything else.

The Cross and the Dragon will be rereleased in August 2016 in print and ebook formats. You can preorder the ebook at Kobo, iTunes, or Barnes and Noble. The novel will soon be available on Amazon. The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar will be rereleased in November 2016. Preorders are available at Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes. It also will soon be available on Amazon.

Your Weight in Gold - The Problem of Tudor and Stuart Money

By Deborah Swift

This Horrible Histories video shows precisely the difficulty with Tudor and Stuart coinage - the denominations were extremely confusing. But it wasn't the only problem - in these days of virtual money, credit cards and online banking, we tend to forget exactly how much space the average man’s wealth took up. Money in Tudor and Jacobean England was a physical commodity that needed to be stored, carried and guarded. Often wealth was stored as 'plate', i.e. silver and gold that could be used for a purpose such as dining. Large sums of money meant having the physical space to keep it and so wealth was often displayed in the form of silver or gold plate, cutlery, candlesticks or other domestic trappings, which could be melted down to make a large number of coins of the same weight.

Wealth was very visible in the 16th century. Ben Jonson’s play, ‘Volpone’, opens with Volpone’s worship of his gold:

‘Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!
Open the shrine that I may see my Saint!’

Johnson’s play about greed and lust satirises some of the forms of financial speculation practised in Jacobean London. The phrase ‘worth your weight in gold’ was a literal truth in Tudor England.

Currency was based on the penny, and the smallest denomination above it was the humble groat or fourpenny piece, and the half-groat (twopence), and one of the largest was the Angel or Angel-noble, called this because of its image of the Archangel Michael stamped in the design. The first shillings, or 'testoons' were created in 1502 in the reign of Henry VII. Occasionally half-pennies or farthings (quarter of a penny) were actually struck as coins, but this was rare: the smaller denominations were usually made by cutting a full penny into halves and quarters, or by using tokens as in Pepys’s Diary.

From The Pastry Cook at the sign of the Crown in Shoe Lane

The picture above is from this excellent site about trade tokens in the 17th Century.

Just a few of the coins in circulation:

Farthing = 1/4 penny
Half-penny = 1/2 penny
Three-farthing = 3/4 penny
Groat = 4 pennies (4d)
Sixpence = 6 pennies (6d)
Shilling = 12 pennies (1s )
Half-crown = 30 pennnies (2s 6d)
Crown = 60 pennies (5s)
Angel = 120 pennies (10s)
Pound = 240 pennies (20s or £1)
Sovereign = 360 pence (30s or £1 10s)

The sovereign was first minted under Henry VII as the gold equivalent of a pound (20 shillings) and was much easier to carry about than the arm-stretching weight of a pound of silver coinage. However, because the currency was based on the actual value of the precious metal, the face value of individual coins was not static as modern coins are, and a particular coin’s value would fluctuate with the price of silver or gold. Apart from the weight, the other disadvantage was that counterfeiting and coin-clipping (chipping a bit off the edge) was rife, although counterfeiting coins was a hanging offence. More detail about actual coins is here: Tudor Coinage.

Gold Angel

Most Elizabethan and Jacobean aristocrats borrowed heavily. Shakespeare’s patron William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, for instance, borrowed large sums from regular court money-lender Sir Michael Hicks. The borrowing was mainly to invest in mercantile ventures in other countries, from where England imported luxury goods or foodstuffs not easily obtained at home. Investing in trade was a risky business. Most trades depended on the ocean and many investors lost their fortunes to the sea. There were rare examples of great success in trade, such as Sir Thomas Gresham who became enormously wealthy from his dealings in munitions and bullion in the Netherlands. Gresham founded and invested in the Royal Exchange, the forerunner of London’s modern stock exchange in 1570. Sadly the first Royal Exchange, the great centre of trade and finance, was destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666.

And in fact the biggest risk to all wealth was fire. In towns made of wood and wattle, and thatched with reed, it was an ever-present risk. In this letter from Henry Wotton to Edward Bacon dated 13 July 1613, he says; ‘some of the paper or other stuff where with one of them was stopped did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoke, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, consuming the whole house to the very grounds.’

Counter Table from Hull Museum

Fear of losing all your money led to obsessive tallying, both at home, and at the ‘Counting House’. This is a rare example from Hull Museum is of a 'counter table' from the time of Henry VIII. Often the surfaces were marked with a grid or had a chequered board to help counting. In fact this is where the word 'counter' , as in a shop counter, is derived. In wills and inventories from the 16th century, counters are often listed as having a compartment. These compartments were probably for storing money and accounting ledgers, but in this example the drawers and hinged lid were added to it later, probably in the 18th century.

By the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign inflation was unstoppable and if their ships failed to come in, many men found themselves in debt. Debt carried a prison sentence so was greatly feared. In ‘The Merchant of Venice’ the themes of loans, bonds and mercantile transactions are interwoven with the plot. Financial concerns would have been familiar to Shakespeare as his father John Shakespeare made a good deal of money from investments in commodities such as wool and malt, apart from carrying on his business as a glover. He also did a bit of moneylending on the side. William followed in his father’s footsteps and these ventures, apart from inspiring a play, probably brought in considerably larger sums than his craft.

The Moneylender and his Wife - Matsys

Lending sums of money at a high rate of interest was common as interest rates were not fixed. It was usual to charge ‘damages’ , particularly if a debt was paid late, and often substantial fines were added with the full support of the law.

In Johnson’s ‘Every Man out of his Humour’ Puntarvolo invites his friends to sponsor him in his journey to Constantinople. Men would regularly lay down large sums of money to sponsor travellers on condition that the sums were doubled or trebled on their safe return. Travel was risky, but could be lucrative for the sponsor when the traveller returned with the spoils of their travels. 

Johnson and Shakespeare deposited £40 with the eccentric Somerset traveller Thomas Coryate before he set out to walk to Venice and back in a single pair of shoes. Coryate seems to have made quite a good living out of his sponsored travels, together with the books he wrote about them -- and even those who did not provide him with major support were willing to stand him a good dinner in return for his eyewitness accounts of exotic places. Coryate died during his last journey to India in 1670, but his books are still available today.

This type of sponsorship was a form of gambling, and the dividing line between legitimate investment or ‘venturing’ and various forms of betting was a good deal finer than it is today. Almost all Elizabethans gambled, from schoolboys who wagered with the ‘points’ that fastened their clothes, to the Queen and her courtiers who loved to play card games with enormous stakes. John Harrington wrote an epigram on the ‘rake’s progress’ of Marcus, a young man who gambled away his fortune at the very popular card game Primero. ‘The Counter’, where Marcus ends up, was one of London’s debtors prisons, called that because of its large number of debtors.

Lucas van Leyden - Primero players

Primero appears to have been one of the earliest card games played in England during Tudor and Stuart times, and was a forerunner to poker. Even Kings, or especially Kings, were not immune to gambling. During the reign of Henry VII, notices of the King's losses at cards appear in the Remembrance's Office. An entry is shown of one hundred shillings paid at one time to him for the purpose of playing at cards. The private expenses of Princess Mary, Henry VIII's daughter and later Queen, also contain numerous items of money ‘for the playe at cardes’.

Sources: 

Shakespeare's Life and World - Katherine Duncan-Jones

Early Modern England - Sharpe

The Time Traveller's guide to Elizabethan England - Ian Mortimer

Deborah Swift is the author of five historical novels for adults and a trilogy for teens. She blogs on her website about historical curios and historical fiction, and whilst you're reading this she is probably staring out of the window, coffee in hand, lucky black cat on lap, plotting her next book. You can chat to her online @swiftstory, or find her on facebook.