marrrkusss

On the trail of the Princes of Powys

2016-05-28T17:43:00.000+01:00

I had a pretty good afternoon out recently castle hunting. During this junket, a thought was raised for me, one that has been in the back of my mind for a while now: just who were the Princes of Powys?

I have, admittedly, not delved all that much into the history of early medieval Wales, but know smatterings that I’ve picked up over the years. For instance, I know about the Norman Conquest of Wales under Henry I that secured the south of the nation as the Welsh March, and I know stuff about Edward I’s Conquest, but that’s really where my expertise ends. I know little stuff about Deheubarth in the south-west, but barely anything about Powys in the south-east. And that’s what I’m hoping to try to put right! So get ready for some craziness, as I attempt to unravel the whole story…

Let’s start with a map. This will probably not be of much use as I go on, as the territories shifted so fluidly it’s almost insane, but you’ll hopefully get an idea, at least, of where everything is. Roughly. Anyway:

So, I recently went to Mathrafal Castle, which is not too far outside Welshpool. First of all, the medieval Kingdom of Powys did not always correspond with the modern county, as for a long period the kingdom stretched into the West Midlands. Immediately following the Roman collapse, however, the centre of power in the area was firmly at Wroxeter. Whether this is where the Kingdom of Powys began, however, is a bit more hazy.

The royal family of Powys claimed descent from the almost-mythic figure of Vortigern and Princess Sevira, a daughter of Magnus Maximus (the Macsen Wledig of Welsh legend). All of that is recorded on the Pillar of Eliseg, outside Llangollen:

So yeah, an appropriately mythical start for the dynasty, though of course, in the years immediately post-Roman occupation, there are some pretty weird and wonderful tales to be heard! In the sixth century, the capital of Powys is known to be Pengwern, but the precise location of this place is also somewhat shrouded in legend – most people seem to agree that it’s likely to be Shrewsbury. However, in 642 the king of Powys, Cynddylan, joined forces with the king of neighbouring Mercia, Penda, to defeat the Northumbrian king, Oswald, at the Battle of Maserfield. Oswald was killed, and gave his name to the modern town of Oswestry. In retaliation, Oswald’s brother Oswiu attacked Pengwern and destroyed the llys (Welsh princes didn’t live in castles, but a ‘llys’, or court) and everyone within – everyone, that is, except the Princess Heledd, who fled into western Powys.

By 717, the llys of the Princes of Powys had been re-established at Mathrafal, and that is where I went!

Mathrafal is a large rectangular enclosure with a motte in the northern corner. The whole design is quite impressive, and I was fairly astounded at how well this thing has survived! There seems to be some debate over whether this is actually the site of the llys, but given the general layout and stuff, it seems suitably impressive that it could be, I suppose!

In 855, the kingdom was joined to that of Gwynedd by Rhodri the Great, who was one of the earliest men to be referred to (posthumously, of course) as King of all Wales – largely as his territories expanded into Seisyllwg (roughly modern Ceredigion) through marriage. Rhodri didn’t live long after the annexation of Seisyllwg, and his lands were split among his four sons as per Welsh custom. His son Merfyn received Powys while Cadell received Seisyllwg, though Cadell invaded around 900 and annexed Powys to himself.

Cadell’s son was Hywel Dda, the famous lawmaker, who succeeded his father in 911. Through marriage, Hywel annexed the kingdom of Dyfed (roughly modern Pembroke), and sometime after 920 created the kingdom of Deheubarth out of both Dyfed and Seisyllwg. Aside from his laws, Hywel is also (somewhat) famous for his voluntary submission to the Saxon kings of England, which he used to great advantage when he annexed Gwynedd in 942, following the unsuccessful rebellion of his cousin Idwal Foel (you may know him as Idwal the Bald..?) and Powys, through the forced marriage of Merfyn’s son Llywelyn to Hywel’s daughter, Angharad. It was in this manner that Hywel claimed lordship over virtually all of Wales (except the south-east), whereupon he introduced his famous Laws in 945.

Hywel died in 950 and was succeeded by his son Owain, who controlled most of Hywel’s land thanks to the early deaths of his brothers. Owain also controlled Powys, of course, and instead of trying to re-take Gwynedd, he looked east to Morgannwg (the modern Glamorgans) and Gwent, having already gained Brycheiniog (roughly modern Brecknock, southern Powys). He also apparently instigated the Annales Cambriæ, the native chronicle that was compiled from the 10th century at St Davids Cathedral. Owain’s son Maredudd, who succeeded him in 988, turned away from the south and again captured Gwynedd for Deheubarth. When Maredudd died in 999, Powys passed to Llywelyn ap Seisyll through his marriage to Maredudd’s daughter Angharad. Llywelyn’s reign was one of prosperity until his death in 1023, when he was succeeded by his son Gruffydd.

Gruffydd ap Llywelyn is immensely important in eleventh-century Wales, as the man who managed to unite virtually the whole of Wales as none of his predecessors had. Following Llywelyn’s death, Gwynedd had reverted to the House of Aberffraw, but by 1039 Gruffydd had gained control of both Powys and Gwynedd. In 1041 he invaded Deheubarth and by 1058 also controlled Morgannwg and Gwent, and was thus recognised by the English as the King of all Wales. It wasn’t to last, though, as the Saxon earls Harold (of Battle of Hastings fame) and his brother Tostig led a combined attack on Wales in 1063, forcing Gruffydd to flee into Snowdonia, where he was killed by his own men.

Wales was once again split into Gwynedd and Powys, ruled by Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, Gruffydd’s half-brother, who founded the House of Mathrafal – see, there was a point to all of that narrative! Bleddyn was killed in 1075, and was succeeded in Powys by his three sons, Iorwerth (killed in 1111 when he was forced into a burning house), Cadwgan (also died 1111) and Maredudd. Cadwgan’s son Owain is famous for the abduction of Nest, wife of Gerald of Pembroke, which caused a minor scandal at the time, and the intervention of the Norman Earl of Shrewsbury. Owain joined forces with the King of Gwynedd, Gruffudd ap Cynan, in resisting the Norman invasion of Wales in 1114, but somehow switched allegiances and became firm friends with Henry I, joining the king of England in his later invasion of Deheubarth where he was killed by Gerald of Pembroke in revenge.

The Welsh March was established across the south of Wales, and Powys reverted to Owain’s uncle Maredudd. During Maredudd’s time, the kings of Gwynedd began to make major territorial annexations in northern Powys, especially under Owain Gwynedd. Maredudd was succeeded by his son Madog, who was on surprisingly good terms with the new king of England, Henry II, assisting in the latter’s wars with Owain Gwynedd (who was in fact Madog’s brother in law). Madog regained a lot of land due to his relationship with the English king and the earl of Chester, including the land around Oswestry and Whittington. When he died in 1160, the kingdom of Powys was split in two, and was never again reunited.

Madog’s son Gruffydd Maelor inherited the north of the kingdom, Powys Fadog (roughly corresponding to modern-day Wrexham County), and his nephew Owain Cyfeiliog inherited the southern portion, Powys Wenwynwyn (roughly modern Montgomeryshire). Owain Cyfeiliog is perhaps most famous nowadays for refusing to meet Gerald of Wales and Archbishop Baldwin during their journey in 1188, for which he was excommunicated. He had, however, founded Strata Marcella Abbey (below) in 1170 as a daughter house of Whitland, and effectively abdicated in 1195 to live out his days there as a hermit.

He was succeeded by his son Gwenwynwyn, who lost virtually all of his lands to Llywelyn the Great in 1212. Gwenwynwyn moved the seat of the Princes of Powys from Mathrafal to Welshpool, though when he died in 1216, Llywelyn overran the entire area and claimed it for Gwynedd.

The ringwork castle at Welshpool (above), much like Strata Marcella, isn’t all that impressive anymore, sadly!

In the north, Gruffydd Maelor was succeeded by his son Madog in 1191, who gave his name to the northern kingdom. Madog was a cousin of Llywelyn the Great, as Gruffydd Maelor’s sister Marared had married Iorwerth Drwyndwn, the eldest son of Owain Gwynedd (who was the brother-in-law of Marared and Gruffydd’s father Madog, remember – ah, inter-marriage!). Madog ap Gruffydd Maelor was on better terms with Llywelyn than either Owain Cyfeiliog or Gwenwynwyn, however, so largely escaped Llywelyn’s attempt to unite all of Wales under him. Madog founded Valle Crucis Abbey in Llangollen in 1201 as a daughter house of Strata Marcella.

The lands of Powys Fadog was split between Madog’s five children, with his eldest son Gruffydd II assuming the title of Prince, building the castle at Dinas Bran in Llangollen and establishing it as the centre of the northern kingdom.

When Gruffydd died in 1269, his son Madog II succeeded him, but was killed in the first English campaign into Wales under Edward I in 1277, when he was attempting to defend his lands. His younger brother Gruffydd Fychan succeeded him, but lost his lands in the final Edwardian Conquest, living out his days as a tenant.

But what of Powys Wenwynwyn? Well, Gwenwynwyn’s son, Gruffydd, kept changing sides from Llywelyn the Last’s brother Dafydd, to Edward I, to Llywelyn himself, eventually dying around 1286 with control of his lands firmly in the hands of his son, who had Anglicized himself as Owen de la Pole (“of the Pool” – that is, Welshpool) and renounced his princedom, for which Edward I granted him the title Earl of Powis, and he retired to live the life of a Marcher Lord at Powis Castle.

In the north, following the death of Gruffydd Fychan in 1289, a procession of young and weak princes followed, with the lands of Powys Fadog given to Reginald de Grey following the Conquest. de Grey built Ruthin Castle, but allowed the hereditary heirs to the kingdom to remain as landowners in the area. Gruffydd Fychan’s son Madog III was in turn succeeded by Gruffydd of Rhuddallt, whose son Gruffydd Fychan II succeeded him. Whoa!

Gruffydd Fychan II was the Lord of Glyndyfrdwy, and the father of Owain Glyndŵr. I feel that everybody knows him, at least, but I am not a fan. Yes, I’m Welsh and I dislike Owain Glyndŵr, I said it! The reasons for this are manifold, but I shall, nevertheless, try to explain!

Owain Glyndŵr was born at Sycharth (above) in 1349 or thereabouts. His father died when Owain was still in his teens, and he was fostered by a local lawyer, David Hanmer, who was later to serve as a legal adviser to Richard II. Owain also studied law, serving as an apprentice in London before returning to Wales in 1383 and his father’s hereditary lordship of Glyndyfrdwy, near Corwen (below). As a landowner, Owain was required to provide military service to the king, which he did, even possibly serving as squire to the Duke of Lancaster (later Henry IV).

So, what have I got against him? Well. You may remember that the lords of Glyndyfrdwy held their lands of the de Grey family, ensconced at Ruthin? In the 1390s, de Grey was accused by Glyndŵr of seizing lands that belonged to him, but the Welshman’s plea was ignored by the court in London. There is also the story that de Grey purposefully informed Glyndŵr too late of a royal command to levy troops for a military action that led to the Welshman being called a traitor. Well, anyway, in September 1400, following the deposition of Richard II by the Duke of Lancaster, Glyndŵr assumed the title of Prince of Wales and led a revolt aimed largely at reclaiming the lands he had lost to de Grey.

Therefore, the entire Glyndŵr Uprising that lasted 15 years and caused untold death and destruction, as well as bringing about a series of anti-Welsh legislation from Westminster, was all because of a land dispute. I cannot begin to describe the vitriolic sentiment that I feel whenever someone refers to Glyndŵr as a national hero. He was a firebrand who caused a massive backlash that he then used to justify his actions. Much like my thoughts on Llywelyn the Last, I feel Glyndŵr has been misunderstood as being a better person than he in fact was. He is certainly not deserving of the reputation as a Welsh Arthur. His motivation was entirely selfish, not as the altruistic national martyr that he is now thought of. And thus do I dismount my soapbox!

Either way, he disappeared after 1412, and it is now widely believed that he died in 1416, with local legends suggesting his burial site to be at Monnington on Wye, near the home of one of his daughters. The only thing that is certain, of course, is that with Owain Glyndŵr, the line of the Princes of Powys finally ended. Later in the fifteenth century, with the accession of the Tudor dynasty, anti-Welsh sentiment noticeably lessened and the need for independence movements and the like effectively died out.

So there you have it! As time goes on, I hope to add to this blog as I visit more places associated with the Princes of Powys.

Until next time!

Shakespeare and Stratford

2016-04-23T21:06:00.000+01:00

Check out today's Google doodle!

23 April 2016 marks the 400th anniversary since the death of William Shakespeare, perhaps the greatest playwright the world has ever seen, and certainly one of the UK's greatest exports. There isn't a lot to be said about the man that you can't readily find elsewhere than my little corner of the internet, so rather than merely clog it up with more of the same, I thought I'd mark the occasion with a little celebration of my own trips to Stratford-upon-Avon, the Warwickshire town of both Shakespeare's birth and death.

Shakespeare was born in April 1564, baptised on 26th but the actual date of his birth is unknown. The house in which he was born, now the Birthplace museum, was also his father John's glove shop/workshop. It's undergone quite a few modifications over the years, even during William's own lifetime it had been converted into an inn (the Swan and Maidenhead) with a cottage annex. It remained within the Shakespeare family until the early 19th century, and was almost sold to an American businessman, who had proposed to dismantle the house and ship it across the Atlantic, but was saved for the nation and remains in Stratford.

While I love half-timbered houses like these, I find it faintly silly that so many tourists flock to Stratford and bypass so many interesting-looking houses and other buildings, but gravitate to this house like iron to a magnet. Such is the fame of the immortal bard, I suppose, though it does make me chuckle sometimes!

The Birthplace is located on Henley Street, at what I've come to think of as the "top end" of town, usually parking nearer the river whenever I visit. There are plenty of other wonderful buildings from the Tudor era to look at as you wander the streets of the town, including whole streets further from the centre.

The town does have a number of properties that have some connection to Shakespeare, though they are usually quite tenuous. Being a part of the Shakespeare Houses, however, ensures they are always being visited by tourists, though I sometimes find it quite sad that people tend to only give these places a cursory glance before heading off to the next stop on their pilgrimage.

We have, in no particular order, Nash's House, which belonged to the first husband of Shakespeare's granddaughter, and happens to have in its garden the foundations of New Place, the house Shakespeare bought and lived in after his career in London.

Hall's Croft, the house of Shakespeare's daughter Susanna's husband, Dr John Hall. Another wonderful Tudor/Jacobean building, it has some interesting information about medical practices of the time.

Anne Hathaway's Cottage is the family home of Shakespeare's wife, and is actually an extensive farmhouse not too far outside of the town itself.

I love Stratford so much. It's one of those central England towns that has managed to retain a lot of its medieval character, and I never pass up an opportunity to visit, especially when the weather is good! The Shakespeare connection has of course led to a lot of cash-ins, some of which might be a little too much, but it still has a lot to recommend, even without such a famous son.

Mount Grace Priory

2015-10-01T20:01:00.001+01:00

It's certainly been a while since I made my last post here! Never fear, this blog is by no means forgotten. Today I thought I'd make a little post following an amazing trip up to Durham once more.

On my way up north, I stopped off at Mount Grace Priory, just off the A19 near Thirsk. It's a place that was somewhat on my radar, though mainly because of the fact it was a monastery in Britain. I love a good monastery, so was looking forward to it, but had no real idea as to what I would encounter here.

Well, I was in for an extremely pleasant surprise!

Mount Grace was a Carthusian monastery, one of only ten such 'Charter Houses' to be founded in Britain. I've talked a lot about monasticism in Britain in previous blogs, primarily the Cistercians of course, along with my exhaustive look at the Dissolution. Here, however, we've got something completely different.

The Carthusian Order did not follow the Rule of St Benedict, as per most medieval monastic orders, but rather harkened back to the desert fathers by emphasising a solitary, eremitical life. The order began in 1084, when St Bruno withdrew from the religious life of Reims to a secluded valley in the Chartreuse near Grenoble. He and his followers led a life of solitary devotion, coming together only to celebrate Matins in the morning and Vespers in the evening, and Mass only on feast days or at burials.

Otherwise, the monks led an isolated life in a private cell within the monastic complex. These cells were strung out around the cloister, which provide the most striking remains at Mount Grace today. Rather than the usual, communal rooms surrounding the cloister such as the chapter house and the refectory, there are a series of small rooms within larger areas, and when I first arrived at this part of the complex, I was at a bit of a loss as to what these things could be. Moving through the complex, I became intrigued by all of this - the idea of a group of monks living alone together became utterly fascinating.

A monk would live within his cell, which was a two-storey affair, the ground floor being given over to the living space, small rooms where the monk would celebrate mass as well as sleep. On the first floor, a general-purpose work room. The cell had a walled garden, including a covered walkway that led to a latrine. While the monk could grow food in the garden, and had access to drinking water within the cell-complex, a hatch in the wall allowed food to be passed through without contact with other monks.

It all seems very strange, and yet also makes perfect sense within the wider history of monasticism. After all, the original ideas of the desert fathers were to get away from the world entirely, and devote their life to spiritual devotion alone. To segregate themselves from fellow monks within an already-segregated complex seems a little like overkill, but certainly recalls the earlier tradition.

Mount Grace is a really intriguing place, and certainly worth visiting if you enjoy monastic ruins.

Happy St David's Day!

2015-03-01T08:40:00.000+00:00

Happy St David's Day, everyone!

To help mark the occasion, I thought I'd write a blog on the patron saint of Wales, using some pictures taken during my jaunt to Pembrokeshire back last summer (yes, believe it or not, these pictures were taken in early July 2014. It just looks so miserable though!)

^ the shrine of St David was restored in 2012

St David lived during the sixth century, the fabled age of saints, and spent a large amount of time founding monasteries around Wales and Brittany. The famous miracle of the creation of a hillock is attributed to him, where the ground raised up in order for him to address those who had flocked to hear him. He died on 1 March, possibly in 589AD, with an exhortation to his followers to "do the little things you have seen me do", which has become something of a motto in Wales.

St Davids, on the western tip of Pembrokeshire, had long been renowned as a place of learning, and a great pilgrimage centre. William the Conqueror arrived here in 1081, reinforcing its significance as a holy place. In 1120, Pope Callixtus II beatified David, which really cemented its place in the religious life of the country - two pilgrimages to St Davids, it was said, were equal to one to Rome.

The present cathedral was begun in 1181, after much had been done to improve the religious community here. In the early thirteenth century, Gerald of Wales became famous for his continual efforts to become Bishop of St Davids, largely due to the nationalist feeling being whipped up by Llywelyn the Great. King John, in his efforts to gain control over Wales, blocked Gerald's election whenever he could. Today, there is a statue of Gerald in the cathedral, the bishop's mitre sadly by his feet...

In the fourteenth century, Bishop Henry de Gower began an ambitious building programme in St Davids, bringing the city in line with the great cathedral-cities of England. Among his work is the construction of the Bishop's Palace opposite the west end.

I love these sorts of buildings. Castles are great, and cathedrals and abbeys are stupendous, but palaces were purely domestic buildings, and have so much of interest when you look at how medieval life was really lived. Yes, they are more indicative of the lives of the ruling elite than the ordinary people, but they're pretty much all we have from a time when most houses were timber at best. And you know what? So much scholarship has been done in the last few decades over lives of the common people, I think it's about time we celebrated those lives of the upper crust once again!

The Bishop's Palace was really the product of the fourteenth century building programme of Henry de Gower, although a lot of work had been undertaken in the late thirteenth century by Thomas Bek, largely following a grant from Edward I. Bek had been the keeper of the king's wardrobe before being endowed with the bishopric, forming a close relationship with the king.

I absolutely loved exploring this building! The domesticity was an abiding factor, as I have already said; seeing where people entertained, where the food was cooked or stored, where people slept... it's a much more fascinating insight into the period than we can get from castles and the like today...

So yeah! Following the Reformation, St Davids was one of the new Protestant cathedrals of the realm. In the sixteenth century, an effort was made to remove the episcopal seat from St Davids to Carmarthen, for a more central location of the See, though this came to nothing. However, the Bishop's Palace suffered as a result by being stripped of much of its adornments.

For a long time, however, the Bishops of St Davids had been staying here less frequently. St Davids is, after all, at the end of a very long road from the centre of the royal court, and bishops were important functionaries therein. The fifteenth century had seen a steady decline in favour of nearby Lamphey, when the bishop came to the See at all.

Lamphey is much closer to the Norman castle at Pembroke, and so would perhaps make for a more convenient residence when the bishop was in the area. A manor is known to have been here in Gerald's time, but the present palace owes much to the building of Thomas Bek, with Henry de Gower seeming only to have renovated and updated.

I really enjoyed Lamphey, too. It was a really miserable day when I visited, and I got soaked through by the time I'd finished exploring, but there's that irresistible allure of domesticity that I so enjoyed at St Davids. The palace here is set over a large area that would have been bustling with life as the bishop took up residence, with provisions laid out in the outer court ready for the feasting and entertainment of the halls of the inner court.

One such hall was indeed built by de Gower, and bears his name still. The arcaded parapet is almost like his calling card, seen also in the palace at St Davids. It is also believed to have influenced the renovation work at Swansea Castle, Henry having close ties with the city.

The palace was sold into private hands following the Reformation, entering the Devereux family (later earls of Essex). Decline followed the Civil War, when it was converted into farm buildings. After a period as a curiosity for the nearby Lamphey Hall, the ruins we see today were eventually given to the state. It's quite sad to think of how it has fallen from such a position of power!

Not far from Lamphey is Llawhaden Castle, which also formed part of the bishop's estates, though with perhaps a more colourful history.

The castle was originally a frontier post on the landsker, the border between Norman Wales and native Wales. For a time, it was held by Lord Rhys of Deheubarth, who is incidentally buried in St Davids, before it was taken by the Normans and, in 1281, became something of a special project for Thomas Bek. Bek made the town the richest within the See, though it wasn't until Adam de Houghton in the late fourteenth century that the castle itself was renovated.

The castle was very much dependent on the favour of the bishop of the time, as most of the fifteenth century saw it let to commoners. Bishop Hugh Pavy, over a century after Adam de Houghton, once again used it as his regular base in the See, where it is mentioned as fulfilling the role of episcopal prison among other things.

Following the Reformation, the castle was stripped alongside the Bishop's Palace, and its decline continued the following century when it was partly demolished.

So there you have it, a cathedral, two palaces and a castle, mostly in appalling weather! I was really unlucky with my holiday, and definitely want to go back and explore more of the area, hopefully with some sunshine! As befits the premier diocese of Wales, there are a lot of remnants of the monastic life of St David there, and it is definitely worth the visit!

Happy St Davids Day everyone!

Happy New Year!

2015-01-01T21:46:00.001+00:00

Okay, so day one may well be nearly over, but I'd just like to wish you all the very best for 2015 - and hope you get to discover some heritage treasures over the next twelve months!

That's certainly my plan, at any rate!

Happy Birthday, Puccini!

2014-12-22T17:08:00.000+00:00

December 22 marks the birthday of the Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini, born in Lucca in 1858.

I love a bit of Puccini, despite the 'populist' criticisms. Tosca (1900) is, in fact, my favourite opera of all time.

To celebrate, anyway, here's Luciano Pavarotti singing Recondita armonia, from the opening of Tosca.

The Boston Tea Party

2014-12-16T21:11:00.001+00:00

16 December is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, so in celebration I'm drinking a cup of Assam.

Of course, this is meant ironically. The incident was the culmination of British repression in the American colonies. Let's see if I've got this right.

The British imported their tea from China, with the East India Company having the monopoly on this. When the Colonists developed a taste for tea, Parliament in London passed an act that ensured the Colonies could only import their tea from Britain. However, the Company was prohibited to export, instead selling by auction in Britain to merchants who then sold it on. All the added taxes in this process resulted in a fairly prohibitive price once it reached America.

But the Dutch didn't have half so complicated a process, leading to a huge upsurge in smuggled Dutch tea making it into the British Colonies. Parliament, in quite a convoluted move, considerably lowered the tax imposed on the Company, instead taxing tea directly in the Colonies. This proved contentious - indeed, it was called unlawful in the Colonies, as the British Constitution clearly states that Britons can only be taxed by their elected representatives, but the Colonies did not elect any members to Parliament. By the early 1770s things had quietened down, though it wasn't to last...

Parliament began taxing the Company again in 1772, whose attempts to offset the tax by price rises merely reduced sales. The following year, the Tea Act allowed the Company to sell directly to the Colonies, but this move effectively extended the Company's monopoly to encompass the Colonies as well as Britain.

Whig Colonists began to chafe under the heavy-handed actions of the British Parliament, specifically over the representation issue, and the extension of the monopoly. The protest came to a head on the evening of 16 December 1773, when about a hundred men, some dressed in Mohawk costumes, boarded three newly-arrived vessels and dumped the entire contents of the tea chests into the harbour in Boston.

The protest initially united both political parties in Britain against the Colonists, but conciliatory measures were soon offered, but the Boston Tea Party was one of the great milestones on the road to the Revolutionary War of 1775-83.

---

American Colonial history is something that really draws me in, I suppose largely because I know so little about it. Whenever we talk of the British Empire in history, it always seems to focus on India and the African colonies, while America is somewhat swept aside. Off-and-on (more off than on, admittedly), I've been meaning to remedy this, and I'm sure my academic adventures will be shared with you all here!

The Parthenon sculptures

2014-12-08T20:54:00.000+00:00

Evening everyone!
I've been studying the Parthenon sculptures this week, as part of the degree I'm doing with the Open University (I'm currently mid-A219, Exploring the Classical World), so thought I'd share some pictures I'd taken in previous trips to London's British Museum, of the so-called "Elgin Marbles".

These sculptures were originally part of the frieze running around the circumference of the Parthenon in Athens, depicting the Panathenaic Festival (the annual festival for the birthday of Athene). They would have been much higher up than, well, eye level, which makes the level of detail you can see quite astounding, really.

The above sequence shows a priest and a youth folding the peplos, the garment woven by young girls prior to the festival and dedicated to the goddess Athene during the festivities.

The above three pictures are of the metopes, panels that lined the outside of the Parthenon in the entablature - the part of the building directly above the columns and beneath the cornice. These scenes generally show the triumph of (Athenian) civilisation over barbarism, depicted by men wrestling variously with centaurs and Amazons. As with the frieze, these panels would also have been high up - the columns themselves were 34ft high.

Finally, the Pediment, the gable that was situated above the entablature. The Parthenon pediments depicted the birth of Athene (on the east) and the feud between Athene and Poseidon over who would be the patron deity of the city (on the west). Grecian temples were oriented to the east, so I assume the birth of Athene was the more important event. The picture above shows the left side of the east sculpture. The reclining chap is said to be Dionysus, though the story of Athene's birth concerns the father of the gods, Zeus. Zeus, as you may know, had a headache, so enlisted the aid of Hephaestus to crack his head open and alleviate the pressure (you know, as one does), though Athene sprang out fully-clothed and ready for action.

The Parthenon sculptures are fantastic works of art, of course, demonstrating the accomplishment of fifth-century BC Greek artisans, and also tell us a lot about the people of that time, specifically from the panels representing the festival. I'm not going to get into the whole debate over where they belong, as that is such a contentious subject, but suffice it to say that I'm just glad they're on public display and available for general viewing free of charge.

(If you're interested in the vigorous debate on the subject, this site is an interesting place to start).

New look, and Anthony Trollope

2014-12-06T14:47:00.001+00:00

Afternoon everybody!
I'm shocked to see that it's been more than three months since I last made a post on my blog here - shocked, and appalled. So I've decided to kickstart my blog now with my 50th entry, complete with a new look! I'd love to hear your thoughts on that! I'm also hoping that I can begin posting again with some degree of regularity, even if it's just short stuff, as I am posting here now.

I'm going to start, anyway, with a death. On this day in 1882, the English novelist Anthony Trollope died, leaving behind an enormous legacy that includes not only nearly 50 novels, but also the post box.

I haven't read a Trollope novel for many years now, but have long been a fan nevertheless. There's a wonderfully intangible sense of Englishness to his works that I just can't seem to resist. Some of the criticisms I've heard point to a seemingly chocolate-box-style portrayal of an England that is quaint and charming, with little-to-no realism, but to paraphrase Henry James, there was no-one who could appreciate the so thoroughly ordinary as Trollope.

One of these days, I'm hoping to finally getting round to reading the Barsetshire Chronicles, after a couple of aborted attempts in my early teens. One day soon...

On the trail of Charles II!

2014-09-03T19:18:00.002+01:00

As I was reminded by English Heritage on Twitter about ten minutes ago, today marks the anniversary of the Battle of Worcester, 1651, where the future Charles II was defeated by the Parliamentarian forces, and was forced to flee to France. It's a story that has fascinated me since I first heard it as a child, with lots of intrigue and stuff. Here's a record, anyway, of my tour through the footsteps of Charles II back in 1651, as he made it through the countryside, from Boscobel House, to White Ladies Priory, and finally on to Moseley Old Hall.

It's not the actual tree Charles is supposed to have spent the night in...

So there you have it, my trip of six years ago!

World War One

2014-07-28T17:55:00.002+01:00

World War I broke out a hundred years ago today.

To commemorate this, here's a picture of my great-great uncle Jenkin Lloyd, who was killed at the Battle of Cambrai on 23 November 1917.

His parents, my great-great-grandfather & mother, received the accompanying letter from the king in acknowledgement of their loss.

It somehow doesn't seem adequate, but then I'm looking at this at a century's remove. They put the accompanying piece in the local paper, which, I imagine, didn't even begin to cover their own sense of loss.

"Lest we forget", we keep saying. And yet, we have forgotten, because we're still killing each other to this day. I wonder when humanity will realise how fundamentally stupid we all really are.

Edward I and the Conquest of Wales

2014-07-08T12:20:00.002+01:00

Afternoon everyone!
I've been thinking a lot recently about Edward I, particularly having been on a recent tour of the four great castles he built in Wales during the later fifth of the thirteenth century. As a Welsh person myself, it always seems slightly incongruous that I would like a king that so subjugated my native land, but like him I do, nevertheless! So today's blog will be an effort to see just why, among the shadows of the Conquest of Wales.

The man has had some bad press, perhaps understandably, from the vicious ways in which he dealt with uprisings in both Wales and Scotland. Of course, this bad press stems from historians native to those areas, who will perhaps inevitably be a bit biased. English historians are usually a bit better at presenting a balanced view of the man, praising his reform of the legal system and establishment of parliament as a permanent fixture. If you haven't already done so, I can massively recommend reading Marc Morris' excellent book A Great and Terrible King. I am, admittedly, not the biggest fan of Morris' work, but his survey of Edward here is just second to none!

Edward was the eldest son of Henry III, whose reign is often described as 'disastrous' because of the perception that he was a weak ruler. I personally find Henry to be a very likeable chap. I sometimes feel that he was born too early - had he been king of England four or five hundred years later, he would perhaps have been one of the most popular monarchs the country had ever seen. That such a pious and generous man was given England to rule when it needed a much stronger king is his supreme accident, therefore. After some early failed military exploits, Henry revealed himself to be something of a skilled diplomat, but the middle ages wanted more teeth in their rulers, and Henry's son Edward soon came to overshadow his conciliatory father.

Henry's 'fatal generosity' was eventually to spark off the Second Barons War, also known as the de Montfort Rebellion, which raged throughout the 1260s and, at one point, effectively deposed Henry as king. Prince Edward led the king's army at the Battle of Evesham and defeated de Montfort, and one gets the impression that Edward was somewhat unhappy with his father's rule.

Henry III died in 1272, while Edward was on Crusade, so that the coronation didn't take place until two years later. Contemporary accounts describe it as an extremely lavish affair, with everyone who was anyone present for the festivities, except the Prince of Wales...

Edward was a very tall man for the age, standing at 6ft 2in (when the average male of the time was around 5ft 6in). He also had a famously bad temper, and these two facts made him appear particularly frightening to his contemporaries. Despite this, however, he was also a devoted husband to his queen, Eleanor of Castile, and is one of the very few medieval monarchs known to have never had extramarital affairs. When Eleanor died at Lincoln in 1290, Edward was distraught and erected crosses to mark each resting place of her funeral cortege between Lincoln and London, the most notable being Charing Cross. For all his fearsome reputation, Edward adored his wife.

^ the viscera tomb to Eleanor in Lincoln Cathedral

^ the (restored) Eleanor Cross outside Charing Cross Station in London

But a strong and powerful king was precisely what was needed at this time, and Edward almost immediately set about consolidating his position lest another 'disastrous' reign occur. First priority was the Tower of London. Back when William I built it, it was meant to be a symbol of royal authority, a stamp on the English capital that should dissuade any from rebelling against the might of the king. But rebellions against the king had happened, to both Edward's father and grandfather, so Edward set about making the Tower even more frightening, with a much bigger footprint and bang up-to-date concentric defenses.

^ as well as fortifications, Edward set about making the Tower an even more opulent royal palace

The perceived slight by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in not attending Edward's coronation is one of those moments in history that leaves me shaking my head in despair. It also has a massive history of its own. As you may or may not know, the princes of Gwynedd had often been belligerent in conquering lands outside of their Snowdonia heartland, with Llywelyn 'the Great' occupying lands well into Shropshire as well as far south as Pembroke. However, they had always remained princes of Gwynedd. Llywelyn's grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, achieved a major coup when he used Henry III's preoccupation with the de Montfort rebellion to make significant conquest of the king's lands in the Welsh March, destroying the royal castles at Dyserth and Deganwy in the mid-1260s.

^ the ruined curtain wall of Deganwy Castle, high above the Conwy estuary

While Prince Edward was enraged, the king was by now well into his diplomat years, and made peace with the Welsh at the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267, where Henry demanded Llywelyn return lands he had taken in the Welsh March, but in return he would recognise the Welshman as Prince of Wales, ceding all homage required of the nobility in Wales to Llywelyn in return for homage from the newly-recognised Prince himself. Llywelyn agreed, naturally, and became the first and only officially-recognised Welsh Prince of Wales. Edward cooled in his animosity to Llywelyn, perhaps in grudging respect for his father's diplomacy? Not everyone was happy, however - the powerful earl of Hertford and Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare, had received the Lordship of Glamorgan in 1262, and Llywelyn's new status made him a vassal of the Prince, who almost immediately set about invading de Clare's lands. de Clare was one of Edward's staunchest supporters following his change of allegiance from Simon de Montfort to the king in 1265, and acted as one of the Governors of England between the death of Henry and the return of Edward from his crusade. He had become one of the most important nobles of England following the rebellion, and he knew it. His magnificent fortress at Caerphilly attests to his might as a Marcher Lord, as well as perhaps how strongly he opposed Llywelyn.

Conflict with the Marcher Lords was in addition to internecine intrigues. Llywelyn's brother Dafydd had been part of a plot in 1274 with Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, lord of central Powys and newly subject to Llywelyn, to assassinate the new Prince of Wales. When it failed, both Dafydd and Gruffydd fled to London and the protection of Edward. Therefore, when Edward requested Llywelyn's presence in the English capital to pay him homage as his new king, Llywelyn cited Edward's protection of his enemies and refused. Oh dear.

There's yet another strategic blunder to be mentioned, that of the construction of Dolforwyn Castle in 1273. Built following the success of the Treaty of Montgomery, Llywelyn sought to consolidate the approach to his lands along the River Severn, but unwisely chose a site four miles from the royal castle of Montgomery. Furthermore, as a vassal of the king, Llywelyn should have sought permission to build a fortified structure, but he did not. Yet another snub to Edward's position as his feudal overlord.

^ view across the central courtyard of Dolforwyn Castle from the keep

One can perhaps easily imagine the towering rage Edward would have been driven into, as he declared war on Llywelyn in 1276. When the English invaded the following July, it was with a force of 15,500 - of which nearly two-thirds were Welshmen. Says a lot for the character of Llywelyn, wouldn't you say?

Edward marched across the north Welsh coast from Chester, establishing bases as he went in both Flint and Rhuddlan, where castles were established to stamp his authority on the land. The English met the Welsh at the Rivery Conwy, in the shadow of the former royal castle of Deganwy, late in 1277.

^ Flint Castle, with the great keep in the foreground

^ Rhuddlan, one of the great concentric fortresses of Edward's reign.

Llywelyn wasn't entirely stupid, however, and realised he needed to make peace with Edward. He surrendered at Aberconwy Abbey in the November, and under the treaty signed there ceded all of his lands except the principality of Gwynedd (which stretched far across north Wales to the border with Cheshire at this time), but kept his title of Prince of Wales. In order to keep the Welsh in check, Edward began building two royal castles, at Aberystwyth and Builth - both heavy with the symbolism of royal authority and loudly proclaiming to the Prince "England is watching".

^ Aberystwyth Castle, the great gatehouse

^ Builth Castle, only the earthworks remain

The first Welsh campaign shows Edward as a decisive military commander and an exceptionally strong ruler. In contrast, Llywelyn emerges as a fish out of water, and he has always bemused me by thinking he could ever take on the English when his hold on Wales was, at best, quite tenuous. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth had often conducted aggressive foreign policies into England, but he had never neglected to consolidate his own standing in Wales - his grandson would have done better to have learnt from that. I get the sense, therefore, that Llywelyn is justly deserving on the rap on the knuckles that the 1277 campaign turned out to be. Of the two rulers, Edward is by far the one worthy of respect here.

1277 was only the beginning, of course. Under the treaty of Aberconwy, Edward had given lands to Llywelyn's brother Dafydd in what is now central Denbighshire, centred largely on the Clwyd Valley. Hardly prime real estate, Dafydd was unhappy, and succeeded in rousing the lords of Powys and Deheubarth against the English, who had appropriated much of central Wales into the March following the treaty. This rebellion of 1282 is usually described as a nationalist uprising, a war for survival and a war for Welsh national identity. To be honest, I find that hard to deny, because it was very much a Welsh vs English conflict, as opposed to the 1277 campaign that had included so many Welshmen on Edward's side.

One of the major points of contention was the enlargement of the March to engulf the ancient kingdoms of Powys and Deheubarth, and the subsequent imposition of English law on those lands. Welsh law and tradition differed markedly to English in many areas, perhaps principally inheritance laws. The Welsh chafed at this, and rose up in revolt. While I would still maintain that the 1282 revolt has its roots in essentially a land dispute by the jealous firebrand Dafydd, it nevertheless became a national struggle, as much as one can define Wales as a nation at this point.

At Easter 1282, Dafydd attacked the English stronghold at Hawarden, sparking the revolt. Edward's response was characteristically heavy-handed. A three-pronged attack was launched between Gilbert de Clare in the south (from Carmarthen); Roger Mortimer from Shrewsbury, and the king himself from Chester. Edward's intention was undeniably to crush the Welsh once and for all. Should I be annoyed by this? I am Welsh, after all. But I'm not - to a large degree, I feel the pugnacious Welsh brought it on themselves by trying to defeat a superior force. I'm more dismayed for the Welsh than I am annoyed by the English.

Welsh victories came quite quickly, when Gilbert was defeated at Llandeilo Fawr in June, following the English capture of Carreg Cennen Castle. His command of the southern army was relinquished to William de Valance, the Earl of Pembroke, the half-uncle of Edward, who led a much more successful campaign against the Welsh.

Later in the year, Anglesey was captured from the Welsh, including the symbolically important llys at Aberffraw, by Luc de Tany, the Seneschal of Gascony and another staunch ally of Edward. However, Luc's victory was short lived, when he overreached and marched onto the mainland before waiting for Edward's army to cross the Conwy and support them. Llywelyn decimated de Tany in November, setting back Edward's plans for a crushing victory in the north.

However, Llywelyn was perhaps emboldened by his victory over the English, and marched out of Snowdonia to rally support in mid-Wales, believing the Marcher Lords were wavering in their support of Edward. He could not have been more wrong, as these Lords numbered among some of Edward's strongest allies. Also arrayed in mid-Wales was Llywelyn's old nemesis Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, who threw his support behind the Marcher Lords.

Llywelyn was cut down at Cilmeri, near Builth, on 11 December 1282, and his head cut off and sent to London, where it was mockingly adorned with a crown of ivy ('fulfilling' a Welsh dream that Llywelyn would be crowned in London) before being set on a spike on Tower Bridge. The Welsh thereafter rallied around Dafydd.

^ the memorial to Llywelyn the Last at Cilmeri.

Edward took advantage of the Welsh setback to march into Snowdonia in January 1283, where he swiftly captured Dolwyddelan Castle and Criccieth Castle, followed quickly by de Valance's capture of Castell-y-bere in southern Gwynedd. Dafydd managed to hold out until June, when he was finally captured at Dolbadarn Castle and imprisoned at Shrewsbury.

^ Dolwyddelan Castle (the crenellations are Victorian), the ancient stronghold of the Princes of Gwynedd

^ Criccieth Castle, later rebuilt by the English

^ Castell y bere, view across the courtyard into Snowdonia

^ Dolbadarn Castle, deep in the heartland of the Princes of Gwynedd

Dafydd was tried at Shrewsbury and condemned to death on 30 September, the first recorded person condemned for high treason. The now-infamous capital punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering was devised by Edward as Dafydd's punishment for his role in the rebellion, and was carried out at Shrewsbury on 3 October, whereupon his head was sent to London to join that of his brother. His daughter was sent to a convent in Lincolnshire (along with Llywelyn's only daughter), and his sons were imprisoned at Bristol Castle.

With the death of Dafydd, Edward immediately set upon building a series of fortresses surrounding Snowdonia in an 'iron ring', as well as granting land across north Wales to his favourites for them to build yet more castles there. Edward's four great castles of Conwy, Caernarfon, Harlech and Beaumaris are all fearsome symbols of English royal authority in the land.

^ Conwy Castle, the outer ward. The first to be built and originally planned as the seat of royal authority, perhaps in recognition of the 1277 Treaty of Aberconwy?

^ Caernarfon Castle, built to emulate the imperial walls of Constantinople, occupies a site heavy with Welsh legend

^ Harlech Castle, keeping watch over lower Gwynedd

^ Beaumaris Castle on Anglesey, the last of the four to be built and never finished due to a depleted treasury

The castles of the noblemen granted lands across north Wales are no less impressive.

^ Denbigh Castle, built from October 1282 by Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln and Baron Pontefract

^ Hawarden Castle, rebuilt from 1297

^ Holt Castle, built between 1282-1311 by John de Warenne after Edward had made preliminary fortifications in 1277

^ Ruthin Castle, built by Reginald de Grey from 1282 on the site of a castle built by Dafydd in 1277

^ Chirk Castle, built by Roger Mortimer and the only surviving, inhabitable castle left from the Edwardian Conquests

Many of the English castles were planned with boroughs adjacent to them, such as at Conwy and Caernarfon, Denbigh and Ruthin, but under the terms of their charters, no Welsh person was allowed to live or trade within the walls. These laws remained in effect, though perhaps not in execution, until the Tudor period over two hundred years later. The king's favourite mason, Master James of St George, was commissioned to design most of the castles to be at the cutting edge of military design, employing many continental innovations that were otherwise unheard of in Wales at this time.

^ Edward I (centre) instructing Master James (right)

The result of the conquest was a massive land-shift that is not hyperbolic to compare with the Norman Conquest over two hundred years previous. Welshmen were suddenly dispossessed and at the mercy of English lawmakers, who rarely understood the traditional rights of the land, let alone the language. In this sense, then, Edward's conquest of Wales was very much an apocalyptic event in the history of the nation. The investiture of Edward's son, the future Edward II, as Prince of Wales in 1301, provided a further snub to the Welsh by instituting a progression of 'alien' Princes, although Prince Edward was actually born within the confines of Caernarfon Castle in 1284.

^ Edward I bestows the title of Prince of Wales upon his son, Edward of Caernarfon

And yet, I still like Edward I. No matter how much one might want to characterize him as a barbarian, he was an extremely effective ruler, who would brook no challenge to his regnal power. At this period of history, the country needed a king who could stand up to these challenges, as the anarchy of the Barons Wars had shown. It is, seemingly, the curse of any effective ruler to be thought of as ruthless (Thatcher, anyone?) without looking into the reasons behind those actions, or indeed looking at the long-term results. It is entirely possible that, had Llywelyn managed to rein in his brother, the cataclysmic war of 1282-3 would not have come to pass; it is entirely possible that, had Llywelyn recognised Edward as his feudal lord in 1274, the campaign of 1277 would not have come to pass. Llywelyn the Great knew how far - and when - he could push his expansionist foreign policies, but Llywelyn the Last did not, and as such I have no sympathy for the man, who brought about his own destruction, and that of the principality he had stove to create.

Feudalism is an extremely important concept during the high middle ages, and it would take centuries for the ideas to die out. I have tried to emphasize throughout this blog that, under the Treaty of Montgomery, Llywelyn was created a vassal to the king of England, and by all accepted customs and rights of the day, he must pay homage to his feudal overlord or his lands would be forfeit. Llywelyn did not pay homage when it was demanded, and therefore reneged on his part of the Treaty. As such, Edward was entirely within his rights, in a feudal society, to take back the lands of his wayward vassal. Llywelyn disobeyed societal norms for the time. That is not Edward's fault. Edward acted in the manner a thirteenth century king was supposed to react, and Llywelyn just couldn't cope.

And thus, I dismount my soapbox!

Edward I was an extremely capable king, who ruled effectively when the country so desperately needed a strong king. He also had the right men around him, not least Robert Burnell as Lord Chancellor, who headed-up the legal reforms of the realm. Edward's father had been a relatively weak monarch, and his son was to prove to be even more inane, but it wasn't until Edward III that we'd see another medieval monarch so successful at the top job.

Magna Carta

2014-06-15T10:30:00.001+01:00

Morning everyone!
It's June 15, Father's Day here in the UK, but also - as I was reminded this morning by Dan Snow on Twitter - the 799th anniversary of King John's seal being affixed to Magna Carta in a field in Surrey. I'm not going to do a massive blog on this, although the subject is perhaps worthy of such, but instead wanted to share with you all some observations.

The document was drawn up to by the barons as an attempt to curtail the power of the king, who had been running somewhat amok, playing fast and loose with his position as an absolute monarch. Magna Carta is frequently held as an example of triumph of the people, democracy in action, and generally a victory for civil liberty everywhere, when in fact it is more an affirmation of the feudal rights of the nobility and their power over their lands.

Nevertheless, Magna Carta is an immensely important document, not only for showing us what the Angevin nobility thought was an important part of their role, but also for the power it gave them through the so-called "Clause 61". In medieval England - and elsewhere - a practice similar to forfeit was common, called distraint. Should a tenant be unable (or unwilling) to pay his rent, for example, his landlord could quite legally seize all of the tenant's assets and sell them to cover his costs. Clause 61 applied distraint to the monarch for the first time ever, and was quite explosive.

Of the original clauses, three still remain as statute law in Britain today. First, the freedom of the English Church. Second, the "ancient liberties" of the City of London are to be upheld. And finally, the right of any man to due process - that is, essentially, trial by jury. John had been guilty of ravaging the monasteries and churches for money, and imprisoning people arbitrarily for years, so these laws severely curtailed his power in these respects.

John, notoriously distrusting of everyone, affixed his seal to Magna Carta very much under duress, but almost immediately ignored its precepts and had the Pope legally revoke him from his oath to uphold it. The barons had pretty much expected this, anyway, and set about John's deposition almost immediately. They sought to replace him with the dauphin of France, Louis (later Louis VIII 'the Lion'), who landed at Thanet in Kent in 1216 amid the uproar of the First Barons War. Louis was actually proclaimed King at St Paul's Cathedral, but John's sudden death lost his entire support to John's heir, Henry III. William Marshal, acting as regent, led the opposition to Louis, who was defeated at Lincoln in May 1217. He was eventually paid off, and left the country under the promise never to invade again. He didn't have to wait long until he inherited the throne of France, anyway.

Hugh de Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, was one of the many witnesses to the document. It is at Lincoln Cathedral that one of the four surviving copies of Magna Carta is displayed today:

Richard Strauss

2014-06-11T19:54:00.001+01:00

It's June 11th! Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Richard Strauss, one of the greats of the Late Romantic era. I just wanted to do a little blog here to mark the occasion, since he is one of my favourites, though I do have quite a complex relationship with his music! I'm no expert, but want to share some of his music while rambling about him.

Also Sprach Zarathustra has got one of the most-recognised openings in perhaps the entire history of western music, and yet the remaining half-hour of music is barely known, if it's even that lucky. This seems to sum up my relationship with his music, unfortunately, though. There are moments that I absolutely adore, the lush, grand sweep of the late Romantic glamour that envelops you and sends tingles all along your body, but then I find myself zoning out of the rest of it. I am quite often a very lazy listener, and have been trying to better my rapport with the man, but so far, not much has happened.

The Dance of the Seven Veils is enough of a bleeding chunk that it is sufficiently well-known outside the context of the opera Salome, not least because of its raunchiness, but I find myself otherwise lost in this opera. Elektra is a bit more enjoyable, perhaps ironically, as it is much more dissonant and much less "late romantic".

But I suppose this really sums up how weird my feelings about Strauss' music are. I do enjoy the romantic "sweep", but I'm still discovering stuff, and I'm guilty of not trying, sometimes; of not giving it the time it deserves. As a final video snippet, something I've only recently discovered, but is really quite wonderful - the final trio from Der Rosenkavalier.

So there are some minor rambles on Richard Strauss, in celebration of his 150th. Hopefully I've inspired, at any rate!

#DDay70 - a commemoration

2014-06-06T17:11:00.000+01:00

There are some moments in the study of history where you feel so unutterably humbled that it seems no words can suffice. 6 June 2014 marks the 70th anniversary of D-Day, part of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Northern Europe. While the war was to rage on for almost another year, D-Day has always struck me as something of a turning point, but as such it has always been almost overlooked: it is merely a vanguard for the more important VE Day in May 1945. But today, when the internet is commemorating the Normandy landings, there are some that have really stood out for me, and I've been overcome with a sense of the enormity of the sacrifice that these men made seventy years ago. It's truly a humbling moment. So here they are.

Ah, Shropshire! (part six)

2014-05-22T21:28:00.000+01:00

I bet you all thought I'd finished my series of Shropshire blogs! The county is so full of history and awesome places, though, that there is still quite a bit of important stuff I've yet to discover out there! Today, however, will be a fairly short blog, as I turn my attention to the south of the county, and the town of Ludlow!

To start with, a surprise (at least, it was to me): Ludlow isn't in Domesday Book. It's a surprise because the history of the town is quite significant, and yet there was no settlement here until at least the twelfth century! The town's history begins squarely with the castle, which was begun possibly in 1075 by William de Lacy, a member of William fitzOsbern's household, though no documentary evidence actually exists for the castle until 1139, where it is embroiled in the Anarchy of Stephen's war with Matilda. During the Conquest of Ireland later in the twelfth century, the castle was taken into royal custodianship to ensure the loyalty of the current baron, Hugh de Lacy, to the king. Seems a bit extreme, but the king was Richard I... Hugh didn't fare much better under John, frequently having to pay fines to keep custody of his lands.

^ the Inner Gatehouse

In 1223 we see the beginnings of Ludlow as an important centre in the March, when Henry III met with Llywelyn the Great to conduct peace talks following the Welsh raids into Shropshire. You may recall that Llywelyn already held land in the county, including the castle at Ellesmere? Well, in the wake of John's death and the advent of the boy-king Henry III, Llywelyn had been making territorial gains. While ultimately no accord was reached, the choice of Ludlow, as opposed to, say, Shrewsbury Castle, is, I think, significant. It's almost in the centre of the Wales/England border, after all, but it's also quite a formidable defensive structure.

^ the round Chapel Tower, with the Great Chamber block behind

During Simon de Montfort's rebellion in 1263-5, the rebels worked alongside the Welsh to harry the king's forces throughout the March. Ludlow was captured by de Montfort in 1264, though it was later recaptured for the king. In the fourteenth century, Ludlow passed into the hands of Roger Mortimer by marriage. You may recall Mortimer from my blog on Hereford? Well, before he was made first Earl of March, he was Lord of Ludlow, a title brought by his wife Joan de Geneville. While Roger became the lover of Queen Isabella and led the revolt against her husband Edward II, the king had imprisoned Joan at Skipton Castle. Roger's affair with Isabella was basically public knowledge, but it is not known what Joan made of it all. When the young Edward III eventually executed Mortimer in 1330, Joan was again imprisoned until Edward gave her a full pardon six years later, along with the restoration of her lands.

^ (left to right) the Great Kitchen and service wing, and the Solar and Great Hall

In the Wars of the Roses during the following century, the castle was captured by Richard, duke of York, and following the accession of his son as Edward IV, Ludlow Castle was made into something of a Marcher palace. In 1472, Edward formed the Council of the Marches, which would provide government for the area, and installed his son Edward the Prince of Wales here as the Council's nominal head.

^ the Tudor apartments, added when the castle was converted into a more comfortable residence

Perhaps its most famous occupant was another Prince of Wales, Arthur, the eldest son of Henry VII and first husband of Catherine of Aragon. In late 1501, following their marriage, they made the long trek from St Paul's to Ludlow, during which time both became ill with an unidentified ailment perhaps the mysterious 'sweating sickness' that plagued the land for a century. While Catherine recovered, Arthur died on 2 April 1502, nearly six months after their marriage. Catherine of course went on to marry Arthur's brother, Henry VIII, and what did or did not happen between the marital sheets at Ludlow would be debated throughout the 1520s-1530s as Henry sought to divorce his Spanish queen.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, the President of the Council of the Marches was Sir Henry Sidney, who added the Solar block (above) and continued to alter the fabric of the castle into a more comfortable residence.

^ the Judge's Lodging, with the Keep behind

When the Civil War broke out, Ludlow was garrisoned for the king, and following a siege by the Parliamentarian forces in 1646, the royalists negotiated a surrender, which allowed the castle to escape slighting following the end of the war. It remained the seat of the Council of the Marches until 1689, and since then it has declined. Nevertheless, it is a magnificent beast of a castle, and one that I can highly recommend visiting!

Indeed, the entire market town of Ludlow is exceptional.

While there is lots of half-timbered loveliness to admire in the rambling streets of the town, also well worth a visit is the Church of St Lawrence, the largest parish church in Shropshire.

The rest of Prince Arthur is buried in Worcester Cathedral, in case you were wondering.

The church is also renowned for the carvings of the misericords. Basically resting posts for the more invalid of the congregation, misericords were intended to ease the suffering of having to stand through entire services when you were sick. Those at Ludlow feature the old English fertility symbol, the Green Man:

So yes, Ludlow is a fantastic place to visit, with a real sense of history coming from the place.

The Suppression of the Monasteries

2014-05-21T16:51:00.001+01:00

It's been almost two years since I started writing these blogs, and I wanted to do something to mark the milestone, so thought a presentation on one of what I consider to be the most interesting periods of British history very apt. I've mentioned it in what feels like every single blog entry I have made, so to tie everything together, as well as laying a solid foundation for many more to come (I hope), I'd like to begin another of these "history lessons": The Suppression of the Monasteries.

The Monastic Background
The story of monasticism really begins with St Anthony in the Egyptian desert, sometime in the third century AD. Christianity is a missionary religion, but there have always been large numbers of believers who have wanted to get away from earthly temptations, not to mention the endless persecutions suffered before the Edict of Milan, and devote their lives to prayer and to God. Saint Anthony is one of the Desert Fathers, who led hermitic lives in the Egyptian desert. His ascetic lifestyle, and the lives of the thousands who followed his example both during his lifetime and after, laid the foundations for the monastic movement.

Possibly the single most important figure in the early story is St Benedict of Nursia, who founded a monastery in Monte Cassino in 529 in an attempt to flee the moral failings of Rome. He wrote his famous Rule of St Benedict in the 540s, setting out the main precepts for monks wishing to live in a monastic community under the rule of an abbot. His example was being copied far and wide as the Dark Ages wore on that hundreds of monasteries had been founded across Europe by the time Charlemagne ordered the Rule to be distributed throughout these communities as the moral standard by which the monks and nuns within should live their lives.

In Britain, however, there is also a strong influence from the Celtic Saints who swept through the British Isles from Ireland - St Patrick, St Ninian, St Cuthbert, St Illtyd, St David and St Columba are all important forces for monasticism's hold in the country. Monastic foundations at Whithorn, Lindisfarne, Iona, Clonmacnois, Llantwit Major, Caldy Island and St Davids all were founded by these Celtic missionary saints, who learned from each other before founding houses of their own. A cohesive monastic movement it was not, however, as monastic foundations tended to be localised affairs under their own abbot or abbess, inspiring others to strike out on their own and not to blandly imitate.

Irish monasticism was based on a community of people living together under the rule of the abbot or abbess, on land granted for the purpose by the leading local family. As time wore on, the abbot or abbess was chosen from among this ruling family, keeping the strong ties between the secular and the sacred within the community. As the centuries wore on towards the Norman invasion, the Irish way was blended with the Rule of St Benedict into the system of monasticism that flourished throughout not just Britain but, thanks to the missionaries, most of Europe.

Education was always a hugely important function of the monasteries, and foundations such as Lindisfarne, Monkwearmouth-Jarrow and St Davids were all important centres of learning in the early middle ages. Thanks to successive endowments of land from nobles, many monasteries became quite wealthy in this age, with gold plate and jewel-encrusted altarpieces. During the Viking raids from the eighth century, monasteries were singled out and attacked for this precise reason, but following the establishment of the Danelaw and some degree of peace between the marauding Danes and the native Saxons, monasticism continued to flourish as it had been.

The Normans
Monasteries were nothing new, then, when the Normans arrived in 1066. However, the invaders brought with them a special kind of monasticism, the Benedictine Order. Despite being called a 'rule', St Benedict's words had been taken more as a guideline or framework for establishing a monastic community, and it was generally a starting point for monks to live their lives. In 910, Cluny Abbey was established in the Loire, and the Rule of St Benedict was taken to heart as the way to live a monastic life. A rigorous routine of work and prayer ('ora et labora') was established, and caught on so well that other monasteries were established in imitation. These monasteries were called 'priories' to reflect their subordination to the original Abbey.

With the Norman Invasion, the Cluniac way was brought to England, and Lewes Priory was the first monastery to be founded from Cluny in Britain. Others followed, and soon many monasteries were founded throughout the country, the land donated by the Norman magnates and monks brought over from France. The power of Cluny increased, reflected in the size of the abbey, which was the largest church in the Christian world until the new St Peter's Basilica was completed in 1626.

Discord, and A New Way
However, temporal power should not be the aim of any religious house, and the Benedictine Order began to fragment because of this. Many sought a stricter Rule, which is ironic given the Benedictines were originally founded because of this need, and several groups splintered from the Order. Among them were the Premonstratensian Canons, who followed the Rule of St Augustine and founded more autonomous abbeys first in Germany and Austria in the 1120s, before sweeping through central Europe and to Britain, such as Dryburgh and Fearn in Scotland, Egglestone in County Durham and Easby near Richmond, and Talley Abbey in Wales. The Savignac Order traces its origins to 1105 and the Abbey of Savigny, where a congregation of monks gathered around the hermit St Vitalis in an effort to reform the Benedictine Order from within. At first very successful, being exported to Britain largely by the patronage of King Stephen, with the first foundation at Furness in Cumbria, by 1147 the Order had hit financial difficulties and merged with the Cistercians (more shortly).

In 1131 the first (and only) wholly British monastic Order was created by St Gilbert, the Gilbertine Order. Catering for both canons (men) and nuns (women), the Order soon outgrew St Gilbert's church at Sempringham, Lincolnshire, as his popularity spread. Joint houses for men and women had existed in pre-Norman Britain, but the Gilbertine Order was the only one to cater for this in the modern monastic context, perhaps accounting for this popularity. Gilbert, unable to cope with this explosion of popularity, asked to merge with the Cistercians also, but due to the mixed nature of his monasteries was refused.

The Carmelite Order appears in 1226 following the rule of St Albert, which is a sort of pared-down version of that of St Benedict. The White Friars, they founded monasteries in towns and cities, such as Chester, Coventry, Nottingham and Gloucester, and were a part of the Mendicant movement of monasticism that sought to bring religion to the people and work within the community rather than to shun society in favour of cloistered asceticism.

Other mendicant Orders to appear in the early thirteenth century were the Franciscans (Grey Friars, founded 1206), Dominicans (Black Friars, founded around 1216), and the Augustinians (founded 1244, without colour). All of these orders had foundations in Britain, centred around the rapidly-growing towns and cities where often more than one church could be found catering to the spiritual needs of the populace.

However, the most successful of the Benedictine offshoots - indeed, a true medieval success story - was the Cistercian Order. Founded in 1098 at Citeaux Abbey, near Dijon, it was with the foundation of Clairvaux Abbey in 1115 by a monk from Citeaux, St Bernard of Clairvaux, that the principle of the Order was established. St Bernard insisted on a strict following of the Rule of St Benedict, and ensured the Rule was enforced throughout the monastery. The practice of establishing 'daughter houses' from the 'mother house' (all Cistercian monasteries were dedicated to St Mary the Virgin), allowed for their rapid spread throughout Europe. Unlike early Celtic traditions of self-sufficiency, Cistercian monasteries had strong ties to each other, and a General Chapter was called annually at the mother house in Citeaux, where all Cistercian abbots attended. A modern-day AGM, if you will.

I have discussed the Cistercian methods previously as comparable to modern business, and the analogy is clear from the economy of the Order. While still reliant on donations of land from the nobility, Cistercians would accept any land, be it arable or scrub, and set to work terraforming what they were given in order to turn a profit. Following an age of lavishness and near-luxury, the Cistercians emphasized ascetic living and a purity of space, which is really exactly what the spirit of the age demanded. The 'back to basics' way proved very popular, and people flocked to join the Order. This popularity led more and more nobles to endow Cistercian monasteries with land, which allowed the Order to spread throughout Europe. The Cistercians arrived in Britain in 1128 at Waverley Abbey in Surrey, and in just over thirty years, Waverley spawned five daughters of its own, which in turn had also gone on to create more daughters. In Wales, the first Cistercian monastery was Tintern, founded from L'Aumone in 1131, and Rievaulx Abbey was founded a year later in North Yorkshire as a staging-ground to launch the Cistercian Invasion of Scotland. This took place in 1136 at Melrose Abbey, with ten more abbeys founded throughout Scotland tracing their origins to Rievaulx. Ireland, with a strong religious monastic tradition of its own, saw the first Cistercians in 1142 at Mellifont, Co. Louth.

It's a wonder the Cistercian monks found any time for prayer at all, given all this movement. The Cistercian way around this was ingenious, really - to ensure the monks could give sufficient time to prayer, they recruited lay-brothers to do the work demanded by the Rule of St Benedict for them. Basically uneducated locals, lay-brothers would tend the fields and look after the repairs and other day-to-day mundanity, while the choir monks would copy texts, both groups coming together to attend the eight services in the church throughout the day. Only, it wasn't quite a coming together, as the church was a divided place with the lay-brothers at one end and the choir monks at the other. Cistercian popularity led to enormous landholding power, and so a system of granges was developed, basically manor farms where lay-brothers could work the land under the oversight of a steward. The real economic power-base for the monasteries lay in these granges, specifically the sheep farms that produced the wool Cistercians became famous for dealing in. Before the discovery of America, and thus the discovery of cotton, all clothing was made of wool (unless you were rich enough to afford silk), and supply for wool was enormous. Cistercian wool from granges across Britain was sold to Florence and Venice, as well as Belgium and France. Because of this, abbots found themselves with actual economic, temporal power, only a couple of centuries after the Order was first founded in an attempt to escape from this development within the Benedictine Order.

The Cistercians continued their missionary activities throughout the twelfth century and into the thirteenth, the Golden Age of monasticism. As new monastic foundations slowed down in the middle of the thirteenth century, the Cistercians turned their attention to consolidating their position by rebuilding their churches and monastic buildings in stone. These ventures began in quite a simple and restrained manner, but as time wore on the buildings became increasingly dazzling in terms of their decoration, and ever more daring in terms of what they accomplished. Gothic architecture became the order of the day, and the flamboyance of English Gothic in particular led to the development of the Perpendicular style of unimagined decadence of design. Only the Black Death put a stop to that.

In fact, the Black Death put a stop to most monastic activity. Numbers were down, both in choir monks and in lay brothers, so granges were sold off (often to the lay brothers who farmed them), and the centre of interest was contracted around the abbey. Many houses found themselves in huge debt in the aftermath of the pestilence, as the abbots had been speculating on the wool trade to gain the money required to build in ever more lavish style. This proved to be only a temporary setback, however, as many abbeys recovered into the fifteenth century, albeit nowhere near the heyday of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Emerging Nationalism
However, another problem arose in the fifteenth century, in the years following the Hundred Years War. Most of the monastic foundations in Britain owed their provenance to France, with whom England had just been at war. While Cistercian abbeys were largely autonomous, attending the General Chapter in France but otherwise regarded as domestic establishments, the Cluniac Priories were distinctly French, paying a stipend to Cluny every year. As such, they were known as 'alien' priories. King John had first attacked the alien priories, demanding a payment of his own, or 'apport', which in a way is a fair decision. The Church had become one of the biggest landowners in England, and not only charged rents on lands it did not farm directly, but claimed a tithe to any person living on Church lands - a tenth of the rent the landlord collected. The Pope furthermore demanded the Church levy a tax of the first year's income on any new landowner. This money, in the case of the Cluniac priories, often found its way across the Channel. Edward I re-implemented the apport while at war in Gascony, and Edward II continued the policy (though perhaps more as a form of taxation than due to any real Nationalism). Edward III initially fostered good terms with the alien priories, cancelling the apport, until the Hundred Years War broke out in 1337. In addition to the apport, land was also lost by the priories during the conflict - the worst blow coming in 1378 when the monks were expelled from the country.

Some priories were placed under the control of domestic abbeys, but many others petitioned to be naturalized. Wenlock Priory in Shropshire petitioned Richard II in 1395 and was granted Englishness for the sum of £400 (nearly £8m in 2011) and the condition that prayers were said for his deceased wife Anne of Bohemia annually on the anniversary of her death.

The Political Aspect
So much for monasticism's religious history. However, this blog purports to be about the Suppression of the Monasteries, so now you know all about the beginnings of these great buildings, let's move on.

The Wars of the Roses are really where it all begins. A subject too fascinating to discuss as merely a part of another blog, I'll suffice for now to say that it was an on-and-off civil war that lasted thirty years between the ruling nobles of the country. The victor of course was Henry VII, descendant of the duke of Lancaster who founded the Tudor dynasty and married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV, to cement his claim to the throne. Henry is famous also for his calculating plans for his rule, including planning the futures for his children. His eldest son, Arthur, was married to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella (the ones who joined together the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile respectively to create the kingdom of Spain, and who also financed Christopher Columbus in his trek to America). His second son Henry was destined to be Archbishop of Canterbury, if not a Cardinal or more. His daughter Margaret was married to the King of Scotland, and his youngest daughter was married to the King of France.

All went well until, five months after the marriage, Prince Arthur died, in somewhat mysterious circumstances. However, the mystery only arises because of what happened later. After some manoeuvering on Henry's part, Catherine was married to the second son, now Prince Henry, and all was well in the kingdom. The marriage was specifically allowed by a Papal Bull issued by Julius II, even after Catherine testified it had never been consummated, which allowed in canon law for Henry to take his brother's place.

Henry succeeded his father as Henry VIII in 1509, aged 18 and with all the confidence of a new King Arthur. Catherine was immediately pressed into service as the Royal Baby Machine, and over the course of her marriage to Henry she found herself pregnant six times, though only one child made it to adulthood, Mary. There is barely a year between some of these births, the poor woman. By the time of her sixth pregnancy, which ended with a daughter who survived six days, Catherine was in her late 30s and considered too old to continue in the function of Queen.

The Great Matter
Anne Boleyn, however, wasn't. The daughter of the Earl of Hampshire and granddaughter of the Duke of Norfolk, Anne was Catherine's lady-in-waiting. Due to certain historical fictions, it seems we all now know her elder sister Mary Boleyn was a previous mistress to the King (in fact she bore Henry two children, neither of whom was officially recognized by him), and so it is logical that Anne would have seen what had happened to mistresses once they were no longer flavour of the month. There has been much sexing-up of the situation of Anne Boleyn, portrayed as a power-hungry succubus who had her eyes set on the throne and Catherine's downfall almost as soon as she arrived at court from her years spent in training on the Continent. Also, much has been made of Henry's break with Rome simply to get Anne into bed. But I do believe this chronically-simplistic view of things fails to take account of some very important facts.

Anne undoubtedly attracted Henry, possibly in ways Catherine never did. For example, Henry is known to have liked his girls to have small breasts and feet, which Anne had (by all accounts). Anne brought with her from the Continent some very interesting ideas, however, and I feel that it is possibly these that ignited a spark in Henry almost as much as those other bits. She challenged him, and she is believed to have actually stood up to him in philosophical discourse. She also stood up to him as regards moving up to the bedroom - she refused to have sex with the King until she was his Queen. Bold stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

Henry was trained to be Archbishop of Canterbury, remember. A startling part of this fact is that he corresponded with the religious philosopher Erasmus when he was still a child, but in such a way as to appear as equals rather than master-and-pupil. Henry, being a prince of the realm and destined for the church no less, had the very best education his father the King could provide, perhaps even more so than his elder brother Arthur - a future Archbishop would need more academic education than a future King. Even after his brother's death, Henry's education was impeccable. When Martin Luther nailed his list of ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Henry wrote a very astute letter of condemnation that so impressed the Pope that Henry was granted the title Defender of the Faith, something that the monarch still holds to this day. My point in all this, anyway, is that Henry knew his theology, and he knew it as an expert.

There is also the reason why I prefaced this with going back to the Wars of the Roses. Henry knew that the anarchy of civil war would return unless he could father a strong son to succeed him, as the debacle of Henry VI's reign had shown. Perhaps mindful of the relatively weak claim to the throne his dynasty had, his overriding concern was the continuation of the Tudor line through a male heir, and Catherine was now judged to be too old to provide him with one. I believe this concern was the biggest of Henry's reign, and if not Anne, then there would have been a marriage sought to some other woman who could perhaps provide the son Henry so desperately needed.

So Henry resolved to divorce Catherine and marry Anne.

This is actually possible in canon law, it is not the case that Henry stopped being a Catholic in order to divorce his wife. Far from it - Henry in fact never really saw himself as anything other than a Catholic. It isn't so much a divorce, however, as an annulment - the marriage was illegal ab initio, and so is considered to have never taken place. Henry knew canon law, of course, and sent his secretary to Pope Clement VII in 1527 to petition for the earlier Papal Bull issued by Julius II that allowed his marriage in the first place to be declared null and void. The idea was that Catherine had lied about the marriage never being consummated, and so the Papal Bull had been issued under false pretenses. A nice piece of stage-management, that: Henry didn't want to be so crass as to say Julius was outright wrong to allow the marriage, merely that Catherine was so wily as to hoodwink even the Pope.

However, in one of history's great coincidences, Clement VII proved to be incapable of providing an answer, as Rome was under siege by Charles I of Spain: Catherine's nephew. While Clement VII had initially managed to escape to the Castel Sant'Angelo, he was still Charles' prisoner to a degree. When Cardinal Wolsey called a full ecclesiastical court with a Papal Legate present, it soon became clear that the Pope would not grant the divorce. Wolsey began to plot with the Pope to have Anne removed from England, but this was discovered and the Cardinal was due to be tried for treason but died on the way to London.

Henry's entire case for annulment rested on a passage in Leviticus (20:21), which states "And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing: he has uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless". Despite the fact that his daughter Mary was in her mid-teens at this point, Henry clung to the passage as vindication. Catherine had testified that she and Arthur had never had sex, which Henry claimed to be a lie. He managed to procure "witnesses" to the fact that, once they were housed in Ludlow Castle after their marriage, Arthur was heard to call for a drink one morning, claiming marriage to be "thirsty work". This and other such ribald 'lads' talk' overheard by the guardsmen was used as proof to denounce Catherine as a liar.

I must admit, it does seem a bit strange. Catherine was on the cusp of turning 16 when she married Arthur, and he was about six months younger. They were very much of an age, by medieval standards, for procreation. Catherine claimed that illness kept them apart from the moment they reached Ludlow, and by the time she had recovered, Arthur was dead.

The back-and-forth between Rome and England began to tire Henry, who began to put the wheels in motion to progress the situation.

Henry installed Thomas Cranmer, the Boleyn family chaplain, as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, managing to manipulate Clement VII into approving Cranmer in the post, and shortly afterwards married Anne Boleyn. In a ceremony at Dunstable Priory, Cranmer confirmed the validity of the King's marriage to Anne, and decreed that to Catherine was null and void because she had previously been married to the King's dead brother. Catherine found herself now under a strange form of house arrest at Kimbolton Castle in Cambridgeshire, where she was permitted visitors but refused to see her daughter, or in fact to leave. She died in January 1536, with rumours that Henry or Anne (or both) had poisoned her. On the day of her death, Anne miscarried a son.

The cost
So Henry had married Anne, and had effectively granted himself annulment of his marriage to Catherine. Firstly, Clement VII excommunicated Henry and Cranmer for going against his prohibition of the marriage. In turn, Henry passed the Act of First Fruit and Tenths. As mentioned earlier, the Church claimed a tenth of all rents and the first year's income on a new landowner's profits from his land. Well, Henry stopped that in 1534, diverting the money into his own treasury. Anne, perhaps on a suggestion of the Bishop of Salisbury, suggested the first-fruit income (valued at £14,000 in 1534, the equivalent of £7.7m in 2011) be used instead on charitable works for the poor, and it is still in effect today, known as Queen Anne's Bounty.

Next on the legislative table was the Ecclesiastical Licences Act, known also as the Peter's Pence Act, forbade any other form of payment by an English landowner to Rome. Peter's Pence specifically is the annual tribute collected on 1 August since 1031, although it was often withheld during the fourteenth century against "obstinate" Popes. Unlike with the tithes, the payment ceased altogether, the Act specifically stating it would not be collected by anyone. It also allowed any dispensations formerly made by the Pope to now be made by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Preamble of the Act makes the first reference to the King being the absolute head of the realm and subject to no-one, temporally or spiritually. Interesting stuff, which paved the way for part three in this legal triptych.

The Act of Supremacy passed in 1534 made Henry the supreme head of the Church in England. There is a very crucial preposition here. Henry is head of the Church in England, not of England. The Church of England comes later. Henry kept traditional Catholic practices and condemned as many Protestant heretics as he did Catholic ones. All the Act of Supremacy does is essentially confer the privileges of the Pope upon Henry within England (although no second Schism occurs because Henry is very careful not to actually claim the title of Pope for himself). Thomas Cranmer is famous for feeling the Reformation under Henry did not go far enough, and it wasn't until Edward VI that the Church of England began to supplant Catholicism properly.

So what about the monasteries?
For a long time, monastic life had been moving far away from the ideals of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A career in the Church had been a viable option for centuries - I've already mentioned how it was the preferred choice for second-born sons, Henry being a case in point. If the fact that monasticism was seen as a "career" and not a "calling" doesn't set alarm bells ringing, then the increasingly materialistic life of ecclesiastic foundations should. Abbeys and Priories across the entire nation had been amassing a lot of land, from which they derived a lot of wealth, which was initially ploughed into the monastic community, specifically into the beatification of the House. As a product of their increased landholdings, abbots and priors became astute businessmen, and began to gave themselves licence to a more worldly existence, if you will.

Initially, the monastic ideal was that all men are equal before God. This quickly was proven to be a lie when one monk would be elected the abbot or prior, elevating him to a higher status than the other monks. The abbot would, at first, sleep in the dormitory with his monks, but as the centuries marched on the abbot granted himself separate quarters. Of course, today this seems highly suspect, and we might point to it as immediate evidence of monastic ideals breaking down, but in the medieval context appearances were important. Particularly important in the communication of status in a highly stratified society. As massive landowners, monasteries (and in particular, the abbot or prior) had a very important position in this society and so a very important image to project. So, while on the one hand the self-aggrandizement of abbots and priors appears to be evidence of a secularization of the monasteries and a breakdown in their purpose, on the other it is merely a response to the developments of the world outside the precinct.

Further divisions occurred when lay-brothers were recruited, the choir monks quickly delegating all the menial tasks, as I have previously discussed. But even the recruitment of lay-brothers can say much for the continuing spirituality of monasteries. Choir monks had more time to devote to the holy work, the 'labora', of the Rule of St Benedict, so it could perhaps be said that an increase of spirituality was a result of this.

And yet, this is not the picture that emerges in the official record. Wolsey had made some effort earlier in the century to curb the abuses of the Church, which had crept in over the years of religious monopoly. It is well known that the Church charged for pardons, and also the practice of land-grabbing secured by 'mortmain', but there are many other infractions committed in the name of God. In a feudal society, men held land of the King in exchange for military service, and after his death his lands reverted to the King - when men left their lands to the Church, the religious institution would never die, and so the lands would never revert to the King (I'm sure you all know the scenes in the episode The Archbishop of The Black Adder?) This one in particular had stymied many a monarch, and Edward I had tried to make some effort to stop this in the 1270s, to say nothing of Magna Carta's efforts.

Manoeuverings
It is unclear when exactly Henry turned his attentions to the monasteries. Suspicions abound as to whether Anne Boleyn turned his attention to the Houses of the Lord, of course. The fact of the matter is, however, that a series of expensive foreign wars in the 1520s on the Continent had left Henry's treasury quite severely depleted. In fact, his entire reign could almost be said to have been an exercise in depleting the coffers his father had been so careful in building. But involvement in the Italian Wars, and also in his continual one-upmanship with Francis I of France, made him desirous of money. Which is something the monasteries possessed in abundance by this time. The King's Chief Minister Thomas Cromwell had been working to diminish the monastic income, on the grounds that it was inappropriately gained. Mortmain in particular was seen as an illegal misappropriation of the King's funds, anyway.

In January 1535, things began in earnest when Cromwell dispatched his men to survey the monastic holdings throughout the realm. This valuation, the Valor Ecclesiasticus, assessed the income of the religious houses thoughout England and Wales, and the approximate value of all their lands and possessions. As a fringe benefit, it also passed comment on the state of affairs in each. There are problems with this survey, of course, as certain assumptions can be made that cast its validity into doubt. Thomas Cromwell has already been shown to be anti-monastic, and could well have instructed his men to "find" evidence of the moral lapse in the abbeys and priories. Or perhaps the commissioners would have thought by making such "discoveries" they were pleasing Cromwell (and, by extension, the King), for their own advancement at court. The Valor Ecclesiasticus, while being of infinite interest in studying this topic, must be treated with a large degree of caution.

Assuming, then, that Henry and Cromwell treated the Valor Ecclesiasticus as nothing more than fabricated evidence to justify their foregone conclusion that the monasteries would be closed, why on earth would one be interested in it? Well, ignoring the accounts of the various iniquities reported to take place at the monasteries, it is entirely possible that the valuations were more accurate. For example, Westminster Abbey is deemed to be the wealthiest monastery in England, followed by Bury St Edmunds and Glastonbury. These top three houses are known to have been extremely wealthy in their day - Westminster being the "royal monastery", and both Bury St Edmunds and Glastonbury were exceptionally wealthy because of the pilgrim 'trade'.

Some of the reports have abbeys where the monks perhaps have separate sleeping quarters (rather than the communal dormitory), their abbot living in something akin to a hall-house rather than the more simplistic life. These kinds of developments are perhaps a natural progression of the increasingly materialistic middle-ages, and so when the monastery is said to have had such "lapses", its valuation can perhaps be taken with a greater degree of certainty. Other monasteries have quite perverse goings-on, such as Haughmond Abbey, where the monks appear to have been given over to paedophilia and fornication, drunkenness and idleness, among other accusations. This of course can be true, but it is sometimes so outrageous that it perhaps needs to be taken with more than a pinch of salt.

The Valor Ecclesiasticus also set about disproving the power of relics, upon which the pilgrim business relied, and all of which smacked far too much of popery for the nascent Anglican country. Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire was well-known for its possession of, among others, a phial of Holy Blood. Cromwell's commissioners 'proved' that this 'relic' was in fact a fake, securing the abbot's own admission. However, there is also the peculiar story from Durham, where the commissioners opened St Cuthbert's tomb to disprove his sainthood, but found the body to be perfectly preserved - and thus, proving the very fact they had hoped to expose as fraud.

Personally, I think that there are many instances within the pages of the Valor Ecclesiasticus where the situation is either exaggerated or plain fabricated in order to paint a picture of a degraded way of life, and justify the coming action from the King.

The Beginning of the End
Either way, the reports of the commissioners formed the basis for the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535. By the clauses of this Act, any religious house that is worth less than £200 was to be dissolved, its property reverting to the King in perpetuity. The law came into force in March 1536, with hundreds of monasteries closing down. Interestingly, it was possible for monasteries to buy their way out of this, and continue on past 1536, if they paid the difference between their assessed income and the £200 figure needed to continue operating. More than 60 monasteries went down this route, but they weren't to know it was but a temporary reprieve.

It is difficult to discern precisely how much money Henry gained from this first round of closures, but it certainly made him very rich. Figures like £1.5million have been mentioned (this is, staggeringly, equivalent to about £22,290,000,000 in 2011-terms) but so much of monastic income was tied up in land and rents, as well as what I suppose you could call their 'mineral wealth', ie the money gained from selling off the lead, the gold plate, the glass, etc. More reasonable estimates have been made around £150,000 (nearly £82m).

It wasn't as bad as it all sounds, though. When we think of the Dissolution of the Monasteries today, if we think of it at all, there is perhaps a tendency to concentrate on the bare facts - Henry VIII closed the monasteries, seized their assets, and began the process of Anglicanisation of the country. It sounds like Henry really was the tyrant history seems intent on making him. The monks were pensioned off, however, with many given homes in the community and jobs as parish priests. If there was a monastery within the area still left open (over 200 of them were left alone by the 1535 Act), the monks were allowed to go there and continue a religious life. Officially, of course, Henry was doing the long-overdue job of cleaning up the religious life of his kingdom.

The Pilgrimage of Grace
It would be wrong to assume, of course, that the monks just accepted all of this. While it is true that some were quite happy with their pensions, and some possibly welcomed the possibility of returning to the material world, undoubtedly many were upset with the course of events. We're talking about men who lived in an age of spirituality, no matter how degraded that may have become since the glory days of the thirteenth century. It was still a widely held belief that God was real and heaven existed as a real place, and people still lived in abject terror of the thought of going to hell once they died. Men who had dedicated themselves to a life of prayer and seclusion were having that life turned upside-down, and some of them weren't happy about it.

In October 1536, the holy men of Lincolnshire had had enough. To an extent, the revolt was brought about by the king's commissioners, who went about the business of stripping those monasteries that had been closed with an almost lewd, brute vigour. The popular uprising in Lincolnshire brought over 40,000 people to Lincoln Cathedral, where they demanded to be allowed to continue to worship as Catholics, and that the property of the cathedral be left alone. Henry's response was predictably intolerant. He sent the duke of Suffolk to disperse the rebels, and the ringleaders were executed for treason within days. However, this popular protest paved the way for the much larger event of late 1536, the Pilgrimage of Grace.

The London barrister Robert Aske presented a series of grievances the people of Yorkshire had with the king's actions, notably what were seen by conservative northerners as religious abuses. Furthermore, by this time, Anne Boleyn had been executed and Henry had since married Jane Seymour. The people had been unimpressed at the king's treatment of Catherine, but were even more disgusted at the way he was carrying on, and the execution of Anne served to undermine a lot of the early ideals of the Act of Supremacy.

Robert Aske and his followers marched on York, expelled the king's tenants from the abbey and resumed Catholic services, returning the monks and nuns to their former places. Popular support proved to be so great that the king opened negotiations with the rebels, and promised to halt any further monastic suppression until he had reconvened parliament. Round One to the rebels.

The following February, all hell broke loose. The leaders of the rising were captured and executed for treason, including six abbots of the northern abbeys, and numerous monks, parish priests, and noblemen. 216 in total, and with the executions of the leaders, the revolts soon died out. However, there are elements of success that cannot be overlooked here, as well.

The Reformation?
As you probably know, the commonly-accepted beginning of Protestantism and the Reformation of the Church began in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his list to the church door in Wittenberg. Martin Luther drew attention to the many abuses of ecclesiastical power in evidence at the time, and his views gained considerable support, crucially from the nobility who sheltered him from the Pope's ire. While Lutheran doctrine grew across the Holy Roman Empire, many other reformers also took up the cause with their own thoughts, notably Huldrych Zwingli in Switzerland. Zwingli in turn can be seen to have inspired that great French reformer John Calvin. Continental Reformation was sweeping like wildfire throughout the formerly Catholic nations of Europe, and its ideologies were often extreme.

The big issue was the mysticism of the mass. Catholicism holds that, during the mass, the communion wafer and wine are transubstantiated through the religious power of the officiating priest into literally the body and blood of Christ. Through partaking of this communion, a sacramental union is formed between the worshipper and Christ, that can only be achieved through the ordained power of the priest. Believers can, consequently, only enter heaven as a saved soul through having partaken of communion while on Earth. That priests often charged for this formed the brunt of Luther's attack.

But it also began people thinking about the sacrament. Did the priest really have the ability to transform bread into the body of Christ? Luther didn't think so, neither did Zwingli. For the Protestant reformers, the idea became that the bread and the wine are symbolic of Jesus' presence, but not his actual body or blood. Zwingli in particular pointed to the line where Jesus performs the first sacrament, saying "Do this in remembrance of me" - the sacrament of the mass becomes a memorial, where the presence of Christ is embodied through the communion but the wafer remains a wafer, a memorial of Christ's sacrifice.

Centuries of religious practice, however, were difficult to undo. True, many thinkers tended to agree with the reformers, and Calvin's Geneva became a haven for like-minded individuals who were persecuted in their native land. But in the main, people were comfortable with what they'd been doing since time immemorial, and the thought of change was upsetting. When Henry began his reform of the Church in England, therefore, he was careful not to ruffle more feathers than absolutely necessary where doctrine was concerned.

The Ten Articles of 1536 were the first step in producing a reformed doctrine in England, but they did not follow the more 'established reforms' of the Continent. Four of the seven sacraments were removed, however the transubstantiation of the Eucharist was kept, making early Anglicanism more Catholic than Protestant. Similarly, in 1538 a conference was held with Anglican Bishops and German theologians over the correct course to take, but still transubstantiation was kept, as well as clerical celibacy and private mass, some of the more roundly-criticised abuses of Luther's Augsburg Confession. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, however, had wanted to bring a more Lutheran approach to the nascent Anglican Church. The Six Articles of 1538 hold many similarities with Catholic doctrine, showing that, while Henry broke with the Pope, he did not break with Catholicism itself.

The End of Monasticism
While he may not have broken with Catholicism itself, he nevertheless continued to close monasteries. In 1537, the abbot of Furness Abbey offered to voluntarily surrender the monastery to mitigate his part in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and following this, voluntary surrenders were accepted by Thomas Cromwell across the country. From 1538, attention was turned to the other religious houses in England - while the secluded monasteries that dotted the countryside were the first casualties, the urban friaries had been left alone. However, as the fifteenth century had marched on, observant friars had declined to the point where, in the 1520s and 1530s, many friary buildings were under-manned and almost derelict. Ignoring the fact that friars performed a valuable service to the community, notably education and important social care roles, friaries were forced to surrender throughout 1538, wiping out the orders in Britain within the year.

In 1535 the Suppression of Religious Houses Act had dissolved any religious house whose total annual income was less than £200, but that still left over 550 religious houses open and functioning. In 1539, a Second Act of Dissolution was passed to close down this remainder. All religious houses were legally the property of the king and his heirs, to dispose of how they pleased. The larger houses that had initially escaped dissolution were hereby closed, culminating in Waltham Abbey, Essex, which finally surrendered on 23 March 1540.

The new era
However, this isn't to say that there was a day, or even a few hours, where there was no religion in England. I did used to think it possible, as all of the history books seem to narrate the course of events being that Henry first dissolved all the monasteries, then set up a new system of cathedrals and bishoprics. The two processes actually overlapped. Eight of the former monastic cathedrals were reinstated as cathedrals of the new Anglican Church, and six new cathedrals were formed out of former monastic churches. This process took some time, with such important sites as Canterbury not being conferred as cathedrals until 1541.

By and large, however, monastic property was sold off to increase revenue for the Crown. Almost as soon as the suppression had began, nobles were petitioning the king to buy former monastic land, and throughout the entire process, Henry continued to accept offers of purchase rather than go through the more protracted auction route. Many former monastic houses were converted into palatial homes for the rich, such as Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, and Neath Abbey in Glamorgan. The fact that monastic buildings had been undergoing increasing domestication over the fifteenth century made this process relatively easy. Some churches were bought by their communities, Binham Priory in Norfolk and Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire are two examples that continue to this day with part of the fabric still being used for religious services.

But in the main, the once-magnificent abbey buildings crumbled into ruin as their stone was robbed-out for other building projects. Valle Crucis Abbey in Denbighshire became a dairy farm, Tintern Abbey in Gwent became an ironworks.

It has been suggested that the dissolution of the monasteries adversely affected the development of England. One example was the discovery of a blast furnace at Rievaulx for smelting iron, which would appear to have been on a par with early industrial processes of the eighteenth century. Did the dissolution put back the industrial revolution by two centuries? Material wealth aside, monasteries were also great repositories of learning, and a lot of the knowledge was lost when their scriptoria were raided and trashed. Travel around the country could often be dangerous and expensive, but monasteries could provide safe havens of hospitality for travelers.

The educational function of friaries was replaced by the grammar schools, and care for the poor and sick reverted to parish councils and the later workhouses. Henry VIII single-handedly closed an entire chapter of English history with the dissolution, and initiated perhaps the biggest reapportionment of land since the Norman Conquest nearly five centuries earlier. The legacy of this can be seen today in the vast, skeletal remains of buildings across the landscape.

Croxden Abbey

2014-05-19T14:49:00.000+01:00

Welcome back! Good grief, it feels like an age since I last made a posting here!

As you may or may not know, I'm currently doing a degree with the Open University, and have very nearly finished the first half of the second level, so am roughly halfway through the entire six-year process. Things have been a bit hectic of late, due to the increased workload, so I've not been able to post as often as I'd like. However, once the exam is out of the way on 4 June, I hope to be back with more interesting stuff!

For now, I'd like to share a short blog about one of my favourite English Heritage places, Croxden Abbey in Staffordshire.

The abbey is quite literally breathtaking, with huge fragments of the west front and south transept jutting into the sky in the otherwise quiet farming countryside. Perhaps a little disconcerting, there is a road bisecting the abbey church, but there are still lots of remains to be discovered!

The abbey was founded in 1176 as a daughter house of Aunay-sur-Odon, by the Norman baron Bertram of Verdun. While there is some information for the first few centuries of its existence, very little is known of Croxden's later history. This lack of record has led to the assumption that the abbey was never very wealthy. Aside from the fact that it was finally suppressed in 1538, in the first round of the dissolution, that's pretty much all there is to it!

But what the historical record doesn't tell us, the abbey itself can help to fill in some of the blanks. In the middle of the thirteenth century, the abbey was enlarged, and the dimensions of the remains would indicate that there was room for as many as 70 monks to live here.

^ looking towards the dormitories and parlour

The fourteenth century saw the addition of a separate hall for the abbot. Nothing particularly novel here, as many abbots were building their own personal quarters in this period. Monasteries, of course, were among the wealthiest landowners in the country.

The most striking thing about Croxden Abbey, though, is the east end of the presbytery. Now nothing more than foundations with a small fragment, it was rebuilt shortly after the monastery was founded in a more continental fashion, with a curved ambulatory off which were five small chapels, forming a cinquefoil shape.

The east end was also used as a burial place during the fourteenth century for esteemed patrons, rather than the more common Chapter House. Coffins can be seen dotted around in the above picture.

^ the north transept, looking down the nave

The records for Croxden in the thirteenth century are really very interesting. As a Cistercian monastery, the abbot was required to attend the General Chapter held every year at Citeaux, near Dijon. Undertaking such a long journey could be extremely dangerous in the middle ages, and the tales associated with Croxden's abbots serve to underline this fact. In 1237 Abbot Ashbourne died on his way back, while in 1274, Abbot Houlton died while in Dijon, which at least gave him a magnificent funeral as over 400 Cistercian abbots were in attendance. In 1298, Edward I forbade any English abbot from attending the General Chapter, demanding the money that would have been spent on the journey instead be paid to the Crown. Being deep into his Scottish wars, this no doubt had more than just a patriotic, anti-French sentiment behind it. However, in 1308, Abbot Over just refused to go, and so in 1313 the mother house paid a visit to Croxden.

Economic problems soon set in as the fourteenth century wore on. By the mid-century, the abbey was in such financial state that the Abbot of Aunay personally investigated. The Abbot was deposed, and while the new abbot made some changes and began to turn the problems around, further plagues and bad harvests, followed by part of the abbey collapsing in 1369, led to the eventual decline of the abbey. By 1381 there were only six monks and the abbot in residence.

^ the cloister, looking towards the west front

The Valor Ecclesiasticus valued Croxden at £103 6s 7d, though it has been suggested that this was an under-valuation. At any rate, while it came within the 1536 criteria for dissolution, the abbey obtained a licence to stay open after paying a fine of £100. This didn't last, of course, and the abbey was forced to close on 17 September, 1538, the final valuation of the property being put at £163 8s 10d. The abbey was stripped of all valuables, and the site was leased to Francis Bassett, a servant of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

^ the Chapter House

The abbey is a bit convoluted to find, I thought - it is signposted (just about) from the B5030 near Uttoxeter, but it is secluded enough that it does take some persistence to find! However, I think you'll agree from the pictures here that it is well worth a visit!

#MuseumWeek

2014-03-25T21:11:00.000+00:00

Wow, #MuseumWeek really snuck up on me! For those of you who don't know, it's a chance to celebrate the work of museums and galleries all over the UK, giving some fascinating insight into the inner workings of these amazing institutions. To get involved, head over to twitter and use the hashtag #MuseumWeek, where you'll find all sorts of great stuff going on!

Unfortunately for me, the real world of the day job has intruded, and I'm not going to get to visit anywhere exciting during the actual week itself, but didn't want to leave such an important event go unmarked here at the Heritage Hunter blog! So I'd like to share some of my pictures from the most-visited museum in the UK, the British Museum!

What started out as the private collection of the physician Sir Hans Sloane was made by act of parliament into the British Museum on 7 June 1753, and now numbers over 8 million objects within its archive. Here are some of those that I've enjoyed over the years:

So there you have it, just a small sampling of one of the finest museums the world has to offer! If you haven't yet been - shame on you! I can highly recommend it!

Amendments to the heritage bill

2014-03-03T19:40:00.000+00:00

Evening everone!

As you may have seen, the Welsh Assembly Government has today opened consultation on the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites 1979 Act, with regard to the criminal offences and defences in sections 2, 28 and 42.

The sections in question relate to work being carried out on historical monuments; to intentional damage or destruction, and to metal-detecting (another hot topic of late!). You can read the Act here.

I would urge you all to make your views felt NOW - I have!

Remember, we only have one historical environment, and it is irreplaceable. Any damage that is done to it can currently be excused because the person involved "didn't know" this was the case. However, ignorance of the law should never be an excuse. I believe the law already gives adequate protection to people who legally have a reason to, say, take a hammer to a historic site. Section 42 in particular appears to me to be giving undue protection to illegal metal-detecting.

So go on, drop them an email now!

A month of civil war! part eight

2014-01-30T16:00:00.000+00:00

Yes, faithful readers, part eight has dawned already - and with it, we near the end of this overview of the English Civil War.

There were effectively three civil wars in England in the first half of the seventeenth century, though it was the second conflict that saw the execution of Charles I and the introduction of the Republic. As I'm sure you'll remember, we left Charles riding into the parliamentary camp at Southwell, and royalist organisation effectively died with the king's surrender in 1646. There began a long period of negotiation throughout 1646, with Charles being seen as the lynchpin to control of the country by whichever faction could successfully treat with him, be they the Scots, the Independents, the New Model Army, or the Presbyterian government in Westminster. Charles clearly knew this, and so courted each side as he made the rounds through the country. In December, Charles made a play for Scottish support by agreeing to implement the Solemn League and Covenant, while he was being kept in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. While this never officially happened, it was enough to garner some significant Scottish support in the war that followed.

It's important to note that Charles was not a prisoner during this time, and certainly nobody wanted to cut his head off. Remember, the Civil War had started in 1642 as a 'rescue mission' by Parliament. Charles was kept in a degree of luxury, albeit under guard, but in 1647 members of the Army captured him, setting in motion the events of the Second Civil War.

Round Two
The issue of pay was a long-standing one between the Army and Parliament, but when they captured Charles, Parliament used the issue to their advantage, withholding arrears in an attempt to coerce them into handing the king over. However, the officers of the New Model Army found themselves in an increasingly important position politically, because they held the king in their custody, and it was enough to make the Scots resume their alliance with Parliament's Presbyterian faction - and the remaining royalists, no less - and declare war on the army.

The Second Civil War had the curious effect of almost reversing the factions of the earlier conflict, as the New Model Army mutinied and declared their support for the king in February 1648. The new Royalists were once the military instrument of Parliament. However, the military action of the Second war was comparatively short-lived, and has been described since more as a revolt than an actual civil war.

Following the Army declaring for the king in February/March, a wave of uprisings broke out against parliament, swiftly put down by Cromwell, Fairfax and others. By August, the war was effectively over, when Charles' troops were roundly defeated at the Battle of Preston. Charles was in the north to meet with the Scottish support for his negotiations from December 1646, known as The Engagement, but Cromwell crushed the Scottish army and ended any hope of reinstating Charles as king.

The Rump
You'll remember, I'm sure, that I began this series by saying that it was on 1 January 1649 that Parliament decided to put Charles on trial. So, what happened to bring them to this point?

At the end of the war, there was quite a high demand for the king to be punished, especially for inciting the second conflict, which was seen by many as wasteful and unnecessary. What is perhaps odd, though, is that many had thought the Charles' position during the first war was justifiable. Negotiations began to put Charles back on the throne as a constitutional monarch - that is, a king under the law. This had already been negotiated in Scotland, as part of the National Covenant of 1638 (remember, Charles ruled in Scotland separately to how he ruled in England and in Ireland).

The idea of returning Charles to the throne infuriated many of the more die-hard Independents, including Cromwell, and on 6 December 1648 a contingent of the military was led into Parliament by Colonel Thomas Pride. Subsequently, any MP who had shown himself to be supportive of restoring Charles to the throne was removed from the House, and in Pride's Purge, about 200 MPs were forcibly removed from power. The remaining 75 MPs then formed the 'Rump' Parliament, which was to govern England for the foreseeable future.

Can they really try him?
The answer to this question is a lot more complicated than a simple yes or no, and a stunning example of legal manoeuvering, I have to admit! On 1 January, it is true that the Rump did not have the legal authority to try the king - much less try him for treason, which was defined on the statute books as killing the king (among other things). However, let's look at this in some more detail.

English history isn't exactly replete with precedents, but similar situations have arisen in the past nonetheless. Edward II was asked by parliament to abdicate before he disappeared, for instance. In 1485, Henry VII actually amended the treason law to legitimize his own coup that overthrew Richard III, so that if the man who sat the throne wasn't the legal king, but only the king in name, it did not constitute treason to kill him.

However, on 4 January 1649, the Rump passed a sort of preliminary vote that essentially gave themselves the right to try the king:
1) The people of the kingdom are the source of all just power, second only to God;
2) The House of Commons, being the elected body of the people, is therefore the source of all just power in the kingdom; therefore
3) The House of Commons has the sole legislative power in the kingdom.

How does this allow them to try the king? Well, the legal system in England was built in three stages: a bill must pass through the Commons, the Lords, then the King before it became law. During the war, this had broken down when Parliament was issuing its 'Ordnances' that were sort of emergency laws that didn't require the Lords or the Royal Assent, but the vote of 4 January basically made it law that the Lords and the King were not required to make a bill law. This is pretty mind-blowing stuff, but it does get worse.

"Remember I am your King, your lawful King..."
With that established, the date for the king's trial was set for 20 January 1649. 150 commissioners were named to act as the jury, including six peers, though tensions remained high throughout the month, and their number was reduced to 135 before the trial, though it was decided that only 20 would actually be required to deliberate if necessary. As it happened, no more than 68 ever appeared at any one session during the trial.

Charles Stuart, king of England, the Commons of England assembled in Parliament, being deeply sensible of the calamities that have been brought upon this nation, which is fixed upon you as the principal author of it...

So began the trial, with an acclamation of blame for the war firmly at the feet of the king. When the prosecutor actually charged him with treason, Charles was said to have laughed, before making his famous rebuttal, "I would know by what power I am called hither". Reading through the transcript of the trial, which was of course made by a Parliamentary scribe, I admit I had a degree of empathy with Charles: a group of men decides they have the power to hold a trial and, after amending the constitution to allow them to do so, they try him for treason, though it is clear that they have already decided his guilt before the date was even set. I would probably have laughed at them, as well.

Charles was accused of abusing his executive powers as king, though the irony here is that the Rump Parliament effectively abused their powers when they did away with the legislative checks on power and gave themselves the power to pass a law. In principle, the Rump Parliament were as bad as the king they were trying.

But, treason?
It is undeniable that the charge of treason is a thorny one. As I said before, the Treason Act defined treason as the murder or attempted murder of the king, the heir apparent, the queen, or the lord chancellor of the kingdom, or the raising of arms against any of those four persons. The moment the Earl of Essex raised his army and pursued Charles through the midlands in 1642, he was arguably guilty of treason, and the subsequent civil war made the entire parliamentary cause treasonous.

But history is written by the winners, of course, and Charles had raised arms against his country, and so was guilty before he even sat a trial.

I sound like I am sympathizing strongly with Charles here, I know. I should say that my sympathies lie with the legal system, and I feel that the Rump Parliament abused that system for its own purposes when they did away with the Lords and the King. There can be no doubting that a king who raises arms against his own people has failed, of course. Charles' own belief in the divine right of kings ought to have prevented the civil war itself, as the belief states that God has chosen the king to govern his people fairly and justly. Charles' behaviour does smack strongly of a temper tantrum, of course, and so is unbecoming for a monarch, but I'm not sure that could justify the constitutional manipulation undertaken by the Rump to enforce its will.

At any rate, Charles refused to formally answer the charges laid against him. Instead, he continually questioned, when he was allowed to speak, the legality of the court before which he was arraigned. It was, perhaps, a too subtle tactic. The commissioners were charging him with killing his own subjects, and Charles' defense, such as it was, was to question the authority of the men who questioned him. Despite several incidences of Charles appearing to be getting the better of the judges, who told him to stop with his line of questioning in what appears to be a blustering fashion, it ultimately proved fatal for him, as a defendant who enters no plea was assumed to have plead guilty by the law of the time. As such, Charles was found to be guilty on 24 January, and condemned to death.

Charles was, at this time, still king, which was affirmed by the clerk when he read the sentence. This was, therefore, something quite new in English history - the reigning king was sentenced to death while still in office by his own subjects. Again, pretty mind-blowing stuff! On 27 January, Parliament passed an act that made it illegal to declare any person to be king, though did not formally abolish the monarchy until 17 March. The House of Lords had, by that time, already been abolished on 6 February.

Execution
It is perhaps common currency the story of Charles asking for two shirts on the morning of his execution, due to the unseasonably cold weather making him shiver. It is also fairly common knowledge that Parliament struggled to find a suitable executioner, the City's hangman having refused. In fact, Alexandre Dumas makes a bit of a tale out of this in Twenty Years After, the sequel to The Three Musketeers, where D'Artagnan et al race to save Charles from the block, only to be thwarted when the son of Milady roughly does the job himself. (If you haven't already, I can highly recommend reading Dumas' novels, which are full of swashbuckling adventure!).

After making a mournful speech, which was likely not heard beyond the scaffold due to the large crowd of soldiers that interposed between it and the people, Charles was executed in one clean stroke around 2pm. It was common practice for the executioner to hold the head by the hair to the crowd, and declare "Behold, the head of a traitor!", but the words were not spoken, presumably because the person who eventually acted as the headsman did not want to be recognised.

Denied burial at Westminster Abbey, Charles was interred at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, with his head reattached.

Interregnum
The execution of the king did not stop the fighting, which continued in Ireland until 1653 as the Third Civil War, and would again spark up later in the century. Oliver Cromwell vehemently opposed any idea that he would succeed Charles as king, but as leader of the Puritans in Parliament, he accepted the title of Lord Protector in 1653, and nominated his son Richard to succeed him in his place upon his death in 1658. It is perhaps quite ironic that Cromwell himself grew tired of rule by parliament and dissolved the Rump in 1653, echoing Charles' own frustrated actions all the way back in 1629.

The army maintained significant power throughout the period of the Commonwealth, and when it appeared that the politicians were losing sight of the original aims of the civil wars, they had sufficient power as to force Richard Cromwell to dissolve Parliament in 1659, reinstated first the Rump Parliament, then the MPs who had been expelled in Pride's Purge of 1648, before finally negotiating to restore the monarchy itself in the person of the former Prince of Wales as Charles II.

But!
It would be remiss to think the Restoration of 1660 was a return to some form of 'old way'. Charles II was a constitutional monarch, but he was still allowed to dissolve parliament when needed: the 1664 Triennial Act stipulated that a parliament must meet every three years, but did away with the previous requirements that it could only be dissolved with its own permission. The Restoration was, instead, a re-imagining of what monarchy should be. Despite promising religious toleration in his Declaration of Breda made shortly before he returned to England, Charles II's first parliament passed a flurry of pro-Anglican laws that severely curtailed the powerbase of the Puritans, perhaps in the hope that they wouldn't start another war now that Charles had reopened the theatres...

So that's my month of Civil War finished! Only intended as a high-level overview, I hope it has inspired you to find out more, and maybe visit a battlefield or two!

A month of civil war! part seven

2014-01-25T18:43:00.000+00:00

Part seven already!

We left the Civil War in 1644, with the forces of parliament in the ascendant. However, things weren't all that rosy in London, as cracks began to appear. However, this was perhaps inevitable, as opposition to Charles was based on several different grievances, which made for an already split group before the war officially broke out. So following Marston Moor, when a distinct group of MPs loosely led by the Earl of Manchester began to manoeuvre for peace negotiations rather than a total victory. Cromwell actually called him up on this in parliament, exposing the fractures between the groups who commanded the army further.

This led to the Self-Denying Ordnance, which excluded from parliament any military commander, and vice-versa. It was the first step on the road to creating the New Model Army, which would prove to be so valuable to parliament in the further prosecution of the war.

There was also a religious aspect to these divisions. Part of the agreement with Scotland that prefaced the Solemn League and Covenant was for religious reformation in England along the lines of the Church of Scotland, whose supporters were called Presbyterians. Opponents to this idea wanted no hierarchy within the church - no bishops, no presbyteries - and instead wanted the congregation to decide its own way for itself. These were called Independents, and much in they way they opposed a hierarchy in the church, they were also much less inclined to a restoration of the monarchy as time went on.

In April 1645, the New-Model Ordnance led to the creation of a new model of army, one cohesive unit under the control of parliament, rather than separate units commanded by MPs and lords in a loose coalition. The New Model Army, as it became known, was also notable for its religious heterodoxy. Following the lapsing of censorship in 1640, there was a degree of religious freedom, with many different sects and ideologies appearing. Many of the officers, however, were staunch Independents.

The Clubmen
I said at the beginning of this series that the civil war in England was not all that enthusiastically received. There is perhaps a tendency to think, after reading all of the accounts of the wars, that the country did suddenly fall one side of an imaginary divide, with royalists on one side, and parliamentarians on another. "Cheshire declared for the king" makes it sound like the entire county was pro-Charles, staunch to the last. That just isn't true, of course - landowners in Cheshire might declare for the king, but the rest of the people who lived there wanted nothing more than to continue on with their lives in as much peace as they were allowed. I suppose the biggest idea to take away from this is that, for most of the people in any particular county, it just didn't matter.

However, when the war was brought home, and stampeding ranks of soldiers were ravaging the countryside on their way to one battle or another, it did matter. While many 'ordinary' people did fight in the war as part of the militia, the dispute between king and parliament was not what motivated them. But when their own livelihood was threatened, matters were taken in hand.

And this is where the Clubmen come in. This is, for me, a wonderful expression of that 'ordinary' sentiment, of people who want to be left out of wars, but also of common sense. Literally bands of men with clubs and other farming implements, Clubmen first gathered in Worcestershire in 1645 to protect their lands and their families from the marauding soldiers who would frequently pass through, destroying land and seizing crops and other supplies as they went.

As time went on, organization became more sophisticated, with even local gentry who had desired to stay neutral in the war setting up bands of vigilante-like men to protect their lands. A third party to the war, they often tried to force peace on the warring factions. Perhaps understandably then, they were popular with neither side, and it wasn't long before military campaigns were taking account of the potential presence of Clubmen and moving against them.

On the road to Naseby
In 1645, Rupert was sent north to attempt to re-take control there. The New Model Army, after some early successes, then went to lay siege to Oxford, despite the fact that Charles had already left his capital. When this was discovered, Parliament, a little shamefacedly, gave full command of the army to Lord Fairfax, who immediately pursued Charles throughout the midlands. Charles and Rupert, having stormed Leicester, marched first to Newark for reinforcements before heading for Oxford and Fairfax.

On a foggy 14 June, the opposing armies at first struggled to find each other. When battle eventually broke out, the infantry was so close that after one volley of musketfire things devolved into hand-to-hand combat. The royalist cavalry were forced to charge uphill, and it didn't take much for Cromwell's flank to defeat them. The remaining parliamentarian forces were able to encircle much of the royalist army, causing many to surrender or flee, with only Rupert's own regiment left standing. The King attempted to lead a charge to relieve them, but it is said his bridle was taken by the Earl of Carnwath, who dissuaded him from riding into certain death, and in the confusion his own bodyguards retreated from the field.

With the royalists in disarray, and the New Model Army successful in its first major engagement, parliamentarian forces appear to have then run amok among the royal baggage train, killing at least one hundred female camp followers. This atrocity against civilians was nothing compared with the PR disaster that resulted from the capture of Charles I's personal correspondence, however.

The King's Cabinet Opened
Remember how many people were convinced, in the 1630s, that Charles was some sort of closet-Catholic, and would ruin the kingdom because of it? Well, it turns out they were half-right. Charles' personal letters captured at the battle revealed that he was in secret talks with the Irish Catholic Confederation, as well as many Catholic nations on the continent, to supply him with troops to continue the war against parliament. Of course, parliament wasted no time in publishing these letters, to the general outcry of the public, and thus tipped public opinion firmly away from Charles.

The remainder of 1645 was one disaster after another for the royalists. Prince Rupert appears to have been significantly depressed by the course of events, and surrendered Bristol to Fairfax on 10 September. Charles was horrified, and banished Rupert from the kingdom. Charles rode to Chester, but parliamentarian forces were dogging his every step, and his forces were repelled at Rowton Heath on 24 September.

1646: The End
With the New Model Army overrunning the south, royalist bastions began to fall like dominoes. In February 1646 at the Battle of Torrington, the royalist army was finally defeated in the field, and the New Model Army began mopping up the remnants. Charles, in what was quite possibly utter despair, rode into the Scottish camp at Southwell on 5 May. Oxford fell to parliament in June, and peace negotiations formally began in July. It seemed like the hostilities had come to an end.

However, it was not to be so simple! Come back soon for the next installment in A month of civil war!

A month of civil war! part six

2014-01-24T19:43:00.001+00:00

And we're back! I do hope you're enjoying this short series as much as me!

We left the civil war in 1643, with the Irish conflict at a truce and the Scots joining the parliamentarian armies following the Solemn League and Convent. 1644 saw a lot of action around the Midlands, as the balance of power shifted from the King to Parliament. In January, the royalists were defeated at Nantwich and many prominent generals were taken prisoner. Among them, George Monck, who took the Covenant and defected to Parliament.

The Scottish appearance in the war put pressure on England from the north, of course, as their army was marching south. The Earl of Newcastle was put under tremendous pressure, and Rupert was tasked with his relief. However, when Newark was besieged in March 1644 by the Scots, Rupert was instructed to proceed there with all due speed - Newark being of strategic importance to the royalists in preventing a parliamentary advance into the royalist-held north. Rupert rode across country and surprised the parliamentarians, trapping them outside the city walls and forcing a surrender. Rupert's lifting of the siege became one of his greatest personal triumphs of the war.

In Parliament, the plan of attack was to combine the forces of Essex with the East Midlands divisions under the Earl of Manchester in one crushing attack against the king. (Incidentally, that's not Manchester, Lancashire, which was little more than a small village at the time, but Godmanchester in Cambridgeshire - the 'God' being left off the peerage title because of religious connotations).

However, following the Siege of Newark that Rupert had lifted earlier in the year, the Eastern army was in no position to comply with this demand. However, that didn't mean parliament was out of tricks, and in May they lay siege to Oxford itself! With Maurice (Rupert's brother) troubling Lyme Regis, and Charles trying to re-take Bristol, Essex led his army to relieve Lyme Regis leaving the army marching on Oxford largely without support.

On to Marston Moor

The Earl of Leven had ridden down from Scotland following the signing of the Covenant, around the same time as Sir Thomas Fairfax rode northwards to Hull, threatening York, the centre of royalist support in the north. The Earl of Newcastle split his army to defend both York and the Tyne, but when the Earl of Manchester came to reinforce Fairfax, things were getting distinctly warm for the royalists.

Prince Rupert was busy throughout this time dashing about the north, liberating Liverpool before he then rode on to York. The parliamentarian forces, hearing Rupert had reached Knaresborough, rode out from York to meet him, though the Prince managed to outflank them and ride straight into York itself on 1 July 1644. Rupert met up with Newcastle in the city, who tried to convince him to ride south to join forces with the king, but Rupert ignored the advice and rode back to meet Essex.

The armies met the following day at Marston Moor, just west of York. Rupert was outnumbered, and Newcastle was arguing strongly against fighting a pitched battle. However, Rupert didn't listen. With the Scots/Parliamentarians occupying the high ground, and royalist troops in the marshy lowland moor, this was never going to go well for the king's men.

As at Edgehill the previous year, early royalist charges led to the cavalry chasing down the routed troops or looting the baggage train. With fighting continuing throughout the night, and men fleeing the battlefield from both sides, the battle was brought to a close by the disciplined forces of the Eastern Association, under the command of Manchester's lieutenant general Oliver Cromwell. 4000 royalists were killed, with a further 1500 of the leaders captured; parliament claimed only 300 of their own allied force fell in the battle. Royalist survivors fled back to York, and Newcastle himself decided he had had enough and left the country altogether, going into exile in Hamburg the day after the battle.

Rupert left York soon after, too quickly for the Scots/Parliamentarian force to capture him, so they instead resumed the siege of York, which surrendered on 16 July. Rupert's first defeat of the war was the beginning of the end of his legend of invincibility; it also marked the ascendancy of Oliver Cromwell as a leading force in parliament. The discipline of his troops was widely acknowledged as causing the parliamentarian victory, and brought him out of Manchester's shadow.

What next?

Parliament's victory led to the ejection of the royalists from the north of England, but the war was far from over. The greatest problem for MPs was that they had a king who no longer had a place in the country. However, after achieving such a victory, many MPs thought they were now in a strong position to negotiate for peace. Others, however - Cromwell included - demanded a complete and utter parliamentarian victory. I'll look at this in greater detail next time...

A month of civil war! part five

2014-01-15T17:49:00.001+00:00

Here we go again! Last time we looked at the beginnings of the war, culminating in the Battle of Edgehill on on 23 October 1642. Following the battle, Charles spent the winter securing his position at Oxford while Essex remained at Windsor. The Earl of Newcastle, William Cavendish - a stalwart supporter of the King, who was relied upon for financial assistance in the absence of the possibility of Charles raising taxes - began to march south to Newark and Nottingham, with the aim of securing the northern ports for the arrival of Queen Henrietta Maria from the United Provinces, where her daughter Mary was married to William II of Orange and who had pledged materiel for the war effort. Lord Derby's efforts throughout Cheshire and Lancashire enabled the royalists under Lord Byron at Chester could link up with Newcastle's forces in Nottinghamshire, securing the north for the King. As a precaution, parliamentary forces began to band together in the east, headed by Oliver Cromwell.

The war of words
It was in 1643 that the journalistic war began, with the royalist propaganda machine publishing the Mercurius Aulicus from Oxford. Parliament soon responded with their own Mercurius Britanicus. These newsbooks, along with over a dozen others that sometimes only lasted for an issue or two, attempted to put their own version of events across to the general public. Broadly speaking, the Aulicus portrayed the parliamentary forces as brutal thugs who frequently engaged in destructive behaviour, even such as attacks on cathedrals (as at Peterborough), while the Britanicus engaged in snide remarks about the King's position within his country, and the popish behaviour of the royalists. Indeed, there's an excellent description of Charles bouncing around the kingdom like a tennis ball, as the war became increasingly frenetic.

1643 began quite badly for Charles, with Essex besieging Reading successfully in April. As the most significant of the fortresses in the buffer between royalist Oxford and parliamentarian London, its loss was dangerous, but the Queen eventually arrived in May with her convoy of materiel, and the King's fortunes began to change. In July, thanks to the brilliance of Charles' nephews Maurice of Simmern and Rupert of the Rhine, Bristol was in royalist possession - Bristol of course was England's second most-important port at this time. Essex' army at Reading was forced to withdraw due to the outbreak of disease, but Charles was unable to capitalize on his successes by marching on London due to dissent in the ranks. With armies largely made up of Yorkshiremen and Devon natives, but Parliament in control of Hull and Plymouth, the generals were unwilling to risk retaliations at their homes by moving against London.

Instead, Charles moved west, and planned to attack Gloucester. After an ineffective siege, relieved by Essex, the royalists chased off the parliamentarian army and they arrived on 20 September at Newbury.

The Battle of Newbury
Parliamentarian intelligence had given Essex to understand that Charles had retired to Oxford, so he led a leisurely retreat to London when in actual fact Prince Rupert's cavalry were gaining on them every day. When they eventually caught up, Rupert harassed the parliamentarians enough that the royalist infantry caught up, and by 20 September, battle was imminent!

Essex' forces began early, and managed to gain the high ground that proved so decisive to the battle. Rupert led the main cavalry charge in an attempt to break the parliamentarian ranks, but their stubborn defense proved difficult to overcome. A combination of heavy artillery fire and stubborn resolve caused the royalists to over-commit, resulting in significant losses. The infantry under Lord Byron had used the most part of the royalist gunpowder to no avail, so by midnight when the two armies eventually disengaged, the royalists were in pretty poor shape. Essex expected to re-engage the following day, but Charles' men were in no state, and reluctantly moved north to Oxford, leaving the way clear for Essex to return via Reading to London.

However...
1643 also saw two very important agreements reached by each side, that would ensure the war would not be concluded any time soon. Firstly, Charles reached a truce with the Catholic rebellion in Ireland, where hostilities were for the time being suspended, and the Irish Catholic Confederation formed as a government in Kilkenny. This truce was interpreted as an ill omen in Parliament, for many thought an Irish alliance with Charles was on the cards - remember, many already thought he was pro-Catholic, so it wasn't entirely impossible to imagine. The fateful words of Lord Strafford uttered to Charles during the Bishops' Wars in Scotland came back to haunt the king, as well - when Charles couldn't raise an army to oppose the Scots in 1639, Strafford had told him there were men in Ireland he could use 'to reduce the kingdom'. He meant, it is now understood, to reduce Scotland, but in the volatile climate of Civil War England, Parliament decided he had meant to reduce England.

So to guard against such an alliance, Parliament negotiated with Edinburgh a Solemn League and Covenant, which effectively brought Scotland into the war against Charles. In return, the Scottish Presbyterian Church would be adopted as the national church, which was fine with many of the Puritans in Parliament, though remained ambiguous enough in its talk of religious reform that it was agreed to by most MPs. But not all. Some MPs actually left London in protest. Mercurius Aulicus had some choice words to say on the subject, and made the most it could of portraying the cracks that were forming among the leadership in London.

Next time, we're on our way to Marston Moor, and I'll also be looking at those cracks in some more detail!

A month of civil war! part four

2014-01-10T14:00:00.000+00:00

It's part four! We've seen the European background to the conflict, and we've seen both the religious and the political state of the nations of the British isles. But what actually happened during the Civil War in England? What were the Scots - to say nothing of the Irish - up to? Well, let's take a look!

We left Charles last time with his standard raised in Nottingham, on 22 August 1642. What exactly does this mean, though? By raising his banner, he summoned his army to him, which formed a declaration of war. However, he was declaring war on parliament, the elected body of the people of England. This is hugely significant, for it had never really been done before. Previous civil wars within England had been aimed at the king, such as the de Montfort rebellion, or the Wars of the Roses. The English Civil War reflects a breakdown of the political system, but from the top-down, rather than the bottom-up.

However, it would be wrong to think that 1642 marked a watershed moment, where the people of the country fell into either the King's or Parliament's camp. The vast majority of the country greatly desired to stay neutral. Wars were costly, and nobody really wanted to go fighting each other, except perhaps the King himself. But war was now inevitable. The king's forces had assembled, parliament's troops followed them to 'rescue' the king, as mentioned last time - that would not be effected without military action, of course.

The road to war: Edgehill
What is perhaps most surprising about the Civil War is that there were only ever three big set-piece pitched battles throughout the entire conflict, beginning with Edgehill on 23 October 1642. Parliament had trooped through the East Midlands, ending in the Cotswolds, strategically placing themselves between the King's base of Oxford and London. Charles perceived his greatest support to lie in the Welsh borderlands, so moved from Nottingham to Shrewsbury, before deciding to march to London. Pausing at Wellington, Charles made the famous declaration to uphold Protestantism, to uphold the law, and to uphold the liberty of parliament.

The parliamentary army, led by the Earl of Essex, led his army to meet the royalists, and the two forces met at Edgehill in Worcestershire on 23 October. While the armies were assembled in the morning, nothing actually happened until the early afternoon, when the sight of Charles personally encouraging his troops apparently goaded the parliamentarian army into opening fire. The royalist cavalry, led by Prince Rupert and Lord Byron, charged on their guns and caused a whole troop of parliamentary cavalry to retreat from the field. Seeing so much of their cavalry disappear, many of the infantry also fled. However, when the majority of the royalist cavalry didn't return from their initial rout, choosing instead to loot the baggage train, the remaining parliamentarian cavalry were able to ride down the royalist infantry. The centre was in such disarray as a result, the king's standard was captured. Luckily, the royalist cavalry then returned, re-capturing the standard on the way. The light failed, and the battle soon ended as the armies retreated to their respective camps.

The following day, neither side was too keen to resume, and by that evening Essex was leading the parliamentary force to Warwick Castle, which allowed Charles to resume his march to London. However, a roundabout route that took him via Oxford and Reading, while Essex went directly from Warwick to London, prevented Charles from entering London, and so he retreated to Oxford, which by now he established as the royalist capital.

Just the beginning...
The armies of the king and of parliament were reasonably well-matched, which really proved to be the cause for the war going on as long as it did. In these early days of the conflict, there was no clear way to say who would prevail. At Edgehill, it has been postulated that Charles should have won, but his undisciplined cavalry, who were too concerned with looting than with prosecuting the war, allowed the parliamentary army to regroup, whereas they could have capitalized on their rout and smashed Essex' forces. Well, that's all a maybe now.

Nobody won Edgehill. The civil war in England continued on, and I'll be looking at more of the conflict soon!