Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (38 page)

Stuart Period (1603-1714)

The Three Weddings of James VI and I (but Only One Wife)

by Margaret Skea

M
ost of us only get married once (to the same person). Things used to be different—for royalty at least….

Some
of us may have written a poem
to our beloved (not guilty). That’s something that hasn’t changed.

Here is a poem written by James VI to Anne of Denmark in 1589:

What mortal man may live but hart
[1]

As I do now, suche is my cace

For now the whole is from the part

Devided eache in divers place.

The seas are now the barr

Which makes us distance farr

That we may soone win narr
[1]

God graunte us grace…

Born in 1566, James became king of Scotland at the age of one, following the forced abdication in 1567 of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.

In 1589, now 23, negotiations for a suitable marriage, which had been a matter of primary concern to court and country alike since his 16th birthday, were finally concluded.

His choice, Anne of Denmark, was one that pleased him—she was young and handsome. It pleased his subjects—it reinforced the already important trade links with Denmark. And, he said, it pleased God—who had “
moved his heart in the way that was meetest
”.

Whether James’ understanding of God’s will was influenced more by the fact that Anne was eight years younger than himself, while the other candidate, Catherine of Navarre, was eight years older and reputedly looking her age, than by the earnest prayer he claimed, is a moot point. The contract was made, and his chosen proxy, George Keith, Earl Marishchal, was charged not only with taking James’ place at the marriage ceremony, but also with the task of bringing the new queen home.

On 1 September 1589 a small fleet left Denmark heading for Scotland.

It was to be an ill-fated voyage. Storms battered the ships, the queen’s life was endangered by cannons which broke loose from the their mountings, and when prayers failed to calm the seas, Peter Munk, the Danish Admiral, concluded that the storms were the work of witches and sought safe haven in Norway.

Munk’s belief that witches played a part in the storms that threatened the ships was one which James was ready to accept, and witch trials followed in both countries, including the infamous North Berwick trials of 1590.

Unwilling to wait until the following spring, James resolved to send ships from Scotland to bring Anne home. But when his Lord Admiral, the Earl of Bothwell, told him how much such a venture would cost, he quickly changed his mind. In fairness, though James had a reputation of being canny—especially where money was concerned—he probably couldn’t afford it.

Enter Maitland, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, who volunteered to send ships at his own expense—an offer that James was quick to accept.

James then made what would be the most impulsive and foolhardy gesture of his life. Disregarding the increased dangers of winter seas, he decided to accompany the fleet to Norway. Knowing it would not please his council, however, he took care both to ensure that word of his intention did not leak out until it was too late for them to stop him and also to leave detailed instructions for the governance of the country in his absence. He was to be away for more than six months.

Fortunately for James, the journey which Anne’s ships had struggled to make for almost a month, took just six days, and he arrived in Norway at the end of October.

There followed wedding No. 2 in Oslo, conducted in French by a Scots minister who had accompanied James, and finally, in January 1590, for the benefit of the Danish royal family, wedding No. 3 at the castle of Kronborg in Denmark.

Thoroughly married, by both Scots and Lutheran rites, the royal couple and their entourage caroused the winter away in Denmark, finally leaving on 21 April 1590. They arrived at the port of Leith, just outside Edinburgh, on 1 May 1590, to a tumultuous welcome from a populace eager for a young and healthy king and queen.

It was a marriage that lasted thirty years until Anne’s death in 1619, and though the initial happiness did not last, they had eight children—three sons and five daughters. Their firstborn, Henry, died in 1612, and it was their second son Charles who succeeded James. The marriage of their only surviving daughter, Elizabeth, to Frederic V, Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, eventually led to the Hanoverian succession to the British throne.

A Witch’s Lair Found Buried under a Mound

by Deborah Swift

D
arkest December in 2011—a group of workmen unearth a spooky find....

Near Lower Black Moss reservoir, close to the village of Barley in England, workmen were digging a tren
ch for a new water main. That was until they suddenly struck rock, and began to find the outlines of walls and doorways.

Beneath a grassy mound in the shadow of Pendle Hill, they found a remarkably well-preserved 17th century building. United Utilities’ workers were amazed to find a witch’s-style cottage, complete with a mummified cat sealed into the walls. Immediately, links were made to the famous Pendle Witches, who were tried for witchcraft 400 years ago in 1612. The fame of the Lancashire Witches in England is similar to that of the Salem Witches in the United States, so excitement was running high.

Simon Entwhistle, an expert on the Pendle Witches said,
“Cats feature prominently in folklore about witches. Whoever consigned this cat to such a horrible fate was clearly seeking protection from evil spirits.”
His view was that the cottage could even be the famous Malkin Tower, the site of a notorious meeting between the Pendle witches on Good Friday in 1612.

The cottage is said to be in remarkable condition although most of the objects unearthed seem to have been from the 19th century—artefacts such as crockery, a cooking range, and a bedstead, so whether this is really anything to do with the Lancashire Witches is purely conjecture. Still, the Lancashire Witches have such a hold on the local imagination that it is tempting to ascribe any find in this area to those times.

“In terms of significance, it’s like discovering Tutankhamun’s tomb. We are just a few months away from the 400th anniversary of the Pendle witch trials, and here we have an incredibly rare find, right in the heart of witching country,”
Mr. Entwhistle said.

In the year 2012, we reached the 400th anniversary of the trial of the Pendle Witches, when ten people were hanged accused of the deaths of other villagers by witchcraft. They were executed at Lancaster on the twentieth of August, 1612, for having bewitched to death
“by devilish practices and hellish means”
no fewer than sixteen inhabitants of the Forest of Pendle. All over Lancashire events were organised to commemorate
the women who died
, unjustly condemned to death on the hearsay of their neighbours.

The Demdike family and the Chattox family were the main victims of the witchhunt. Their story was well-documented in
A Discoverie of Witches
, a pamphlet of the time. The full story is a complicated one, but almost everything that is known about the trial is in a report written by Thomas Potts, the clerk to the Lancaster Assizes, completed by 16 November 1612.

At the end of the 16th and into the 17th century, Lancashire was regarded by the authorities as a wild and lawless region, an area
“fabled for its theft, violence and sexual laxity, where the church was honoured without much understanding of its doctrines by the common people”
(Hasted). In addition, James I was obsessed with daemonology and witches, and only fuelled the nation’s enthusiasm for finding witches where none existed.

It is from these dark times and this grim northern environment that the two sisters, Sadie and Ella Appleby in my novel,
The Gilded Lily
, go on the run. Ella has been involved in a Witch Trial, the story of which is told in
The Lady’s Slipper
. The girls hope to re-invent themselves and find glitter and glamour in fashionable London.

As for the mummified cat—concealing things in old buildings was very common in the 17th century. One of the most common things found in old buildings is
shoes
. Nobody knows why, but it was supposed that a shoe trapped the spirit of the wearer, and some 1,700 concealed shoes have been found—not just in Britain, but also in Germany, Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Pirate Extraordinaire and Friend to the Crown

by Katherine Pym

S
ir Henry Mainwaring began life in Shropshire around 1587. He was born to a gentry family and educated as a lawyer at the Inner Temple of London. In 1612, he was given the post to
escort the English ambassador to Persia. It would be in an armada-type convoy as a protection against the pirates who lurked around the Strait of Gibraltar. However, Spain and Venice did not trust the armada. They believed the English would turn to piracy as soon as the fleet entered the Mediterranean.

This irritated Mainwaring. In a ship purchased for £700, he set out to the Mediterranean where he turned pirate. He harassed the Spanish, and any other ships not English for a period of several years. He had a fleet of approximately six ships and considered himself the scourge of the Mediterranean. But he did not center around there.

By 1613, he set his base in Ma’amura on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, at the mouth of the Sebou River, about 150 miles south of the Straits. It was a popular pirate stronghold in the early 1600s, a “place of rendezvous” for as many as forty ships and 2000 men. Mainwaring used this base to harass Dutch shipping, as well as the Spanish, French, and Portuguese. His only firm promise was never to attack an English ship, even though he could have amassed a fortune. His countrymen’s vessels carried goods from the Levant Company which included spices, fabrics, and unique goods.

In 1614, Mainwaring left the Ma’amura foothold, which was fortuitous. After he’d left, a Spanish armada of 99 ships and thousands of men took hold of the mouth of the Sebou River, and settled in the area, declaring it a Spanish territory. Mainwaring had been saved from destruction by the skin of his teeth.

Now, his main goal was to pester the fishing fleet off Newfoundland. He took ships (though not English ones), their munitions, food, and men. He told King James I one day these men were “many volunteers, many compelled.” When King James I asked how this was, Mainwaring replied many men wanted to become pirates, but they were afraid once a vessel was caught, they’d be hanged for piracy. They wanted to enjoy the fruits of these labors without the threat of such brutal and ignominious punishment. A man hanged for piracy was left in the noose until three tides washed against him then dispersed before being cut down. If families didn’t claim the bodies, they’d be taken to be dissected.

After plaguing the fishing fleet off Newfoundland, Mainwaring’s travels became blurred. He drifted back toward the Mediterranean until in 1616, King James I pardoned him with the seal of England.

He settled in England, wrote a book titled
Discourse of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates
. He presented it to King James I and received a knighthood in return.

He sat in the House of Commons in the 1620s, supported the Crown during the Civil Wars, and went into exile in France during the Commonwealth, where he died in poverty.

Source

Tinniswood, Adrian.
Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean
. New York: Penguin Group, 2010.

General George Monck and the Siege of Dundee

by Brian Wainwright

I
n the late summer of 1651, Scotland’s fortunes were at a very low ebb indeed. Her field army had suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of English Commonwealth forces at the battle of
Dunbar (3 September 1650) and the nearest thing she had to a government, the Committee of Estates, had been captured at Alyth in Perthshire during the night of 27/28 August by Colonel Alured at the head of a party of 8,000 English horse. King Charles II had led his army out of Scotland and into England at the end of July, and only a few scattered garrisons remained to defend the country.

Although Oliver Cromwell had led the bulk of the Commonwealth forces in Scotland south in early August in pursuit of Charles II, a substantial English army remained behind under the command of General George Monck. These men did not stand idle after the capture of the Committee of Estates, but set about reducing the remaining strongholds that were still held by the Scots in the name of Charles II.

Stirling Castle fell on 14 August, surrendering on terms after a brief siege. By August 23 Monck was at Perth, where his troops received supplies of cheese, biscuits, and other essentials sent by ship from England.

On 26 August, Monck formally “summoned” Dundee—in other words, he invited the defenders to capitulate on terms. However, the Royalist Governor, Sir Robert Lumsdaine, not only refused, but suggested that instead Monck and his army should lay down their arms and accept the King’s grace. (It must be remembered that Charles II was still in the field in England at this time, and his comprehensive defeat at Worcester on 3 September 1651 was still a thing of the future.)

Dundee was a well-fortified, walled town, which had previously seen off an attack by the Marquis of Montrose. The Governor’s confidence is therefore understandable.

The rules of war at this time were harsh, and were to remain unchanged well into the 19th century. If a garrison surrendered immediately on summons, it could usually expect generous terms. If it resisted for a time and then yielded, it might still receive reasonable terms. However, if it resisted and was eventually taken by storm, any mercy shown was purely at the discretion of the victor. Men taken in arms might lawfully be shot or put to the sword, and although civilians were nominally protected, it was the usual custom to allow the victorious troops to loot and rape to their hearts’ content for at least twenty-four hours. Obviously if a civilian male picked up a weapon to defend his family he was likely to be killed without question. In an age when uniforms were by no means standardised, even where they existed at all, it was not always straightforward to distinguish between a soldier and a civilian anyway.

This may seem barbarous, but the intention was to encourage garrisons to yield before a “practicable breach” had been made in their defences. The storming of a fortification was an horrendous business for the attackers as well as the defenders. Many of them would inevitably be killed or badly wounded and it was necessary to provide them with “incentives”. Some might hope to be promoted, but for the majority the prospect of several hours looting a town without restraint was reward enough.

By 29 August, siege guns, including mortar pieces, were in place and the following night, amid wet and stormy weather, they were “played upon the town”.

Late on 31 August, Monck was reinforced by two regiments of horse who had been out on patrol (and defeated 400 Scottish cavalry while they were about it) and was now in a position to storm the town. The next day began with a heavy exchange of artillery fire, lasting some two or three hours until large breaches were made in the fortifications. At 11 o’clock the English, with their field cry “God with us” broke into the town in two separate places.

Hand-to-hand fighting continued for half-an-hour, when some of the Scots retreated into the church. They were overtaken by the English, and at least five hundred soldiers and townsmen were killed, including the Governor, compared to around twenty English killed. The large disparity strongly suggests that many, perhaps even the great majority, were cut down in the rout. When the English reached the market-place, quarter was given to another five hundred Scots.

One source I came across claimed that 2,000 were killed, including 200 women and children—it is hard to be definitive about such matters at this date when the losing side inevitably magnified casualties for propaganda purposes. The 500 dead can perhaps be taken as a minimum.

Although the English soldiers were given an “official” twenty-four hours to plunder the town, attacks on inhabitants and their possessions went on for a
further fortnight
despite Monck’s attempts to stop them. Given that the New Model Army was one of the most professional and disciplined armed forces in Europe, this was completely inexcusable, even by the standards of the time.

I have a long-standing interest in the Civil War in the Three Kingdoms, but until very recently, I had never heard of the massacre of Dundee, which is very odd when the whole world, his wife, and his cat knows about the similar events at Drogheda for which Oliver Cromwell is held responsible. I have difficulty in accounting for this discrepancy, except to point out that in 1660 General George Monck was instrumental in restoring Charles II to his throne, after which nothing bad could be said about him. Whereas, after 1660, nothing was too bad to say about Cromwell.

For anyone who would like to know more about events in Scotland at this time I strongly recommend
Cromwellian Scotland
by Frances Dow, the book which first brought the sad events at Dundee to my notice.

So You Say You Want an Execution...

by Sam Thomas

W
riters of historical fiction love executions.

From Hilary Mantel’s
Wolf Hall
,
to Nancy Bilyeau’s
The Crown
, to my own
The Midwife’s Tale
,
authors cannot resist the lure of the gallows or (even better) the sta
ke. Such moments provide drama and tell the reader something important about the world our characters inhabit.

Unlike today’s executions which usually take place in a private (and bizarrely medical) setting, early modern executions had all the trappings of a civic ritual. Prayers were said, sermons preached, speeches delivered, all with the goal of setting the world right after a terrible murder. The blood of the victim cried out for justice—an eye for an eye—and the executioner provided it.

But the symbolism went further than this. In many cases, a murderer was executed not at the prison, but at the very scene of the crime. In 1668, Thomas Savage murdered his fellow servant, and after his conviction, he was hanged from a gibbet built in front of the house where he’d committed the crime. What better way to close the book on a murder?

Executions thus were morality plays in which the Crown saw justice done and overawed its subjects with the power of life and death. Given this public setting, it was important that everyone played their part. The condemned was supposed to confess to his crime and confirm that the execution was just. The crowd were supposed to bear witness to justice and the power of the government.

If this was the goal of the play, however, in many cases the actors or the audience went off-script and improvised an entirely new drama, with a much more opaque meaning. The first place that the meaning of an execution could go wrong was with the crowd, for many executions had all the dignity of a three-ring circus. Peddlers strolled through the crowd crying their wares, and many in attendance treated the execution as an opportunity for eating, drinking, and socializing.

One pamphlet from 1696 shows a preacher delivering an execution sermon, while behind him one can see not only the condemned offering up his last prayers, but a magician performing on an adjacent stage. (In this case, it seems better to be the opening act than the headliner.) In other cases, government officials explained their decision to publish the condemned prisoner’s final words by saying that the crowd was too loud for anyone to hear him.

If a festive crowd (and magician) could get an execution off on the wrong foot, the condemned could make things worse. In many cases, Catholics condemned for treason proved the most difficult to control. Some Catholics claimed to die as martyrs of the Church (rather than traitors to the Crown—a vital distinction at the time), kissing each step of the ladder as they climbed it, and in one case kissing the executioner himself! Once on the scaffold, they would use their final speeches not to affirm the justice of their execution, but to defend the Catholic Church.

In cases such as these, the crowd or even the presiding officials could get involved, once again robbing the event of its solemnity. In 1591, Judge Richard Topcliffe attacked one prisoner saying,
“Dog-bolt Papists! You follow the Pope and his Bulls; believe me, I think some bulls begot you all!”
Not to be outdone, the condemned replied,
“If we have bulls
[for]
our fathers, thou hast a cow to thy mother!”
Other prisoners taunted the crowd (who naturally gave as good as they got), or even engaged in raucous religious debates.

If executions were meant as awe-inspiring ceremonies that demonstrated the government’s power, many did not get the message, and we can only wonder what those involved made of such events.

Religious Upheaval during 17th Century England

by Katherine Pym

M
any centuries plod along with not much happening. But when you come into the 17th century, it is a minefield of tempestuous action—all due to religion.

From the initial fears that James I might harbour C
atholic sympathies to the hostility toward Charles I—a Protestant, but too popish—the century jogged at a furious pace toward religious revolt. Churches were gutted of their musical pieces, their gilded altars, and their stained-glass windows as the country descended into three civil wars and a king’s beheading, before settling for a quiet moment into the staid, dark Commonwealth years.

During this decade of Cromwellian rule, color all but disappeared. Men, women, and children wore black with no lace or ribbons. Mayday was no longer sanctioned. Bartholomew’s Fair and bear baiting could not be stopped, but drama, song, and dance were. Theatres were closed and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was pulled down.

Under the Commonwealth, the
Book of Common Prayer
was outlawed as being too popish. Ministers in the Church of England lost their vocations. Many ended up in debtor’s prison.

Religious intolerance sidestepped for a moment when King Charles II returned from exile. He wiped the slate clean with the Declaration of Breda, and people of all faiths breathed a sigh of relief. The king would bring a state of sensibility to England.

They were misguided.

Within months of King Charles II’s coronation, new laws were put into place that switched the tide from Anglican suppression to Presbyterian suppression. A group of restrictive statutes called the Clarendon Code (which Clarendon did not author) took effect during the years of 1661-1665 that intended to strengthen the power of the Church of England. Within these five years, the Cavalier Parliament rejected the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 and quelled all nonconformist activity. To hold office, you had to prove you supported the Church of England and take Holy Communion.

By mid-1662, the Act of Uniformity installed the
Book of Common Prayer
back into church services. Those Presbyterian clergy who refused to use it were cast out of their vocations. In an event known as the Great Ejection, two thousand Presbyterian ministers walked away from their pulpits. Many ended up in debtor’s prison as their Anglican counterparts had done before them.

In 1664, the Conventicle Act disallowed more than five Presbyters to meet at one time for unauthorized worship. In 1665, the Five Mile Act forbade nonconformist ministers to come within five miles of any incorporated town, nor were they allowed to teach in schools.

While London burned during a conflagration in September 1666, Frenchmen were accused of being papists and setting the town afire. Several were hanged from lampposts throughout the city. The king and his brother had to ride out amidst people burned out of their homes to reassure them the French did not start the fire. God’s hand did it.