The Good, the Bad and the Unready (55 page)
Read The Good, the Bad and the Unready Online
Authors: Robert Easton
Thorstein the
Red
see
COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
Sigismund the
Red Demon
see
Sigismund the
LIGHT OF THE WORLD
Red and Black Douglases
The Douglas clan, one of the mightiest of all Scottish families, has produced several noblemen whose deeds and consequent nicknames can be found throughout this book. But how the name ‘Douglas’ came into being is worthy of note itself.
There are two main schools of thought. According to that proposed by the eighteenth-century antiquary George Chalmers, a nobleman called ‘Theobald the Fleming’ journeyed in 1147 from Flanders to Scotland, where the abbot of Kelso granted him some land to live on. The abbot also gave him the rights to a river known as ‘the dark stream’, or ‘
dhu-glas
’, from which the clan name ‘Douglas’ is supposedly derived. A second theory holds that during a battle between the forces of King Solvathius and Donald the
WHITE
(
see
COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
) Solvathius noticed a knight of surpassing bravery. When the king asked the identity of the man, somebody replied, ‘
Sholto du glasse
’, a phrase which has been variously translated as ‘Behold yonder grey-haired black man’ or ‘Behold the black, grey man’, and the words
du glasse
were quickly fused into ‘Douglas’.
Both these views are based more on conjecture than fact. Of considerably greater certainty is that in the late fourteenth century the Douglas family split into two factions. On one side were the descendants of Archibald the
GRIM
, known as the ‘Black Douglases’, possibly because of Archibald’s ‘terrible dark countenance in warfare’, inherited from his semi-legendary forebear. On the other side were the ‘Red Douglases’ of Angus, named possibly because of the colour of their hair, which ran through the clan. Of the two households, the Black Douglases initially enjoyed greater influence and were the unrivalled power in the south of Scotland at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. After the death of William, the eighth earl of Douglas, in 1452, Black Douglas power waned and the leadership of the Douglases shifted to the ‘Reds’ of Angus, including such luminaries as Bell
THE CAT
and his grandson Archibald
GREYSTEEL
.
Elizabeth the
Red-Nosed Princess
see
COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
Aurelian the
Restorer of the World
Aurelian, Roman emperor, 214–75
In 270 Aurelian, otherwise known as Lucius Domitius Aurelianus, inherited an empire in a shambles. In the space of fifteen years mismanagement, rebellion and barbarian invasion had reduced imperial territories by two-thirds, and his task of reinstating the empire to its former glory was nothing short of Herculean.
He started immediately, expelling the Vandals from Roman land and forcing the last remaining Goths back over the Danube River, for which he received the title ‘Gothicus Maximus’, or ‘the Greatest Goth’. In 272 he addressed the lost eastern provinces of the empire, now ruled by Zenobia the
QUEEN OF THE EAST
, where he was delighted to find resistance to be minimal. The so-called Palmyrene cities fell like ninepins before his troops, and Zenobia was ferried to Rome and displayed in golden chains before hundreds of thousands of cheering citizens. For this achievement Aurelian was given the title ‘Restitutor Orientis’, or ‘the Restorer of the Orient’.
Finally the victorious Aurelian turned his attention to the west and, thanks in part to the treachery of Tetricus, the commander of the Gallic Empire, he speedily recovered Gaul and Britain. He returned to Rome in triumph and won his last honorific from the Senate – that of ‘Restitutor Orbis’ or ‘the Restorer of the World’. In just four years he had done what some had deemed impossible, giving new life and hope to an empire that was on its knees. Certainly Aurelian was impressed with his own achievements, describing himself on his coins as ‘Deus et Dominus’, ‘God and Lord’.
Edward the
Robber
Edward IV, king of England, 1442–83
Edward was publicly dubbed ‘the Robber’ after his slaughter of the forces of Henry the
MARTYR
at Towton, where he confiscated much of the land belonging to Lancastrian sympathizers. Privately, others saw him as a robber of something far more precious than land and claimed that he was ruled not by his brain but by another organ of his body. Edward was a handsome monarch. He had a winning smile and a mane of golden brown hair, and stood just over six feet three inches with his boots off… and he got his boots off a lot.
There is ample evidence that he was a debauched womanizer of the worst kind. According to his contemporary Dominic Mancini, Edward ‘was licentious in the extreme… [and] pursued with no discrimination the married and the unmarried, the noble and lowly’. Sir Thomas More adds that ‘he was of youth greatly given to fleshly wantonness’, while the French critic Philip de Commynes suggests that his death, of an unknown illness at age forty, was due to his excessive ‘devotion to pleasure’.
Until the twentieth century the general consensus among historians was that Edward had no merits at all. For some, his ‘robbing’ of the life of his brother George, first duke of Clarence, who was allegedly drowned in a vat of malmsey wine, epitomized a degenerate, cruel life. A few modern historians, however, have portrayed him in a more flattering light, as an astute leader who brought a measure of political stability into a divided realm, his talents in the bedroom matched by his skill at domestic government.
Erik the
Romantic
Erik XIV, king of Sweden, 1533–77
Erik asked both
GOOD QUEEN BESS
and Mary the
MERMAID
to marry him. They both turned him down. He then popped the question to a number of German princesses. They, too, declined. His many proposals earned him nothing more than a nickname. Erik did eventually tie the knot, with Karin (‘Kitty’) Mansdatter, his mistress, but his reign was noted more for his insanity than his romance, with Erik stabbing courtiers for no reason, claiming to be his brother John, the duke of Finland, and sentencing two guards to death for ‘annoying the King’. An indignant John deposed Erik and threw him in prison where, tradition has it, someone poisoned his pea soup.
Erik the
Romantic
Ruby Nose
see
NOSE ALMIGHTY