Medieval Gambling

I'm back from the annual general meeting of the American Branch of the Richard III Society, which took place in, of all places, Las Vegas. Since the Saturday banquet was a costume-optional occasion, this gave me the opportunity to strut through a casino floor wearing a medieval gown and hennin, an opportunity I will surely not have again any time soon.

My fellow Woodvillians were either too busy with their fulfilling lives elsewhere to make it or hadn't had time to practice the secret Woodvillian handshake, but nonetheless it was a fun conference.

Anyway, I gave a presentation on medieval gambling, the text of which I've included below if you're interested. I didn't pass out at the podium from stage fright, which I always consider the mark of a successful presentation.

Oh, and my gambling losses--one dollar in the airport slot machine--were most unimpressive. (Getting to the conference via Airtran--my flight Friday was delayed, causing me to miss my connecting flight and have to spend seven hours in Atlanta waiting for the next available one--was quite a gamble enough!)

Plantagenets at Play: Gambling in Medieval England


Whether you were in a tavern, a ship, a solar in a great castle, or camped in a battlefield, no matter what your station in life, there was one way you could pass the time in medieval society: by gambling.

Games of chance, of course, have an ancient history, and cubic dice appeared as far back as the seventh century B.C. [1] There were many different sorts of dice games. Among the favorites were raffle, where the winner had to throw all three dice alike or the highest pair, and hazard, which seems to have been aptly named because it had the worst reputation. It was most often played in taverns, and it attracted cheaters, who if caught could be led to the pillory and made to wear their false dice around their necks. [2]

Crooked dice were quite common: the Museum of London has some examples, including a stash of dice bearing only high numbers or only low numbers and dice that had been weighted with drops of mercury. Such dice, the museum website reports, were called “fulhams,” apparently because “the Thames-side village of Fulham was notorious as the haunt of dice-sharpers.” [3]

On a more pleasant note, when Hugh le Barber claimed in 1307 to have been miraculously cured of blindness, he noted that he could once again see to play dice as well as chess. Commissioners sent to test his story reported that he could now see the points of a dice. [4] The apprentice in Chaucer’s Cook’s Tale was an accomplished dice player:

For in the toune nas ther no prentys
That fairer koude caste a paire of dys [5]

Dice was the simplest form of gambling, but it was by no means confined to the lower classes. The future Henry IV, one of the most well traveled of English kings, lost at dice at Calais, in Prussia, and at Danzig. [6] Henry VII was an especially avid gambler, as we shall see: dice was just one of the means by which he lost money. [7] John Howard, the future Duke of Norfolk, paid five pence for a “bale [that is, a pair] of dysse.” [8]

A close relation of dicing was a game called cross and pile, named for the two sides of a coin—in other words, “heads or tails.” One of the royal practitioners of this sport was the ill-fated Edward II, who had to borrow money from his barber and his usher to play at the game. This appalled a nineteenth-century antiquarian, who wrote that such pastimes would now be considered “insufferably low.” One can only wonder what the man would have made of Las Vegas. [9]

Checkers, or queek, was another way a gambler could be parted from his money. One enterprising soul designed a checkerboard with depressed squares so that those betting that their pebbles would land in a black or a white square would lose. The board was only profitable for a short time, however: it cost its proprietor an hour in Newgate for three consecutive days. [10]

Betting on horses was a perennial favorite, with John Howard, the future Duke of Norfolk, being a notable devotee. Howard also bet on cockfighting. [11]

Medieval people, in fact, could turn almost any type of recreation into a money-losing enterprise. Henry VII lost money at tennis and archery as well as traditional games of chance, [12] and the future Henry IV proved to be as unlucky at tables as he was at dice. [13] Even chess, the most respectable of medieval pastimes, could be bet upon. [14]

Fifteenth-century England did see one new arrival on the gaming front: cards. Though cards existed in tenth-century China, European playing cards apparently derived from Egyptian models. [15] In 1371, they are first mentioned in Spain, [16] and by 1377, both Florentine and Parisian officials had enacted restrictions on playing cards. [17]

It would be several decades before cards became popular in England. Chaucer, it has often been noted, never mentions them in his works. The earliest reference I have found in England is in 1413, and it has a good Yorkist pedigree.

Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was uncle to Richard, Duke of York, and therefore a great-uncle of Edward IV and Richard III. He had a good claim to the throne and for that reason, Henry IV and Henry V kept a close eye on him. In the period from September 1413 to April 1414, the twenty-three-year-old was traveling in the company of Henry V—and losing over 157 pounds in gaming. Mortimer’s companions must have been delighted when the young lord proposed a game of chance, because the word perdebat—“lost”—occurs with distressing frequency in his household accounts. Mortimer lost at tables, raffle and chance, a game called devant (apparently a dicing game)—and at cards. [18]

Despite Mortimer’s enthusiasm for cards, it would be decades before another mention of them occurs in English sources. That is in 1459 in the Paston letters, where Margaret Paston reports that over Christmas, a widowed acquaintance forbade the members of her household to engage in dancing, harping, luting, singing, or “loud disports,” but permitted them to play tables, chess, and cards. [19]

In 1463, Edward IV’s Parliament forbid the importation of playing cards as well as the importation of dice and tennis balls, in an effort to protect English craftsmen. [20] This, as card expert David Parlett points out, suggests that they were being produced in England, although no English cards from this period have been found.

The following year, Edward IV secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, and at least one of the king’s new extended family members was a card player. In November 1464, when at Reading with the king, John Howard lent Eliza Scales, Anthony Woodville’s wife, eight shillings and four pence to play at cards. [21]

The early English cards did not bear the suits of spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds that they do today; those suits made their first appearance on French cards in around 1470 and are accordingly referred to as the French suits. Parlett suggests that the early English cards bore what are known as Latin suitmarks: swords, clubs, cups, and coins. [22]

Though Parlett states that no English cards dating before 1590 have been found, [23] some earlier packs from other countries are extant. One of the most striking is a set from the Netherlands known as the Hunting Pack, which dates from about 1470 to 1480. The four suits in the 52-card pack consist of hunting accessories: bundles of cord, dog collars, double nooses, and hunting horns. Each suit has a king, queen, and jester and 10 numbered cards. The entire set can be seen in the Cloisters in New York. Its website indicates that other than Tarot cards, this is the only complete set of illuminated playing cards to survive from the fifteenth century. [24] One wonders if Margaret of York or her brothers might have seen this set!

Gambling, of course, is a social concern now, and was in medieval times as well. Most anti-gambling legislation in medieval England was aimed at ordinary people. During Richard I’s crusade of 1190, for instance, anyone below the degree of knight was prohibited from gambling. Knights and clergy, on the other hand, could play as long as they did not lose more than twenty shillings in a single day. If they did pass the twenty-shilling limit, they had to cough up one hundred shillings. Not surprisingly, Richard the Lionhearted and Philip of France were exempt. [25]

Edward IV’s first Parliament in 1461 was not only bad news for Lancastrians, but for card players. (Lancastrian card players must have been in particularly bleak spirits that year.) As part of a general crackdown on lawlessness, Parliament directed, “And also that no lord or other person of lower estate, condition or degree, whatever he may be, shall allow any dicing or playing at cards within his house, or wherever else he may prevent it, by any of his servants or others outside the twelve days of Christmas; and if any presume to do the contrary at any time, that he shall expel them from his house and service.” [26]

Again and again, medieval English kings forbade commoners from engaging in various pastimes, including football and dicing, ostensibly because it distracted them from practicing the archery skills they needed to defend their country. This must have been a losing proposition, since successive Parliaments kept passing such legislation. Edward IV himself had a second go at an anti-gaming law in 1478. The act, entitled “Closh” (a bowling game that Elizabeth Woodville’s ladies were spotted playing in 1472), conquers up a world straight out of the film Reefer Madness:

To the king our liege lord; the commons assembled in this present parliament pray, that where according to the laws of this land no person should play any unlawful games such as dice, quoits, football and similar games, but that every strong and able bodied person should practise archery because the defence of this land relies heavily on archers; contrary to which laws the said games and several newly invented games called closh, kayles, half-bowl, hand-in and hand-out, and checker-board are played daily in various parts of this land, both by persons of good repute and those of lesser estate, not virtuously-disposed, who fear neither to offend God by not attending divine service on holy days, nor to break the laws of this land, to their own impoverishment, and by their wicked incitement and encouragement they induce others to play such games so that they are completely stripped of their possessions and impoverished, setting a pernicious example to many of your lieges, if such unprofitable games are allowed to continue for long, because by such means many different murders, robberies and other most heinous felonies are frequently committed and perpetrated in various parts of this land, to the very great disquiet and trouble of many of your well-disposed lieges, and the unbearable loss of their goods: which players have daily been supported and favoured in their said misbehaviour by the officers and occupiers of various messuages, tenements, gardens and other places in which they play and pursue their said wicked and disgraceful games. [27]

Henry VII passed legislation in the same spirit. In 1495, his parliament decreed that “no apprentice, agricultural worker, labourer or employee in a craft shall play at the tables from 10 January next except for food and drink only, or at tennis, closh, dice, cards, bowls or any other illegal game in any way other than at Christmas, and at Christmas to play only in the dwelling house of his master or where the master of any of the said servants is present, upon pain of public imprisonment in the stocks for one day.” [28] Household ordinances also restricted gambling: in 1468, the servants of George, Duke of Clarence, were subject to dismissal if they played games for money, except during the twelve days of Christmas. [29]

Whereas commoners were the target of such legislation, kings and their offspring could gamble to their heart’s content, if they were so inclined. In 1377, mummers entertaining the future Richard II at Kennington played dice with the young prince for a ball of gold, a cup of gold, and a gold ring. Young Richard won each object, because the dice “were subtly made so that when the Prince threw he would win.” [30]

On the whole, however, in gaming, the House of Lancaster seems to be ahead of the House of York. Henry IV as Earl of Derby, we have seen, was quite fond of games. I have found nothing to indicate whether Henry V had a taste for gaming, but as young Edmund Mortimer suffered so many gambling losses while in that king’s company, it must have been common in his household. Despite his drearily pious reputation, Henry VI is known to have lost sums at gaming. [31]

Edward IV seems to have been fond of a board game called fox and geese, though whether he played it for stakes is not recorded. [32] He ordered “two foxes and fourty-six hounds of silver over-gilt to form two sets of merelles.” [33] Fox and geese (or in Edward IV’s case, fox and hounds?) was essentially a hunting game in which the fox captured the geese. [34] (Others who enjoyed the game were the monks of what became Gloucester Cathedral; a board was found cut into the benches there. [35])

Sadly, I have found no indication of whether Richard III was a gambler—unless, of course, one counts his fatal charge at Bosworth as a gamble. Charles Ross notes that he enjoyed hawking and commissioned his servants to search out new birds for him, [36] but there is no indication of his attitude toward even eminently respectable pastimes such as chess. It may or may not be significant that in his censorious account of Richard’s Christmas court of 1484, the Croyland chronicler complained that “too much attention was paid to singing and dancing and to vain exchanges of clothing between Queen Anne and Lady Elizabeth,” but did not mention gambling in his parade of horribles. [37]

Richard, however, was evidently not disposed to tolerate much frivolity among his common subjects. In May 1485, he sent a letter to James Herde, bailiff of the town and lordship of Ware, marshalling the archery argument and threatening the man with the loss of his position if he did not bring the locals into line:

Forsomoche as it is commen (to) unto oure knowlaige that diverse & many personnes inhabitants within oure said Towne whiche be of habilite in theire persones & expert in shoting approved a lawfulle game and necessarily requisite to be exercised for the defense of this oure Royalme refusing the same game applie theim customably to use carding dising Boling playing at the tenys Coyting picking and othre (unf) unlefulle and inhibited disportes. . . . marveling that ye have suffred any suche inconveyences soo to be used within youre Offices.

Those who continued to play the prohibited games after a warning (along with offenders caught taking hares, partridges, pheasants, and other game) were to be committed to prison to remain there at the king’s pleasure. [38] Whether Herde managed to bring his unruly town into line is unknown.

Henry VII, who has been rather unfairly saddled with a reputation as a miser, was quite fond of gaming. Extracts from his accounts aptly demonstrate the willingness with which he was parted from his money through playing cards, dice, tennis, and even chess:

To the King to pley at cardes, £5.

To the King which he lost at cardes, £4.

For a par of tables and dise bought, 1s. 4d.

To the King for his losse at cards, £2.

To a Spaynyard the tenes pleyer, £4.

To Sir Charles Somerset for the Kinges losse at tenes, to Sir
Robert Curson, with the balls, £1. 7s. 8d.

To the King for pleying at the cards, £3.

To Hugh Denes for the Kinges losse at tenes, 14s. and for a
silke girdle, 6s. 8d.—£1. 0s. 8d.

For the Kinges losse at the paune pley, 7s. 8d.

To the Kinges grace to play at the cardes, in gold, £20., in
grotts, l00s. in grotts, £19., and in grotes, 60s.

To the new pleyer at tenes, £4.

To Jakes Haute for the tenes playe, £10.

For the Kinges losse at cardes at Tawnton, £9.

To Hugh Denes for the Kinges pley at dice upon Friday last
passed, £7. 15s.

To the Kinges losse at cardes at Hegecote, 3s. 4d.

For the Kinges losse at tenes, 8s.

Delivered the Kinges grace for play on Sonday at night,
£1. 13s. 4d.

To my Lorde of York to pley at dice, £3. 6s. 8d.

For the Kinges losse at chesse, 13s. 4d.
To Weston for the King to pley at cleke at Burton-opon-
Trent, £2. [39]

On one occasion, Henry VII lost half a mark at cards to his seven-year-old son Henry. [40] The future Henry VIII did rather better than his older brother Arthur, who lost forty shillings in 1496. [41] The Tudor family matriarch, Margaret Beaufort, was not above wagering herself. Michael Jones and Malcolm Underwood report that she “sent a man of Buckden to go on pilgrimage on her behalf whilst she gambled at blank or cards”! [42]

Elizabeth of York’s privy purse expenses from the last year of her life show her to have been an avid player as well. In August 1502, 10 shillings were delivered to her for “tabuls”; in October 1502, Lady Guildford delivered 13 shillings and 4 pence for the queen to play at dice. In December, the queen received 100 shillings “for hure disporte at cardes this Cristmas.” [43]

The subject of Elizabeth of York and cards leaves us with a final question: Was Elizabeth the “playing card queen”? This has been stated as fact many times, including by an authority no less august than The Weekly World News, [44] but there seems to be little or no evidence to support this proposition, other than the vague resemblance between Elizabeth of York’s most famous portrait and the stylized queen that appears on modern playing cards. Parlett makes no mention of Elizabeth of York. The International Playing-Card Society’s website states that Anglo-American cards take their design from the patterns used in Rouen in the 1400’s, where the kings, queens, and jacks mainly represent named figures from antiquity, although some of the names may have become corrupted over time. [45] Notably, in a fifteenth-century French set, the Queen of Diamonds clutches a flower, just as do Elizabeth of York and the Queen of Hearts in English decks. [46] Unfortunately, then, it seems as if the story of Elizabeth of York inspiring the Queen of Hearts must be consigned to the stuff of legend, though we can take comfort in the fact that the queen did enjoy a good game of cards nonetheless.


Bibliography

John Ashton, The History of Gambling in England. London: Duckworth & Co., 1898.

Samuel Bentley, Excerpta Historica, or, Illustrations of English History. London: Richard Bentley, 1831.

S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII. Yale University Press, 1999.

Anne Crawford, intro., Howard Household Books. Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1992.

James Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983 (reprint of 1904 edition).

C. Given-Wilson et al., eds., The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. CD-ROM. Scholarly Digital Editions, Leicester: 2005.

R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI. Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2004.

Francis Grose and Thomas Astle, eds., The Antiquarian Repertory, Vol. 4. London: 1784.

Rosemary Horrox and P. W. Hammond, eds., British Library Harleian Manuscript 433. Gloucester: Richard III Society, 1979.

Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby. Cambridge University Press, 1995 (reprint).

Teresa McLean, The English at Play in the Middle Ages. Berkshire: The Kensal Press, 1983.

Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century. London: Bodley Head, 2008.

Nicholas Harris Nicolas, ed., Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York. London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1972 (reprint of 1830 edition).

Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children. Yale University Press, 2003 (paperback edition).

David Parlett, The Oxford Guide to Card Games. Oxford University Press, 1990.

Nicholas Pronay and John Cox, eds., The Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459–1486. London: Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1986.

Compton Reeves, Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England. Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 1995.

Charles Ross, Richard III. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.

C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Medieval England. Yale University Press, 1999.

C. M. Woolgar, ed., Household Accounts from Medieval England, Part 2. Oxford University Press, 1993.

C. M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England. Yale University Press, 2006.

[1] McLean, p. 102.
[2] McLean, pp. 103-04.
[3] http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/EventsExhibitions/Permanent/medieval/objects/record.htm?type=object&id=515184
[4] Woolgar, Senses, pp. 185-86.
[5] Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/gchaucer/bl-gchau-can-cook-m.htm
[6] McLean, p. 104. A detailed record of Henry’s gaming can be found in Lucy Toulmin Smith, ed., Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land Made by Henry, Earl of Derby . . . in the Years 1390-1 and 1392-3. Camden Society, 1894.
[7] Chrimes, p. 306.
[8] Crawford, vol. II, pp. 327, 524.
[9] Grose and Astle, pp. 406-08.
[10] McLean, p. 105.
[11] McLean, p. 22-23; Crawford, vol. 1, p. 227.
[12] Chrimes, p. 306.
[13] McLean, p. 108.
[14] McLean, p. 117.
[15] Parlett, pp. 38-40
[16] Parlett, p. 35.
[17] Parlett, pp. 36-37.
[18] Woolgar, Household Accounts, pp. 592-94.
[19] Parlett, p. 46; Paston Letters, vol. vi, 78-79. Gairdner dates the letter in 1484, but as Parlett points out, it appears to be from an earlier time.
[20] Parliament Rolls, April 1463, Edward IV; Parlett, p. 46.
[21] Crawford, vol. I, pp. 480-481.
[22] Parlett, p. 43, 46. For an illustration of some French cards of the late fifteenth century, see http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/~daf/i-p-c-s.org/faq/history_6.php
[23] Parlett, p. 46.
[24] http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/the_cloisters/set_of_fifty_two_playing_cards/objectview.aspx?collID=7&OID=70016900. Another view of the cards can be seen at http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bnpr/hod_1983.515.1-52.htm
[25] Ashton, p. 13.
[26] Parliament Rolls, November 1461, Edward IV.
[27] Parliament Rolls, January 1478, Edward IV.
[28] Parliament Rolls, October 1495, Henry VII.
[29] Woolgar, Great Household, p. 44.
[30] http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Poetry/a_christmas_mumming_1377.htm. See also Mortimer, p. 253.
[31] Griffiths, pp. 250, 269 n. 99.
[32] Reeves, pp. 76-77,
[33] McLean, p. 110.
[34] Id.
[35] Reeves, p. 77.
[36] Ross, p. 142.
[37] Pronay and Cox, p. 175.
[38] Horrox and Hammond, vol. 2, p. 219.
[39] Taken from Bentley, pp. 85-133.
[40] Woolgar, Great Household, p. 101.
[41] Orme, p. 178.
[42] Jones and Underwood, p. 158.
[43] Nicolas, pp. 42, 52, 84.
[44] ‘Every Poker Player Knows This Gal!” Weekly World News, July 6, 1993, p. 28. Page 7 of same issue informs the reader, “Space Alien Graveyard Found!”
[45] http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/~daf/i-p-c-s.org/faq/history_12.php. See also Parlett, pp. 44-45.
[46] http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/~daf/i-p-c-s.org/faq/history_6.php

Some Website Additions, and a Support Group

First, if you haven't seen it already, do stop by Alianore's blog for The Support Group for People Unfairly Maligned in Historical Fiction. It's hilarious, and, alas, all too true! I was pleased to see that Margaret of Anjou (maligned as an adulteress), Katherine Woodville (maligned as a child molester of the young Harry Buckingham), and William Hastings (maligned as a rapist of a virgin peasant girl) all showed up, as did Richard III (treated as impossibly bad or impossibly good). Do check out Edward II's, Piers Gaveston's, and Hugh le Despenser the younger's comments as well, along with Henry VIII's wives and the unfortunate "Pimp Daddy Boleyn."

Second, I've updated my website to add some pieces on Margaret of Anjou that have already appeared on this blog, plus some further reading on her. I'll be adding more Margaret-related material to my website in the future, as well as a feature called "In Their Own Words," in which I'll reprint various writings found in the public domain, such as letters and wills. I'll keep you posted!

Eleanor le Despenser Gets a New Dress

The other day, I was fooling around on eBay (a place I really have no business being). As is my wont, I did a search for "Despenser" (among other searches) and lo and behold, what appeared but a doll costume entitled "Eleanor le Despenser"! I said to myself, "Self, if there's one person in the world who truly needs this, it is you!" (Talk about niche marketing.) So in the great tradition of consumerism, I pressed the "Bid" button, and in due course, I won the auction and received my item.

Unfortunately, in my excitement that someone would name a doll costume after Eleanor, I failed to note the seller's very plain statement that the doll was not included. As this costume was made for a 17-inch doll, and all of my own fashion dolls are 11-1/2-inch Barbies, this has made for problems in the fitting room, as the folks on "Project Runway" would say. Still, don't you think Eleanor looks nice? (Perhaps Hugh or her uncle Edward II will stop by and pay her a compliment. And there is a scene in The Traitor's Wife where she has to wear a larger woman's clothing, so maybe this might work after all.) There's a mantle that goes with it as well, but since this was a smaller doll, it rather overwhelmed her, so I left it off.



I might not be blogging much in the next week or so, as I'm working on a presentation for the Richard III's Society's upcoming meeting here in the US. My presentation will be on medieval gambling, since the conference is being held in Las Vegas. Getting it ready (including perusing PowerPoint 2007 for Dummies), as well as practicing the secret handshake that we Woodville lovers give each other at Richard III events, will be keeping me busy for a while.

I have a copy of Hilary Mantel's Booker-prize-winning Wolf Hall to take on the plane. I'm looking forward to reading it!

Lastly, but no means leastly, Lisa over at BookBlab is giving away a copy of Hugh and Bess, so stop on by before October 31 and sign up!

What I Read This Summer, and a Couple of Things I'm Looking Forward To

Following are some reviews I did for the August issue of the Historical Novels Reviews. First, though, I'd like to mention that there are some nonfiction books I'm chomping at the bit to read! First is Arlene Okerlund's biography of Elizabeth of York, who to my knowledge has been the subject of only one previous biography, that by Nancy Lenz Harvey. Harvey applied novelistic techniques to her biography, which focused mainly on Elizabeth's life before her marriage to Henry VII, so I'm looking forward to a more scholarly treatment of this queen. It's on its way to me already.

Second, Christopher Wilkins has a biography of Edward Woodville, The Last Knight Errant, coming out in December! That will be on my Christmas list if the cats walking over the keyboard don't accidentally put it in my Amazon shopping cart before that. (Silly cats.)

Not medieval, but as a long-time Dickensian (and here you thought I was only a Despenserian and a Woodvillian), I'm excited about Michael Slater's new biography of Charles Dickens. Oh, and there's also Leandra de Lisle's biography of Lady Jane Grey and her sisters, which I read for the November Historical Novels Review and thought was excellent.

Anyway, now it's review time:

Daughters of the Doge
Edward Charles, Pan, 2008, $13.95, pb, 374pp, 9780230531239

In this novel, the sequel to In the Shadow of Lady Jane, young Richard Stocker is still mourning his friend Lady Jane Grey when he accepts an invitation to accompany Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, to Venice. A Protestant in a country ruled by the Catholic “Bloody” Mary, Richard is eager to take the excuse to leave England for a time and to consider whether he wants to devote his life to the practice of medicine. Richard soon finds, however, that he has not left intrigue behind in England. And when the vain Courtenay decides that he must have his portrait done at an inexpensive price, Richard’s dogged quests through Venice’s art studios will lead him to convents and courtesans—and to a new love as well.

Earnest and resourceful, Richard, the narrator, is a likeable hero, whose coming-of-age story is all the more appealing for being set in the atmospheric location of sixteenth-century Venice. Charles neatly integrates historical characters, including Courtenay, Francis Walsingham, Titian, and courtesan Veronica Franco, into Richard’s adventures, and he employs a broad variety of Venetian settings, from slums to convents to art studios. The story of an innocent abroad who gains experience and a fresh start, Daughters of the Doge is an engaging tale.

****

Girl in a Blue Dress
Gaynor Arnold, Crown, 2009, $25.95, hb, 432pp, 9780307462268

All of Victorian London is mourning the death of famous author Alfred Gibson, but one woman has not been invited to the funeral: his widow, Dorothea, who has lived in virtual seclusion since being cast out of her husband’s life years before. Shut off from most of her family after the separation, Dorothea has accepted her position with a quiet dignity that borders on passivity, but as she mourns her brilliant husband and reflects on their lives together and apart, she will slowly muster the courage to re-enter the world, to face those from whom she has been long estranged, and even to encounter the woman who Dorothea believes stole her husband from her.

Girl in a Blue Dress is based heavily on the marriage of Charles and Catherine Dickens, but Arnold, by turning Catherine Dickens into Dorothea Gibson, gives herself the freedom to stray from the historical record, though the personalities of the main characters remain very close to their real-life counterparts. Dorothea, the narrator, commands our respect and sympathy but has enough inner strength to avoid being pitiful, and the rest of the characters are vividly drawn as well. In her portrait of Alfred Gibson, Arnold does justice to Dickens’s own charisma and complexity; we deplore his behavior toward Dorothea while feeling the same attraction for him that his wife does. Gibson even gamely tackles the task of supplying Gibson’s literary oeuvre with Dickens-like prose and characters.

First published in the UK in 2008, Girl in a Blue Dress was long-listed for the Booker Prize. It’s easy to see why: this is a richly satisfying debut novel.

***

Emily’s Ghost: A Novel of the Brontë Sisters
Denise Giardina, Norton, 2009, $24.95/C$27.50, hb, 320pp, 9780393069150

William Weightman, the personable young curate who assisted the Reverend Patrick Brontë at Haworth Parsonage for several years, is best known for sending Valentines to the three Brontë sisters and for possibly being the object of Anne Brontë’s affections. In this novel, however, it is the fiercely independent, unconventional Emily Brontë who finds herself falling in love with Weightman, who possesses not only charm and good looks but a social conscience and a kind heart.

Meticulously researched and written in a clean, crisp prose style, Emily’s Ghost encompasses not only the splendor of the Yorkshire moors but the hardships of daily life in the poor parish of Haworth, where, as one character notes forebodingly, few people live past their thirties. The inhabitants of the Bronte parsonage, human and animal alike, each possess distinct personalities. Giardina manages the difficult feat of making Weightman a genuinely good man without making him colorless; Emily is strongly individualistic without becoming tiresomely eccentric; Charlotte exasperates the reader but never entirely forfeits our sympathy; and Branwell’s better qualities are not lost amid his dissipation.

Without departing from known facts or engaging in bodice ripping, Giardina gives us a compelling and moving love story between people we come to care about deeply. Even those who have not read the works of the Brontë sisters should enjoy this novel thoroughly.

Search Terms!

I couldn't do a search term post last month because, alas, all of the searches were downright boring and straightforward. This month, however, is somewhat of an improvement.

(Strangely enough, I got a lot of searches for "Elizabeth Woodville and witchcraft." Has someone written a novel about her involving witchcraft?)

Without further ado, here's the other searches:

gardner s 2007 article the importance of timing when implementing new projects

Or when searching for articles written two years ago.

the miseries of buckinghams towers

If there's one thing I cannot bear to see, it's a building in distress.

pro richard iii why?

Often I wake up at night screaming the same thing. Why? Why?

susan higginbotha
ssan higinbotham

Missing keyboard letters: the silent epidemic sweeping the world. Help now before it's too late.

The Duke of Suffolk Has an Accident, And Odds and Ends

As part of my research for my novel in progress, I've been looking into the question of whether William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, wrote the poems attributed to him. (Short answer: no one knows for sure.) Anyway, in researching this (and trying to be careful that my novel doesn't turn into The Tragical History of the Duke of Suffolk, with a Little Bit About Margaret of Anjou Also), I came across this headache-inducing tidbit from a 1915 article by C. Rutherford entitled "The Forgeries of Guillaume Benoit" published in the English Historical Review:

We know that Suffolk set out from Paris with Ralf Boteler, the abbot of Fecamp, and Giles Clamecy, on or about 12 November [in 1424]. On the following Tuesday he met with an accident in a certain village near Amiens, a beam falling on his head as he lay in bed.

Ouch! Suffolk was taken by litter to recuperate in Paris, where, according to Guillaume Benoit, the then-unmarried Suffolk was pining for love. To cheer him, Benoit read him love poetry (which to me would have the opposite effect, but what do I know?) and summoned the musician Gilles Binchois, to whom Suffolk gave two ells of scarlet cloth in exchange for writing a rondeau.

I do hope I'll get to work this into my novel somehow, as aside from the poetry, it's not every day that the ceiling falls in upon a man lying in bed.

Now for some odds and ends. Having finally finished reading some books for review, I've had a chance to start Michelle Moran's Cleopatra's Daughter, which I'm enjoying thoroughly. Pick up a copy!

And thanks to my darling daughter and thoughtful husband, I am now the proud owner of a Snuggie ("the blanket with sleeves"). Mine is blue, and I can hardly wait for winter to come so I can bedazzle my neighbors by walking Boswell in it. (I can even buy Boswell a matching one.)

Twelve Ways to Liven Up History for Historical Novelists and Historical Revisionists

Having stopped by Alianore's blog this morning and enjoyed her post "Misinformation about Edward II," it's occurred to me that while there's been plenty of advice on how to strive for accuracy in historical fiction, no one's offered any advice on how to throw reality to the winds and distort facts with abandon. So without further ado, here's some guidance for aspiring nonhistorical novelists (and for those who like to embellish nonfiction as well):

1) Question parentage at all times, and don’t be afraid to spread sexual slander. After all, most children are conceived out of public view, so who knows who was really present in someone’s bed? (Extra points if you can make the father someone who was dead or 1,000 miles away at the time of conception.)

2) Add or subtract a decade or so from a historical figure’s age, depending upon your needs. Not only can this be helpful with (1), it often opens up a variety of possibilities for enlivening your characters’ sex lives.

3) Not sure what caused a historical figure’s death? Make it murder, and be sure to lay the guilt at the feet of someone you don’t like.

4) Proof is for pedants and bores. If you haven’t got adequate facts to support an assertion, make it anyway.

5) Conspiracy theories are your best friends forever. In fact, those who prefer historical accuracy are really part of a vast conspiracy to keep people from learning the Real Truth.

6) Reanimate the dead. Just because someone died five years before an event or scene took place is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t include him in it. Especially if you can defame him while doing so.

7) If two people have the same name, this is your heaven-sent opportunity to freely confuse them with each other. If their parents didn’t want you doing this, they should have had the foresight to give the kid a different name.

8) If you’re unsure of a fact, by no means check it. Trust your instincts and run with it, particularly if the assertion could ruin a historical figure’s reputation.

9) If there is an innocent explanation and a sinister explanation for an event, the sinister explanation must prevail.

10) No historical figure must ever be given the benefit of the doubt about anything, unless he’s (a) your hero or (b) Richard III.

11) If you’re caught in an error by one of those cranky sorts who appreciate historical accuracy and meticulous research, blame your error on the bias of either male chroniclers, academic historians, or the victors, as the case might require.

12. If you can’t find any of the above to blame, keep repeating your error. Sooner or later, people will start to believe it, and your worries will be over.

A Will and a Letter from William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk

Yesterday, while doing research for my novel about Margaret of Anjou (don't worry, I'm actually doing some writing for it also), I came across the will of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, who was responsible for arranging Margaret's marriage to Henry VI. It's one of the more moving wills I've come across.

Suffolk wrote the will on January 27, 1450, just before he was hauled off as a prisoner to the Tower of London. The English had met with drastic reversals in France, and Suffolk, though by no means the only person in England who had brought about the disaster, was being made the scapegoat for the government's missteps. The primary charge that would be brought against him--that in 1444 he had promised the surrender of Maine without being authorized to do so--has long since been disproved by historians. (Henry VI, however, explicitly promised the surrender of Maine in a letter dated December 22, 1445.) Among the wilder accusations against him was one that he had married his young son, John, to little Margaret Beaufort with the intention of killing Henry VI and making John king.

As Bertram Wolffe points out, Suffolk was in an impossible position: though he vigorously defended himself against the charges that were brought against him by the Commons, he could not do so adequately without attacking the king, who bore the ultimate responsibility for the disasters in France. But Suffolk was unshakeably loyal to Henry VI, and in any case, he depended upon the king for his life. Henry tried to save Suffolk by ordering that he be banished for five years. (Echoes of Edward II?) Unfortunately, the commoners, for whom Suffolk symbolized all of the shortcomings of Henry VI's reign as an adult, wanted Suffolk's death, not his disappearance. As Suffolk sailed toward Burgundy, his ship was intercepted by a vessel named Nicholas of the Tower. Suffolk was forced off his own ship, given a mock trial, and beheaded on May 2, 1450, after six strokes from a rusty sword. Whether the murderers acted entirely on their own or in the hire of someone more highly placed remains a mystery.

Among the slanders that were later to be circulated about Suffolk was that the 53-year-old Suffolk and the 20-year-old Margaret of Anjou were lovers. There's no evidence to support these allegations, which seem to have originated in Tudor times with the chronicler Hall and which were given vigorous life by Shakespeare. (Shakespeare, at least, has the excuse of borrowing from Hall; one 21st-century historical novelist who has accused Suffolk of fathering Edward of Lancaster in 1453 despite having been dead since 1450 is on rather shakier ground.) What makes these slanders so patently cruel is the evidence that whatever else his faults, Suffolk dearly loved his wife, Alice Chaucer (granddaughter of Geoffrey), and their son. Having ordered that his body be buried at Charterhouse at Hull, Suffolk (who wrote his will in his own hand) directs:

where y wol my ymage and stone be made and the ymage of my best beloved wyf by me, she to be there with me yf she lust, my said sepulture to be made by her discretion in ye said Charterhouse where she shal thinke best, in caas be yat in my dayes it be not made nor begonne; desiringe, yf it may, to lye so as the masses that y have perpetuelly founded there for my said best beloved wyf and me may be daily songen over me. And also ye day of my funeralx, the day of my berieng, that ye charge thereof be bysette upon pore creatures to pray for me, and in no pompes nor pryde of ye world. Also y wol yat my londes and goodes be disposed after that that y have disposed them in my last wille of ye date of these presentez, and only ordeyne my said best beloved wyfe my sole executrice, beseching her at ye reverence of God to take ye charge upon her for the wele of my soule, for above al the erthe my singuler trust is moost in her, and y wol for her ease, yf she wol and elles nought, that she may take unto her such on personne as she lust to name, to helpe her in yexecution yerof for her ease, to laboure under her as she wold commande hym. And last of al with the blessing of God and of me, as hertely as y can yeve it to my dere and trew son, y bequethe betwene hym and his moder love and al good accorde and yeve hym her hoolly, and for a remembraunce my gret balays to my said son.

(The "gret balays" seems to have been a ruby.)

Suffolk's one son, John, having been born late in Suffolk's and Alice's marriage, was only seven at the time of his father's murder. Before leaving England for what would prove to be his fatal journey into exile, Suffolk wrote an affectionate letter to the young boy in which he further emphasized his love for his family and his loyalty to his king:

My dear and only well-beloved son, I beseech our Lord in Heaven, the Maker of all the World, to bless you, and to send you ever grace to love him, and to dread him, to the which, as far as a father may charge his child, I both charge you, and pray you to set all your spirits and wits to do, and to know his holy laws and commandments, by the which ye shall, with his great mercy, pass all the great tempests and troubles of this wretched world.

And that also, weetingly, ye do nothing for love nor dread of any earthly creature that should displease him. And there as any frailty maketh you to fall, beseech his mercy soon to call you to him again with repentance, satisfaction, and contrition of your heart, never more in will to offend him.

Secondly, next him above all earthly things, to be true liegeman in heart, in will, in thought, in deed, unto the king our aldermost high and dread sovereign lord, to whom both ye and I be so much bound to; charging you as father can and may, rather to die than to be the contrary, or to know anything that were against the welfare or prosperity of his most royal person, but that as far as your body and life may stretch ye live and die to defend it, and to let his highness have knowledge thereof in all the haste ye can.

Thirdly, in the same wise, I charge you, my dear son, alway as ye be bounden by the commandment of God to do, to love, to worship, your lady and mother; and also that ye obey alway her commandments, and to believe her counsels and advices in all your works, the which dread not but shall be best and truest to you. And if any other body would steer you to the contrary, to flee the counsel in any wise, for ye shall find it naught and evil.

Furthermore, as far as father may and can, I charge you in any wise to flee the company and counsel of proud men, of covetous men, and of flattering men, the more especially and mightily to withstand them, and not to draw nor to meddle with them, with all your might and power; and to draw to you and to your company good and virtuous men, and such as be of good conversation, and of truth, and by them shall ye never be deceived nor repent you of.

Moreover, never follow your own wit in nowise, but in all your works, of such folks as I write of above, ask your advice and counsel, and doing thus, with the mercy of God, ye shall do right well, and live in right much worship, and great heart's rest and ease.

And I will be to you as good lord and father as my heart can think.

And last of all, as heartily and as lovingly as ever father blessed his child in earth, I give you the blessing of Our Lord and of me, which of his infinite mercy increase you in all virtue and good living; and that your blood may by his grace from kindred to kindred multiply in this earth to his service, in such wise as after the departing from this wretched world here, ye and they may glorify him eternally amongst his angels in heaven.

Written of mine hand,
The day of my departing fro this land.

Your true and loving father

John de la Pole became the second Duke of Suffolk and (his childhood marriage to little Margaret Beaufort having been dissolved) went on to marry Elizabeth, a daughter of Richard, Duke of York, making him the brother-in-law of Edward IV and Richard III. Though his own son, the Earl of Lincoln, would rebel against Henry VII, with fatal results for the earl, the second duke seems to have generally followed his father's advice with regard to kings: having deserted the Lancastrian cause in 1461, he would thereafter be loyal to Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII in turn.

Sources:

Michael Hicks, ‘Pole, John de la, second duke of Suffolk (1442–1492)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22450, accessed 20 Sept 2009]

C. L. Kingsford, Prejudice and Promise in Fifteenth Century England.

J. N. Larned, A Multitude of Counselors (a version of Suffolk's letter in modernized spelling; the version with the original spelling can be found in Gairdner's edition of The Paston Letters).

Surtees Society, North Country Wills

John Watts, ‘Pole, William de la, first duke of Suffolk (1396–1450)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22461, accessed 20 Sept 2009]

Bertram Wolff, Henry VI.

Guest Post by Jeri Westerson: Don't Call 'Em Dark Ages

I'm pleased to be part of Jeri Westerson's 2009 fall blog tour for her new novel, Serpent in the Thorns, which will be released on September 29. As part of it, here's a guest post from Jeri:

Don’t Call ‘Em Dark Ages

By Jeri Westerson

Continuing my blog tour to promote my newest Crispin Guest Medieval Noir novel, SERPENT IN THE THORNS, I’ve been discussing the various erroneous thoughts people seem to harbor about this most interesting period, the Middle Ages.

One mistaken idea was that this period in time was “Dark” as in “Dark Ages.” Everyone was just waiting around for the Renaissance. It must have been so tedious being in the dark and waiting to be enlightened!

Scholars of any repute do not refer to the Middle Ages as the “Dark Ages.” This usually means the period between 500 and 800 AD. We call this the “Early Middle Ages.” The Early Middle Ages has also been called the “Gothic Period,” but this is also an insult, although an acceptable one. The Italians in the first throes of the Renaissance referred to some of the old, outdated architecture from this early period as “Gothic,” in other words, created by uncivilized barbarians like the Goths who hacked their way through Europe from Germany. (No, they weren’t wearing black lipstick and nail polish with a cynical take on the world.) These were some of the original barbarians (along with the Vandals of Spain. Ain’t history fun?) The Visigoths were the fellows who sacked Rome in 410 and cut a swath in the Empire, tolling its death knell.

The period from 900 to 1100 is referred to as the “High Middle Ages,” and the period between 1200 and 1500 is considered the “Late Middle Ages,” just in case you wondered.

The notion that the Middle Ages was a stopping point in man’s creativity and scientific exploration is ridiculous. The medieval period—a period roughly between 500 and 1500 AD—was coined by the Victorians. “Medieval” means “middle ages,” that is, the period between the classical period of Greece and Rome and the modern (Victorian) era.

One thousand years is a long time. And in that period, there were many innovations, not the least of which is the button and the button hole. There was also the growing science of optics, begun in earnest in the Muslim world around 800 AD, including the notion that the speed of light was finite. The discussion of optics didn’t reach medieval Europe till about the twelfth century and between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, monks were using “reading stones,” crystal orbs cut in half for magnifying tiny writing.

Optics for glasses didn’t come about till the sixteenth century and lenses for microscopes and telescopes a bit later.

Paper was created in the 1200s, which was handy for all that printing that was about to happen on those printing presses with moveable type, invented in 1440 or so, by the German goldsmtih Johannes Gutenburg.

The hourglass and then the clock were also medieval inventions. The first tower clock in London got to ticking in 1288. Time pieces were first created so that monks and nuns could follow the Divine Office, a series of prayers done in set times throughout the day. Bells were rung to let the populace know when these hours of prayers arrived. Eventually these time pieces became more and more sophisticated.

But before that, there was the sundial, invented in this time period, along with astrolabes for figuring latitudes, and compasses for naval navigation.

Yup, as you can see, they were just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. In the dark. Do you ever get the feeling you were cheated in school all those years ago?


_________________________________


Jeri tries not to cheat in her medieval noir novels. You can read more about her latest release, SERPENT IN THE THORNS, on her website www.JeriWesterson.com



Thanks for stopping by, Jeri!

A Melusine Sighting, A Brand-New Theory, and a Father's Love

In 1445, Margaret of Anjou was present at Nancy at the wedding of her sister, Yolande, to Ferry de Vaudemont. It was a grand occasion, marked by days of jousting, and King Charles VII himself showed up. But what image was on his shield, pray tell? None other than Melusine, the fairy that with a little help from Warwick the Kingmaker and Richard III launched dozens of historical novels claiming that Elizabeth Woodville and her mother practiced witchcraft.

Now, the naive might suppose that Charles VII bore Melusine on his shield because he thought it was a nice story, but this would violate the Two Chief Rules of Fifteenth-Century Revisionist History: (1) if an action has a sinister explanation and an innocent one, the sinister explanation must prevail, and (2) no historical figure can ever be given the benefit of the doubt about anything except for Richard III. We can safely assume, then, that Charles VII's shield was a clear statement that the entire French court was no more than one giant witches' coven. When we consider that the year before, Charles of Maine, uncle to Margaret of Anjou, married Isabella of Luxembourg, sister to the witchy Jacquetta Woodville, and that both the houses of Anjou and Luxembourg were knee-deep in Melusine, our case is closed. In fact, we can probably say that witchcraft, not diplomatic and military bungling, would eventually cost the English the territories that they had gained in France. (I'm proud of this theory, so if anyone tries to steal it, remember you heard it here first.)

What is truly amazing, though, is that long before Edward IV fatally entangled his house with the descendants of Melusine by marrying Elizabeth Woodville, his own father was attempting to match him with the French royal family! In 1445, Richard, Duke of York, tried to arrange a marriage between little Edward and one of Charles VII's daughters. The marriage never took place, possibly because of rising tensions between England and France but more likely because a horrified Duke of York, having learned of Charles VII's allegiance to Melusine and the Forces of Darkness in general, wisely drew back from the abyss yawning before his innocent son. Unfortunately, his fatherly concern could do nothing to save his son from the eventual fate that awaited him at the hands of the sinister Jacquetta and Elizabeth and their ancestress, Melusine.

Sources:

Because I said so. And lots of Novocaine at the dentist's office.

(But yes, Charles VII is recorded as wearing a shield with Melusine on it in 1445, and the Duke of York did indeed try to marry his son Edward to one of Charles's daughters.)

A Word From My Cover Designer

A few posts back, I posted the cover for my forthcoming novel, The Stolen Crown (March 2010), and someone asked me the name of the cover designer. I posted it in the comments, and I was delighted to hear from the designer herself, Cathleen Elliott at FlyLeafDesign. It seemed a shame to have Cathleen's remarks about the cover design process get buried in the comments, so with her permission, I'm reproducing them here:

There is an early scene where Kate sees the secret marriage taking place. She is given a gold chain to keep quiet. This image spoke to me most in the way that the gold chain is there and it is also wrapped around her neck like it is silencing her. She is tugging on it. Which I think is symbolic.

The apple is really just the whole forbidden fruit thing. It's a general feeling about these forbidden marriages. The way she is holding it is seductive and secretive. The apple (figuratively speaking) is the moment when man was driven out of the garden and there was a separation between God and Man. Not that this is a religious reference but here it symbolizes the division between the houses York and Lancaster.

There is also the scene with the apple. Susan, I thought you chose the apple in that scene because there were talks of leaving Kate. That he should just say "She seduced him"

As for the dress it can be so hard to get everything just perfect in one image. This dress is slightly more modern but the feel and the symbolism were right on. The dress is close but mostly serves as a beautiful backdrop.

Yes, I do read the books I work on. It's one of the best pleasures of my job! Lucky me! :-)

There is nothing that makes me happier than a happy author and readers. You all made my day. Truly.

I've posted the cover again, so you can see what Cathleen's talking about without having to go to the sidebar. Thanks again, Cathleen!

EDIT: I'm stopping by to add that the series design work for my three Sourcebooks covers--i.e., typography and the overall layout--was done by Kimberly Glyder at Kimberly Glyder Design (who has a blog here and a website here). Here they are so you can see all three of 'em side by side and note the common elements:

A Giveaway Winner, and Some Splendidly Purple Prose

First, we have a winner for Brandy Purdy's novel! I've notified Terry, who won. Thanks to all who stopped by and entered.

Second, last night, I was trying to find some more information about Reculee, where the widowed Margaret of Anjou settled following her return to France. In doing so, I came across this 1912 biography by one Edgcumbe Staley, entitled King Rene d'Anjou and His Seven Queens, which contains a section on Rene's daughter Margaret. As this book kept me up for a good hour past my bedtime, forcing me to muffle my laughter in order not to disturb the slumbering family, I thought I'd share some highlights. (The whole thing is available on the Internet Archive if you're so inclined.)

Henry was as weak as water; he hated political questions, caring very much more, of course, for peaceful intercourse with his fascinating spouse . . .

The slaying of the Duke of York at the Battle of Wakefield (remember, Margaret was in Scotland at the time):

A troop of horse, headed by young Lord Clifford, and followed immediately by the Queen, mounted and armed, made an impetuous dash to where the Duke's standard hung heavy in the still, damp air. It they captured, and forthwith threw it over Margaret's knees, and with his sword Clifford struck the rebel leader down from his horse, and slew him as he lay at Margaret's feet. In a trice he had severed the head of her mortal enemy, and upon his knee he offered the ghastly trophy to his Queen. "Madam," he said, "the war is over; here is the King's ransom!" The Queen turned sick at the terrible sight, and hysterically sobbed and laughed alternately, and she screamed aloud when soldiers stuffed the blood-dripping head into a common chaff-sack.

In exile, Margaret loses none of her eloquence:

One more affecting speech of the heroic Queen must be recorded. "When on the day of my espousal," she said, "I gathered the rose of England, I was quite well aware that I should have to wear it whole with all its thorns!"

Sadly for Margaret, however, Edward soon avenges his father's death:

Edward, yielding to the base instincts of a cruel nature, very soon got news of Margaret's hiding-place, and with a demoniacal scowl, "Ah, ah !" he cried out, "we've settled the cub; now for the she-wolf!"

. . .

At Coventry, of all places for further outrage, a place so greatly agreeable to Henry and herself, ill-fated Margaret was subjected to personal insults from her vanquisher. In reply she reviled him, and thrust him with abhorrence from her. In revenge he ordered her to be fastened upon a common sumpter horse, and he ordered a placard to be placed on her breast, "This is Queen Margaret, good lieges," and her hands were tied behind her back. Thus was the most valiant, most unselfish, and most loyal Queen that England ever had led to grace the mock triumph of a royal murderer. She was thrust into the foulest dungeon of the grim Tower, and there remained, bereft of food, of service, and well-nigh of reason, too, for seven dreary, weary months.

At last, poor Margaret (still alive after having been deprived of food for seven months) returns to France:

Gently but firmly she had to be restrained, lest she should do herself some harm and injure others. Alas ! Margaret of Anjou came to her death, not in the halo of sanctity, but in the mist of mental obscurity, and thus she died alone perhaps unlamented, and certainly misjudged by posterity. Near her end languor and paralysis seized her, and she passed away unconsciously on August 25, 1482.

Incidentally, Mr. Staley's book was reviewed in the September 1, 1912, New York Times, which pronounced it "graphic and entertaining." I just hope I can match it.

Margaret the She-Wolf?

I thoroughly enjoyed Alianore and Rachel's recent joint post on Isabella, Edward II’s queen. Aside from being very funny, the point it makes is quite valid.

This got me to thinking about Margaret of Anjou, the subject of my novel in progress. Margaret is usually depicted in historical fiction as a vengeful and half-mad harpy, intent on destroying anyone who gets in her path. But how does her body count compare to those of male commanders during the Wars of the Roses?

Not very well, it turns out.

Margaret is said to have ordered the executions of three men, Thomas Kyriell, Lord Bonville, and William Gower, after the second Battle of St. Albans, by having her young son, Edward, pass judgment upon them. The men had been guarding her husband, Henry VI, who was then in Yorkist captivity. Some versions claim that the men had been promised their lives by Henry VI; others claim that Margaret and the prince simply watched the executions and that others gave the orders. Edward IV’s 1461 Parliament mentions only Henry VI in connection with the executions. Having rather disingenuously condemned the hapless Henry for failing at St. Albans to “join his person and blood to the defence, protection and salvation of the same lords and persons coming to assist him by his authority and command [i.e., the Yorkists], like a victorious and a noble captain, but like a deceitful coward,” Parliament goes on to complain that Henry

wilfully allowed those worthy and good knights, William, Lord Bonville, and Sir Thomas Kiryell, called to the order of the Garter for the knightly prowess they had demonstrated, and William Gower, esquire, the bearer of one of his banners, to whom he had given faith and assurance on the word of a king, by his own lips, that he would keep and defend them there from all harm, danger and peril, to be murdered and after that tyrannously beheaded, with great violence, without process of law or any pity, contrary to his said faith and promise, abominable in the hearing of all Christian princes.

Notably, at St. Albans, as Helen Maurer points out, three other Yorkist prisoners, including John Neville, the Earl of Warwick’s younger brother, were spared execution—an odd act if Margaret was indeed the vengeful she-wolf of popular imagination.

The best-known deaths attributed to Margaret, though, are those of the Duke of York, his son Edmund, and Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, at the Battle of Wakefield. Few historical novels set during this time fail to depict Margaret cackling in glee over their displayed heads after the three are executed in cold blood. There are several problems with such scenes, though. First, Margaret was not at Wakefield to cackle; she was in Scotland at the time of the battle. Second, although one report does indicate that the Duke of York survived the battle long enough to be jeered at by his Lancastrian captors before being executed, most reports indicate that he died in battle. Likewise, it seems more likely that young Edmund died while fighting in the rout instead of being murdered while a helpless captive. As for Richard Neville, although he was captured alive, he was lynched by a mob at Pontefract before his head was put on display.

In fact, the Yorkists, generally depicted by novelists as a chivalrous lot, have a rather higher body count to their credit than does Margaret. Following the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, the future Edward IV executed the sixty-year Owen Tudor, Henry VI’s stepfather, along with at least several others (the lists of those executed vary and in some cases have been shown to be inaccurate). After the Battle of Tewkesbury, Edward IV executed no fewer than a dozen men, having first broken sanctuary to do so.

Following the Yorkist victory at Northampton in 1460, where Henry VI fell into Yorkist hands, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, succeeded in forcing the defenders of the Tower to surrender it to him. Thomas Browne and six people associated with the Duke of Exeter, the Tower’s constable, were executed at Tyburn, charged with treason against the very king they were supporting, Henry VI. Later, in 1469, Warwick, while nominally still supporting Edward IV as king, executed the elder Richard Woodville, his son John Woodville, and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke—executions that had no legal justification whatsoever, as all of the men were loyal to Edward IV.

Exeter himself had ten men put to death at Sandwich in 1460 for sending supplies to Warwick. After Warwick had turned Lancastrian, the Yorkist John Tiptoft hung, drew, and quartered several of Warwick’s men.

So to Margaret personally, we can ascribe at most three executions--assuming that she, rather than her commanders or her husband, authorized them. The lives of those three men should not be viewed as unimportant, but assuming that the executions were indeed a breach of a promise made by Henry VI, they were no more unjust than those ordered by Edward IV after Tewkesbury and by Warwick in 1460 and 1469, and no more brutal than those ordered by Tiptoft. (It’s not quite fair to pick on Richard III here, but because for some reason the same novelists who portray Margaret of Anjou as a crazed she-wolf generally also depict Richard as a virtual saint, it should be pointed out that within a twelve-day period, he executed William Hastings, Anthony Woodville, Richard Grey, and Thomas Vaughan without trial, or with only the semblance of a trial, on charges that were never proven. Bonville and Kyrielle, by contrast, at the very least were guilty of deserting the Lancastrian cause for that of the Yorkist one.)

Much of Margaret’s bloody-minded reputation, of course, comes from the chronicles that describe the devastation inflicted by her troops following the Battle of Wakefield. B. M. Cron, however, has analyzed the evidence supporting these accounts and found it markedly lacking. Both she and John Gillingham cast doubts on the accounts of the Croyland Chronicler and Abbot John Whethamstede: Gillingham writes that Croyland’s account does not specify any places that were actually pillaged, but rather “is couched in the vague and emotional rhetoric of unsubstantiated atrocity stories.” Cron concludes that there would have certainly been “pillaging, petty theft, and unpaid foraging” by Margaret’s troops, marching in mid-winter, but that the army “did not indulge in systematic devastation of the countryside, either on its own account or at the behest of the queen.”

Propaganda, it’s too often forgotten, did not begin with the Tudors. Just as it served the Yorkist purpose to paint Margaret as an adulteress, thereby casting doubts on the legitimacy of her son, it also served the Yorkist purpose to depict her and her army as singularly vengeful and cruel. Just because such propaganda served a purpose in the fifteenth century, however, is no reason for us to blindly perpetuate it today.

Sources:

B. M. Cron, “Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian March on London, 1461.” The Ricardian, December 1999.

John Gillingham, The Wars of the Roses. Louisiana State University Press, 1981.

C. Given-Wilson et al., eds., The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. (CD-ROM version).

Helen Maurer, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England. Boydell Press, 2003.

A. J. Pollard, Warwick the Kingmaker. Hambledon, 2007.

The Boleyn Wife by Brandy Purdy: A Giveaway

I'm pleased to be offering a giveaway of an advance review copy of Brandy Purdy's The Boleyn Wife, featuring Jane Boleyn, sister-in-law of Anne. The Boleyn Wife was originally self-published as Vengeance Is Mine. I never got to read it in its original version, because it was snapped up by Kensington very quickly, so I'm looking forward to the revised, expanded version.

Brandy and I have known each other for a while online, and we now share the same agent!

Here's the back cover description from The Boleyn Wife:

Shy, plain Lady Jane Parker feels out of place in Henry VIII's courtly world of glamour and intrigue--until she meets the handsome George Boleyn. Overjoyed when their fathers arrange a match, her dreams of a loving union are waylaid when she meets George's sister, Anne. For George is completely devoted to his sister, and cold and indifferent to his bride. As Anne acquires a wide circle of admirers, including King Henry, Jane's resentment grows. But if becoming Henry's queen makes Anne the most powerful woman in England, it also makes her highly vulnerable. And as Henry, desperate for a male heir, begins to tire of his mercurial wife, the stage is set for the ultimate betrayal...

Encompassing the reigns of five of Henry's queens, THE BOLEYN WIFE is an unforgettable story of ambition, lust, and jealousy, of the power of love to change the course of history, and of the terrible price of revenge.

You can enter through September 7. I will send the name and address of the lucky winner to Brandy. (US residents only, sorry.) For more information about Brandy and her books, visit her website.

A Pretty Bess, and a Giveaway

Just stopping by to invite you to take a look at Historically Obsessed, where Lizzy J has produced a lovely drawing of Bess de Montacute! Pretty, isn't she?

Speaking of Hugh and Bess, there's a chance to win it over at Alaine's blog. If you haven't entered yet, now's your final chance to do so, since the drawing will be held on August 31. You have a choice of winning my book, The White Queen, or An Echo in the Bone. That's some impressive company!

The Wars of the Roses and Zombies

Since SonjaMarie over at the Historical Fiction Online forum drew our attention to this upcoming novel, entitled Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter, it has occurred to me that there's a market out there begging to be filled: namely, the Wars of the Roses told as they never have been before.

This possibility is so exciting, I'm practically hopping off my typing chair. Think of how long Cecily, Duchess of York, lived. Yet how much do you hear of her in her later years? Clearly, she must have been a zombie--doing her son Richard III's bidding. And her sister Katherine lived well into her 80's, opening even more possibilities: The Zombie Neville Sisters. Either as a standalone or a series, this is a story that begs to be written.

Of course, if you're going to have zombies, you need to have zombie hunters, which could put a whole new spin on Buckingham's rebellion.

But, you may ask, if there's a place in the Wars of the Roses for zombies, surely there's one for vampires as well? Never fear. What do you think Edward IV and William Hastings were really up to when they were romping around London together? How delectable Eleanor Talbot's neck must have been! And did Richard III finally give way to his own vampiric nature when his brother died? Well, there is actually one source that claims that the unfortunate princes in the Tower were bled to death. Need I say more about how this could have been accomplished? And how better to explain all of those unaccounted-for years of Perkin Warbeck?

Unfortunately, I'm not terribly up on the lifestyles of the undead, so I'm going to need some help executing this series. Yup. I need a ghost writer.

Un-Real Estate, and Other Picky Stuff

As I promised myself, last week I got a copy of Philippa Gregory's The White Queen. I did worse than that, actually: I bought a copy. About halfway through, however, I began to realize that I had done my bank account a great disservice.

I didn't finish the book, so I won't review it per se, save to say that Gregory tells the reader that Melusine was the ancestor of Elizabeth Woodville. Then she tells the reader again that Melusine was the ancestor of Elizabeth Woodville. Then, in case the reader is not absolutely certain of this, she has the characters talk to each other about Melusine being the ancestor of Elizabeth Woodville. There are some good bits of dialogue in the book (Anthony in particular has some nice lines), but I got very tired of wading through rivers of Melusine to get to them.

But what stands out about this novel for me, unfortunately, is its inaccuracies. Now, I make mistakes in my historical fiction. Every author is bound to. But is it really excusable for an author who's been writing about the Tudors for years to have Elizabeth Woodville go to Nonsuch Palace, built by Henry VIII? (You know, the guy who had Mary Boleyn as a sister-in-law.) And the errors just kept on coming. In addition to visiting the then-nonexistent Nonsuch Palace, Elizabeth goes to what she describes as one of her favorite country houses, the manor of Wimbledon, which was actually the property of the Archbishop of Canterbury until Thomas Cranmer gave it to Henry VIII in an exchange. At least Gregory didn't have Elizabeth playing at the royal tennis courts there.

OK, maybe complaining about Wimbledon is a little on the picky side. But Whitehall Palace, where Elizabeth also goes? It was known as York Place in the 15th century, and was a residence of the Archbishop of York until it fell into Henry VIII's hands with the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey. It certainly wasn't a Plantagenet palace.

One mention of Whitehall Palace might have been forgivable. But Elizabeth keeps going back there, again and again. I kept expecting Will Somers to show up and start whistling "Greensleeves."

Then there's the unfortunate Countess of Warwick. Following the Battle of Barnet, she went into sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey, a monastery. Irritatingly, Gregory keeps calling this a nunnery. Monks, nuns, they're both celibate, so what's the difference?

I've grumbled elsewhere about Gregory's claim in an interview that Jacquetta Woodville was tried and found guilty of witchcraft (a claim Gregory repeats in her author's note), when in fact she was acquitted, so I won't bore on about that again. But why must Gregory present the Woodvilles as being Lancastrians in 1464, when they had made the shift to York following the Battle of Towton? Elizabeth's father was a member of Edward IV's council in 1463!

I could grouse at length about Elizabeth and Hastings being strangers to each other when Elizabeth meets Edward IV, when in fact Hastings and Elizabeth had business dealings with each other before that time, but you get the idea.

Now, all of this may sound overly picky. But if a writer's going to praise herself as a meticulous researcher, as Gregory has done, she needs to actually do meticulous research, and that means getting the little facts right as well as the big ones. Giving Tudor-era residences to Plantagenet queens, confusing monks with nuns, and claiming that people were convicted of serious crimes when they were acquitted of them simply doesn't cut it.

Quiz time: Who was Elizabeth Woodville descended from?

The Parentage of Edward of Lancaster

No historical novel set during the Wars of the Roses is quite complete unless it contains a passage where the parentage of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou's son, Edward of Lancaster, is called into question. Philippa Gregory's latest effort duly follows this rule by having Jacquetta Woodville tell her daughter that Henry was "struck deaf and dumb nearly for the whole year that the child was conceived and born" and that Margaret took a lover during this time. (In fact, Henry did not go mad until early August 1453, just a couple of months before his son was born on October 13, 1453.) Another recent novel set during the same period has a rustic propose William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, as one of several possible fathers for the child--quite a feat on the duke's part, considering that he was murdered in 1450 and Edward was born in 1453.

While there's no doubt that rumors circulated about the parentage of young Edward, especially in the late 1450's as Yorkist propaganda heated up, there is no evidence, other than gossip, that Edward of Lancaster was the son of anyone other than Henry VI. As both R.A. Griffiths and Helen Maurer have pointed out, the Parliament Rolls for 1455 indicate that Richard Tunstall, an esquire of the body, had previously received a handsome annuity for bringing the king the news of the queen's pregnancy:

Provided also that this petition and act of resumption shall not extend or be prejudicial to our letters patent and grant made by us to Richard Tunstall, knight, by the name of Richard Tunstall, esquire for our body, of 50 marks a year for term of his life, part of an annuity of £40 a year, granted by us for term of his life, to be taken from the issues, profits and revenues of our manors, lands and tenements, and from our other possessions within our county of Lancaster, by the hands of our receivers there at the time: because, among other things, the said Richard gave us the first comforting report and news that our most entirely beloved wife the queen was with child, to our most singular consolation, and a great joy and comfort to all our true liege people.

Maurer also notes that Henry bought a jewel called a "demy ceynt" for Margaret while she was pregnant and that Margaret received generous grants in July 1453, which she suggests were made by Henry as a reward for her pregnancy. It certainly seems unlikely that they would have been made had the king suspected that Margaret was carrying another man's child.

Once Henry recovered from his first episode of mental illness, his reaction to his son was one of pleasure. As the Paston Letters indicate:

Edmund Clere to John Paston.

January 9, 1455.

Right welbeloved cosyn,—I recomaund me to you, latyng you wite such tidings as we have.

Blessed be God, the King is wel amended, and hath ben syn Cristemesday, and on Seint Jones day comaunded his awmener to ride to Caunterbury with his offryng, and comaunded the secretarie to offre at Seint Edwards.

And on the Moneday after noon the Queen came to him, and brought my Lord Prynce with her. And then he askid what the Princes name was, and the Queen told him Edward; and then he hild up his hands and thankid God therof. And he seid he never knew til that tyme, nor wist not what was seid to him, nor wist not where he had be, whils he hath be seke til now. And he askid who was godfaders, and the Queen told him, and he was well apaid.

. . .

And my Lord of Wynchestr and my Lord of Seint Jones were with him on the morrow after Tweltheday, and he speke to hem as well as ever he did; and when thei come out thei wept for joye. And he seith he is in charitee with all the world, and so he wold all tho Lords were. And now he seith matyns of Our Lady and evesong, and herith his Masse devoutly . . .

But what of the old story, that crops up in many historical novels and even in some nonfiction, that Henry VI, unable to comprehend how he could have been the father of Margaret's child, declared that it must be the work of the Holy Spirit? This story comes from a dispatch on March 27, 1461, from Prospero di Camulio, Milanese Ambassador in France, to Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan. Writing from Brussels about the latest English news, Camulio reported that it was being "said that the King of England had resigned his crown in favour of his son, although they say his Majesty remarked at another time, that he must be the son of the Holy Spirit, etc." What writers who latch onto this tasty morsel of a statement almost never quote is the rest of Camulio's sentence: "but these may only be the words of common fanatics, such as they have at present in that island." Certainly the timing of this gossip, current just a few weeks after Edward IV had taken the throne, should make us suspicious, as it did Camulio.

Those who maintain that Henry VI was not Edward's father often point to the eight-year delay between the couple's marriage in 1445 and the birth of Edward in 1453; they suggest that a desperate or simply wanton Margaret, having given up on Henry's capabilities, recruited another man to beget a child upon her. But the gap between marriage and pregnancy could be explained by other factors, such as subfertility, and is hardly indicative in itself that Margaret resorted to adultery to produce a child. Notably, Cecily of York, who seems to have married her husband no later than 1429 when she was 14 and he was 18, did not have her first child, Anne, until 1439. Despite this lengthy delay, no one has suggested that Anne was anyone other than the Duke of York's child. It seems only fair to give the Red Rose the same benefit of the doubt as the White Rose.

Isn't It Pretty?

Got the cover art for The Stolen Crown today:



It's from Monna Pomona by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Dumb Stuff I Am Looking Forward To This Week

Yesterday being a beautiful, sunny August day, I went to my library of choice. To my delight, a book I wasn't expecting to be there (it was supposed to be at another branch, which was closed) was on the shelf! I consider this to be a harbinger of the week to come, which promises to be full of all sorts of dumb stuff to look forward to, as follows:

Monday: CiCi's Pizza opens its local branch! I love CiCi's Pizza. It's tasty, and it's cheap. With the new branch, instead of having to drive 30 minutes to satisfy my pizza lust, I will have only a ten-minute drive. So for dinner Monday, I will be treating myself to a medium sausage. The Son and maybe the Husband will probably also have some. The Daughter does not appreciate CiCi's Pizza. (A demon seed?)

Tuesday: Philippa Gregory's The White Queen goes on sale! If what I've heard and read from various sources is true, this will not be a model of historical accuracy, but as a diehard Woodvillian, I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. For one thing, Elizabeth Woodville seems to be portrayed reasonably sympathetically, which is a plus, though I could do without what appears to be her ability to influence the weather.

Wednesday: "Top Chef" starts its new season. (For those who aren't familiar with it, this is a show where chefs compete for a prize, with one being eliminated from competition each week.) I hate to cook, and everyone on this show would probably be appalled by my fast-food tastes. I nonetheless thoroughly enjoy "Top Chef." Go figure.

Thursday: "Project Runway" starts its new season. (This is a show where fashion designers compete for a prize, with one being eliminated from competition each week.) I can't sew, but I do like to wear clothes, though the very stylish host, Tim Gunn, would probably have a coronary if he saw the bathrobe that I am wearing as I type this blog post.

Friday: Finishing up The White Queen while munching on my second CiCi's Pizza of the week. Or maybe my third. It's important to help the local economy, you know.

Saturday: Birthday dinner for my grown niece. I am expected to bring dinner for the kiddies. Guess what I'll be bringing?

Sunday: Probably a trip to the gym to work out all of that CiCi's Pizza.

Blog Award, Squidoo Lens, and a Question About Characters

First, the lovely Anne Whitfield has nominated me for the One Lovely Blog Award! Thanks, Anne! I'll soon be nominating some blogs myself (if I don't soon, give me a virtual conk on the head). This leads me naturally to:

Second, for a while I've had a Squidoo Lens on Reading Historical Fiction, which I've just got around to updating. My question is, do you know of any historical fiction blogs that I've missed? I'm not looking for blogs dedicated to a particular author, or author blogs where the author focuses mainly on his or her own writing, or writing-oriented blogs, or blogs that only occasionally discuss historical fiction, but blogs that review primarily historical fiction or post interviews with a variety of historical novelists. If you have one that I've left out, just let me know!

Third, Sharon Penman has been answering reader questions over at Library Thing, and she made a comment that intrigued me, "I don't feel comfortable reading how another writer has treated historical figures I think of as 'mine.'" Now, I know many other authors feel the same way as Penman, but I'm the polar opposite: I love seeing how other authors treat historical people I'm writing about or have written about. This is just sheer compulsiveness on my part: once I become interested in a historical figure, I want to read everything about him or her, and I haven't the strength of character to resist simply because he or she's a person I happen to be writing about.

Many novelists, of course, avoid reading other fictional treatments of their characters because they don't want to risk unconsciously plagiarizing someone else's work. That's the most compelling argument to me in favor of abstinence, though in my completed novels, this wasn't a great risk for me because my main characters figured into other novels only as supporting characters or as villains. With my novel in progress this is more of a concern, because my heroine is the heroine of other published novels. It's not a great concern, because the authors of the books in question differ from me greatly in style, and I will be taking a different slant on some events and giving prominent roles to certain supporting characters who play more background roles in the other novels I've seen.

I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this, though: if you're a writer, do you avoid reading other fictional treatments of your characters? And if you're a reader, once you've read and liked a fictional portrayal of a historical character, do you prefer to keep that picture unsullied by other portrayals? Or are you a character junkie like me, who will keep on reading everything you can about that character?

Elizabeth le Despenser, Daughter of Hugh and Eleanor

Elizabeth le Despenser (who appears a couple of times in Hugh and Bess) was the youngest surviving daughter born to Hugh le Despenser and Eleanor de Clare. Her birth date is unknown, but either she or her brother John might have been the child born to Eleanor in December 1325, as all of the other Despenser children can be accounted for before that date. It is also possible, in light of the fact that she was not forcibly veiled as a nun like the three middle Despenser daughters, that she was Hugh the younger’s posthumous child, though this is pure conjecture.

Nothing is heard out of Elizabeth until August 1338, when the prioress of Wix sent her to the care of her aunt, Eleanor’s younger sister Elizabeth de Burgh. Eleanor had died the previous year, and Elizabeth’s oldest brother, Hugh, had probably sent his young sister to board at Wix in Essex following their mother’s death. (The manor of Wix had been part of the inheritance of Elizabeth's grandfather, Hugh le Despenser the elder, though it was no longer in Despenser hands in the 1330's.) That same year, Elizabeth was married to young Maurice Berkeley, born in 1330. The marriage was probably an effort by Maurice’s father, Thomas Berkeley, and the Despenser family to mend old grudges: Thomas Berkeley had fought against the Despensers in the 1320’s and had been the keeper of the imprisoned Edward II at Berkeley Castle in 1327. Maurice’s mother, Margaret, was a daughter of the Roger Mortimer who had ordered the death of Elizabeth’s father and grandfather, Hugh the elder Despenser and Hugh the younger Despenser. Elizabeth never got to exchange pleasantries with Margaret about this, though, because Margaret died in 1337, before Elizabeth joined the Berkeley family.

Elizabeth’s brother Hugh gave his sister a marriage portion of 1,000 marks, 200 marks of which were payable each half year. Meanwhile, Thomas Berkeley settled the manor of Hurst in jointure on the young couple.

Elizabeth de Burgh sent little Elizabeth to Tewkesbury around 1340; Frances Underhill suggests that she was sent at this time to join the Berkeleys. Elizabeth again visited her aunt in the summer of 1348, in company with some of her relations. Meanwhile, according to Smyth, Maurice went to Granada in 1344 and stayed there two years; Smyth theorizes that he was sent there to prevent cohabitation with Elizabeth. (Was the girl such a siren?) When the couple finally did get together, though, it was with the usual effect: On January 5, 1353, Elizabeth gave birth to their first son, Thomas. The couple eventually had three more boys, James, John, and Maurice, and three girls, Catherine, Agnes, and Elizabeth. It’s notable that there is not a “Hugh” in the bunch; Maurice and his father must have been the ones picking the children’s names.

Maurice fought at Poitiers in 1356. Unfortunately, he was wounded there and taken captive; he was not released until 1360, when he was ransomed. His wounds had apparently left him an invalid, for he took little part in national affairs even after his father died in 1361. Because of his inability to travel, he was unable to attend his son’s wedding in 1368, but he had himself made a suit of cloth of gold for the occasion.

The abstracts of the Berkeley accounts contain few glimpses of Elizabeth’s married life. She received 20 shillings each quarter for expenses in her chamber, and she is recorded as having a new gown furred with coney skins from the kitchen “during the year of her husband’s sickness,” whatever year that might be. One suspects that Elizabeth’s father might have turned up his nose at the coney skins.

Maurice died at Berkeley Castle on June 8, 1368, aged only about 37, and was buried with his mother at St. Augustine’s in Bristol. As her dower, Elizabeth was granted Wenden in Essex, two-thirds of Portbury and Portishead and Uphill in Somersetshire, the small holding at Chicklade in Wiltshire, and the manors of Coaley, Upton and Awre, and the small holding at St. Chloe in Gloucestershire. Her jointure and dower was worth about £335 a year. She was at least 41 at the time, having been born no later than 1327.

By 1372, Elizabeth had married Sir Maurice Wyth, a knight in Somerset. In that year, the Earl of Pembroke wrote to the abbesses at Romsey and Wherwell requesting them to allow Elizabeth to stay in their houses while Wyth was away in the earl's service. As Elizabeth had no shortage of places to stay, perhaps she simply preferred the atmosphere of a nunnery to her own manors during her husband’s absence. In 1378, Maurice and Elizabeth dated a grant of land from Portbury.

Maurice Wyth made his will on July 11, 1383; it was proven on August 6, 1383. After requesting to be buried at St. Botolph without Aldersgate in London, he left Elizabeth “all my husbandry from the present date until the feast of Saint Michael to come, now growing in Portbury and Portishead with all necessaries pertaining to my chamber, wardrobe, hall and also to buttery and kitchen. To my said wife all my silver vessels of the better sort to the value of £40.” He ended his will with the request, “And it is my last wish that my said wife hold herself contented with all bequeathed to her.” Whether this was a boilerplate clause or whether he was genuinely worried that Elizabeth might covet the rest of his goods is anyone’s guess, but when Elizabeth herself died on July 13, 1389, aged at least sixty-two, she chose to be buried not with the Berkeleys, but at St. Botolph with her second husband.

(Wars of the Roses aficionados may be interested to know that Eleanor Talbot, claimed by Richard III to be the wife of Edward IV, is a descendant of Elizabeth and Maurice Berkeley. Now you know who to blame.)

Sources:

The Complete Peerage.

Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, Abstracts and Extracts of Smyth’s Lives of the Berkeleys.

Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II.

National Archives, Berkeley Castle Muniments.

Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries.

Frances Underhill, For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh.

F.W. Weaver, Somerset Medieval Wills.

Jacquetta Woodville and Witchcraft

As most people who have not been in a coma for the last few months know, Philippa Gregory is coming out with a new novel about Elizabeth Woodville, The White Queen. This morning, I noticed that the publisher has posted several videos to Youtube in which Gregory talks about her upcoming novel.

In this video, Gregory chats to an interviewer about witchcraft. About midway through, she states that Jacquetta Woodville was actually tried and found guilty of witchcraft, and would have been executed were it not for the intervention of someone (it appears to me that Gregory is saying "Margaret Bourchier," but I'm not sure). [Edit: As Trish has pointed out, Gregory claims that Margaret of Anjou" intervened.] At that point in the interview, only my enduring love for my flat-screen monitor prevented an encounter between said monitor and human fist.

Where in the world Gregory got this information from, I don't know, for the historical record indicates that Jacquetta was cleared of the charges against her. As for Margaret of Anjou intervening, she was in exile in France at the time! The document showing that Jacquetta was acquitted can be found on Google Books in the Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1467-77, pg. 190. Because I'm an obliging geek, I'll post the entry here (forgive the occasional typo; Google Books loses something in converting PDF to plain text for cut-and-pasting purposes):

Feb. 21. Exemplification, at the supplication of Jaquetta, duchess of Bedford, late the wife of Richard, earl of Rivers, of the tenour of an act in the great council, remaining in the office of the privy seal in the chamber of the great council called ' le Parlment chambre ' within the palace of Westminster, made on 10 February, 9 Edward IV. In the presence of the king and the cardinal archbishop of Canterbury, the archbishop of York, the bishops of Bath, chancellor, Ely, treasurer, Rochester, keeper of the privy seal, London, Durham and Carlisle, the earls of Warwick, Kssex, Northumberland, Shrewsbury and Kent, and the lords Hastinges, Mountjoye, Lyle, Cromwell, Scrope of Bollón, Saye and others a supplication addressed to the king on behalf of the said duchess and two schedules in paper annexed were openly read, and afterwards his highness by the advice of the said lords of the council accepting the declaration of the said lady commanded the same to be enacted of record and letters of exemplification to be made. The tenours of the supplication and schedules above mentioned ensue in this wise. The duchess complains that Thomas Wake, esquire, in the time of the late trouble caused her to be brought in a common noise and slander of witchcraft throughout a great part of the realm, insomuch as he caused to be brought to Warwick to divers of the lords present when the king was last there an image of lead made like a man of arms of the length of a man's finger broken in the middle and made fast with a wire, saying that it was made by her to use with witchcraft and sorcery, and for the performing of his malicious intent entreated one John Daunger, parish clerk of Stoke Brewerne, со. Northampton, to say that there weru two other images made by her, one for the king and one for the queen, whereunto the said John Daunger neither could nor would be entreated, and the king commanded the said Wake and John Daunger to attend upon the bishop of Carlisle, the earl of Northumberland, the lords Hastynges and Mountjoye and Master Roger Radcliff to be examined, and their examination is here annexed, and in the great council on 19 January last she was cleared of the said slander, wherefore she prays that the same may be enacted of record. Thomas Wake says that this image was shown and left in Stoke with an honest person who delivered it to the clerk of the church and so showed it to divers neighbours after to the parson in the church openly to men both oí Schytlanger and Stoîte and after it was shown in Scwriiley, a nunnery, and to many other persons, and of all this he heard or wist nothing till after it was sent him by Thomas Kymbell from the said clerk. John Daunger of Shctyllanger said that Thomas Wake sent to him one Thomas Kymbell, then his bailiff, and bad the said John send him the image of lead that he had and so he sent it, at which time he heard no witchcraft of the lady of Bedford, and that the image was delivered to him by one Harry Kyngeston of Stoke, who found it in his house after the departing of soldiers, and that the said Thomas Wake after he came from London from the king sent for him and said that he had excused himself and laid all the blame on John and bad him say that he durst not keep the image and for that cause sent it to Thomas and also bad him say that there were two other images, one for the king and one for the queen, but he refused to say so. English. [Rolls of Parliament, VI. ¡132.] By p.s. [3033.] 1470. Membranes 4 and 3.

Blog Tour and July Search Terms

Hugh and Bess is officially out today, so I'm going on another blog tour! Look at these sites for reviews, interviews, and a guest post:

Musings of a Bibliophile (7/28)

Passages to the Past (8/1)

My Friend Amy (8/1)

Reading Adventures (8/2)

Jennifer's Random Musings (8/2)

Peeking Between the Pages (8/3)

Historical Novels.info (8/3)

Grace's Book Blog (8/4)

Historical Tapestry (8/5)

Mrs. Magoo Reads (8/5)

Historical Fiction (8/6)

Jenn's Bookshelf (8/6)

The Tome Traveller's Weblog (8/7)

Beatrice (8/8)

Book Addiction (8/9)

Steven Till (8/10)

Medieval Bookworm (8/11)

Carla Nayland (8/11)

The Literate Housewife Review (8/12)

Diary of an Eccentric (8/13)

Bookfoolery and Babble (8/14)

OK, we're done with the self-promotion! Now for what you've been waiting for--search terms!

what does a countess do

Countess stuff. maybe?

david starkey what do you think about jean plaidy?


Feel free to stop by, Dr. Starkey, and tell us!

is jean plaidy explicit

I'll let Dr. Starkey answer that one.

jean plaidy list of reissues

C'mon, Dr. Starkey, get cracking! Don't let us down.

george duke the ghost executed secretly

It's never a good idea to execute a ghost in public. Might get the wrong people upset.

relationship between edward ii and edward ii?


I'm no genealogist, but I'll hazard that it was a pretty close one.

well written steamy historical romance

"Give it to me!" she begged, trembling and tingling with lust. "Now! It is what I have always dreamed of."

"Woman," he whispered in the way that always turned her knees to jelly. "What have I told you? In our language, 'it' must have an antecedent, and you must never end a sentence with a preposition."

"Right," Margaret of Anjou moaned, her body arching madly. "Give yourself, your all, your everything to me. It is what I have always dreamed of, my darling King Henry."

Well, I tried.