The Good, the Bad and the Unready (7 page)

For nineteen weeks Salisbury attacked, and for nineteen demoralizing weeks he was repulsed. In her stout defence of the castle Agnes employed the tactic of mockery. She had her kitchen staff, for example, visibly ‘dust’ the ramparts with handkerchiefs after every bombardment, and on one occasion she sent Salisbury a fresh loaf of bread and a bottle of wine as a commentary on his attempts to starve her into submission.

A particularly low point for the English must have been when Salisbury menacingly wheeled an arch-roofed war-engine called a ‘testudo’ towards the walls. The testudo, itself nicknamed ‘the Sow’, was the pride and joy of Salisbury’s men and had seen much success in earlier sieges. But in Agnes the Sow found its match. The countess quickly ordered her colleagues to heave a massive rock from the ramparts on to the battering ram below, and smashed it into kindling. As those manning the war-engine ran for their lives, she is recorded as shouting gleefully, ‘Behold the litter of English pigs.’

Salisbury eventually slunk away admitting defeat, cursing the countess’s constant vigilance and complaining that:

 
Charles the
Black Boy
see
Charles the
MERRY MONARCH

James the
Black Douglas

James Douglas, Scottish nobleman, 1286–1330

James Douglas, who was also known as ‘the Good Sir James’, supported and served Robert the
BRUCE
, both before and after Robert gained the Scottish throne. James’s exploits, particularly in cross-border warfare, earned him considerable territory in the Border region as well as the nickname ‘the Black Douglas’, attributed to him both for his dark colouring and for his ruthlessness in battle. Such was his reputation for mercilessness that women in the northern counties would discipline their children by warning that ‘the Black Douglas’ would come and get them if they did not behave. There are suggestions – sadly groundless – that his epithet actually stems from a military trick he employed to capture Roxburgh Castle in 1314, when he disguised his troops as black cows.

Edward the
Black Prince

Edward, prince of Wales, 1330–76

Edward’s contemporaries knew him as either ‘Edward IV, anticipating incorrectly his succession to the throne, or ‘Edward of Woodstock’ after his place of birth. The title ‘the Black Prince’, by which he is universally known today, did not gain any currency until the late sixteenth century.

The origins of the soubriquet are unclear. Some suggest that at the battle of Crécy in 1346 King Edward the
BANKRUPT
put his sixteen-year-old son at the vanguard of his troops in order that he might win his spurs. The teenage prince fought heroically, and for his bravery his fellow soldiers hailed him as ‘the Black Prince’ after the black cuirass (body armour) he was wearing. Others, however, such as the historian Jean Froissart, write that his designation derives instead from his ‘terror at arms’ and ‘martial deeds’.

In 1361 Edward married his cousin and childhood playmate Joan the
FAIR MAID OF KENT
and was sent to rule the province of Aquitaine in south-west France. Ten years later he returned to England as bankrupt as his father, having fought against, and lost everything to ‘Peter the Cruel’ of Castile. After several years of bad health Edward finally died in 1386, passing over the kingdom to his only surviving son, Richard the
COXCOMB
.

Charles the
Blackbird
see
Charles the
MERRY MONARCH

Elizabeth the
Blood Countess

Elizabeth, countess of Transylvania, c.1560–1614

While her boorish husband, ‘Ferencz the Black Hero of Hungary’, was away at war, Elizabeth became fascinated by the occult. Believing that bathing in the blood of virgins was the only way to maintain her creamy complexion, she enticed some 600 local young women to her castle in the Carpathian mountains, where they were ritually slaughtered and employed for cosmetic purposes. When the local peasant population ran out, she lured more upmarket women to her lair, until her dastardly beauty treatment was finally discovered. Elizabeth was tried and found guilty and, as punishment, was walled up in a tiny room of her castle.

Otto the
Bloody

Otto II, king of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, 955–83

Otto, sometimes dubbed ‘the Red’ and ‘Rufus’, in all likelihood on account of the colour of his hair, was a small, brave man, known for his generosity to the Church, knightly virtuosity and occasional acts of impulsive hot-headedness. One such act, in 981, may explain his third nickname, ‘the Bloody’.

Otto travelled to Rome that year in order to thwart a plot
to overthrow him. Upon his arrival, he invited all the chief conspirators, who were blissfully unaware that they had been rumbled, to a banquet. While they were all tucking in, Otto suddenly jumped up and stamped his foot. Armed men rushed into the hall and the emperor unrolled a scroll. Otto read aloud the names of the indicted nobles and, one by one, they were dragged from the table and strangled.

Bloody Abdul
see
Abdul the
DAMNED

Bloody Mary

Mary I, queen of England, 1516–58

From an early age Mary demonstrated a devotion to the Catholic faith. Sebastian Giustinian, the Venetian ambassador, reports that when she was only two years old she saw Friar Dionosio Memo, the organist of St Mark’s Church in Venice, in the court of her father,
BLUFF KING HAL
, and she apparently cried out the word ‘priest’ until Memo played for her.

Later in life, when queen, she considered it her Christian duty to turn the tide of Protestantism which had been flowing through England since the reign of her brother Edward the
JOSIAH OF ENGLAND
(see
ENGLISH EPITHETS
). To this end she married Philip the
PRUDENT
of Spain (also a devout Catholic) and, having quashed a Protestant rebellion led by Sir Thomas Wyatt, restored papal supremacy in England and revived the laws against heresy. Over the following three years nearly 300 ‘heretics’ were hanged or burned at the stake, among them Archbishop Cranmer and Bishops Ridley and Latimer. For permitting these executions, Mary was despised in certain quarters and rumours circulated that she had slept with the devil and given birth to a snake.