The Tudors are SO 2015. This? Is Where It's All Happening

But the Tudor era is a period of lust, of intrigue and sexy debauchery and passion and jealousy and desire and excellent dresses.... so why don't I write about the Tudors?

It's a funny one. I mean, it'd be easier if I did. I'd be riding on the coat tails of Philippa Gregory and Anya Seton and Hilary Mantel - and everybody knows about Henry VIII and his convoluted love-life, and Elizabeth (and Essex....maybe) and her even more convoluted and intriguing passions. The fashions are gorgeous, the TV producers and the film producers are crying out for bodices to rip open and breeches to undo: why, in the name of creation, am I writing about a period mostly known for its unflattering fashions and spawning the man who coined the term "warts and all"?

And I guess the answer is - because I find principle sexier than unprinciple.

I'm fascinated, intrigued, and ultimately repelled by the English Civil Wars - a war without an enemy, as the Parliamentarian commander William Waller wrote in 1643 to his friend the Royalist commander Ralph Hopton. "We are both upon the stage and must act such parts as are assigned us in this tragedy, let us do it in a way of honour and without personal animosities".
I think it's interesting that many people's perception of the protagonists now is that the King's supporters were fun-loving, free-spirited party animals who loved wine, women and song - 17th century rock stars, in effect - whilst Parliament's were dour, short-haired, joyless and worthy.
It's cobblers, of course - both sides had men of fire and honour, as committed to their cause as each other.
And to me, that's considerably more appealing than a fat old guy with a bad temper and a gammy leg, a sexual predator who abused his power to bribe, flatter and coerce women into his bed and whose politics were - allegedly - based in his codpiece.

I think we love the idea of the Tudors because they're so marvellously larger than life, an almost Machiavellian world of political treachery and intrigue apparently centred on a thing we all understand - sex. We "get" desire, and jealousy, and love-conquers-all; we understand, we sympathise with, a world where a man-monster is a figure of terror as well as desire - almost the ultimate Christian Grey, the sexy uber-CEO who manipulates as well as seduces.
And maybe the idea of a quieter passion isn't so flamboyant. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms don't inflame the public imagination the same way because there is, simply, no sex involved. Oliver Cromwell looked like a potato. (Elizabeth must have seen something worth the having in him, because they had a long and happy marriage and a number of children.) Thomas Fairfax was married to the somewhat volatile Anne for twenty-seven years, and praised her lack of beauty as a virtue in his - somewhat dodgy - poetry. Charles and Henrietta Maria were uxorious enough that she went over to Europe, sold her jewellery, and raised troops for him. Rupert - well, Rupert never married, so let's not mention Rupert's love life. (Suffice it to say it was varied and active.)

It's not that women were not strong, involved, characters in their own right. Why should Brilliana Harley, sending the family plate to safety in boxes marked up as "Cake" to avoid detection by Royalist troops, be any less appealing that poor hapless Anne Boleyn?
Or if your taste runs towards tragic romantic heroines, Bridget Cromwell, travelling across a war-torn country to marry her scarred hero Henry Ireton under siege in Oxford, only to be widowed so short a time later?
Or the King's spymistress, Jane Horwood, intelligencing for him and loving him at one and the same time? (Oh, I hope she had some happiness with him, even if his letters to her portray their liaison as more pragmatic than romantic. Her husband was such a vile, abusive, violent piece of work, I do hope that Jane found love, after a fashion, with Charles - someone who was decent, and honourable, and treated her with courtesy. Not my type, but then what do I know? I'm a Fairfax girl...)

So many stories, and so much passion - but for the spirit, not for the body. For a cause, for a thing which people - both Royalist and Parliamentarian - believed in with, literally, the last drop of their heart's blood.

And as for the fashions? Quite like the Elizabeth of Bohemia look, myself.

In the Shadow Of The Storm by Anna Belfrage - a review

In The Shadow of The Storm: Book 1 of The King's Greatest Enemy

I have to admit to a degree of worry as I started to read this new book, because I am a great fan of Ms Belfrage's Graham Saga.

My first worry was that it wasn't going to be as good - and my second was that it was going to be Alex and Matthew in the 14th century: a trap that many successful authors fall into, of replicating carbon copies of their successful characters in another period of history.
Well, I needn't have worried on either head.

I am very fond of Alex and Matthew Graham, but there is always - in my reading - that element of tension in their relationship. With Adam and Kit, despite the somewhat - unusual - beginning of their marriage, there is never any doubt for me that no matter how tumultous this period of history is, their love is solid. This is not, I don't think, a will-they won't-they story, set against a faintly-drawn generic historical background. It's a story of will Fate let them, in what has to be one of the most violent, tumultous, passionate, uninhibited periods of English history. A man and a woman, who find each other, and are determined that conflicting loyalty, intrigue, and murder will not come between them.

Be not misled, gentle reader. We are not in the realms of courtly love here. We are dealing with a real and passionate period, where a brutal punishment can be meted out to a man in scenes of graphic savagery, and a woman be poisoned to death by her own family - and where the same man who raises a sword with violent skill, can make love to his wife with kindness and tenderness.
We are also dealing with a very accomplished author, who can describe love as well as pain with skill and empathy.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Alex and Matthew are very much a self-contained unit, but Kit de Courcy and Adam de Guirande are a fantastically-drawn pair of lovers enmeshed in a complicated political and social web. And a well-researched, authentic, believable one, that feels as right to the reader as a warm wool surcote.

Be warned: there is a considerable amount of brutality in this book. The Welsh Marches in 1321 were a place of unpredictable political allegiances, where a wise man keeps an eye on the main chance. Not a period where an author should tread, without a considerable amount of background research, and certainly not a period where an author who fears to describe spilled blood should go. (Just as well this author fears neither.)

I scent a long and happy relationship for this reader, with the de Guirandes....

Fifty Shades Of..... Gender Bias and Sexuality in Historical Fiction

Isn't it reassuring to know that all those heroines of historical fiction, who found that they just weren't maternal, or meek, or submissive enough - that they identified themselves more strongly as masculine, that they cut their hair, or wore breeches, or climbed trees - they were all sweet, frilly girlies, really: because with the right man, you can get better!

Five hundred years ago - three hundred, two hundred years ago - women weren't allowed to identify with masculine gender stereotypes. We conformed, to the Gospel according to St Paul; we learned in all subjection, we were respectful, we covered our hair and our bodies as we were taught, or we paid the price of social ostracism.

You know the old chestnut of the girl who dresses as a boy to follow her soldier lover to war and bring him home safe? Don't get many of them in the 17th century. In fact, I don’t think I know of a single example of a woman who enlists as a soldier during the English Civil Wars - maybe that's because women were following the drum anyway, in the guise of camp followers, or maybe it's because until the creation of the New Model Army in 1645 no one was looking, or maybe it's because 17th century women were more than capable of fighting the good fight in skirts, viz. Lady Derby, Brilliana Harley, Elizabeth Lilburne, I'll stop now but I could keep going all night. The 17th century highwaywoman Moll Frith lived and dressed as a woman - as attested by her nickname, Cutpurse Moll - and anecdote reports that at one point she robbed Thomas Fairfax, shot him in the arm and killed two of his horses. Which must have pleased him no end…

But it's not really till the 18th century that we start to see the "mannish" woman appear - Kit Ross, who followed her man into Marlborough's Army and then decided that she quite liked the Army life and lived as a soldier for the better part of ten years, serving in two different units undiscovered; Anne Bonney and Mary Read, that pair of unglamorous pirate captains, who were as fierce and merciless as any of their masculine counterparts - what's interesting is that most of the 18th century women who disguised themselves as men disguised themselves successfully, and lived within close male communities undiscovered for long periods, but that they also were considered as equals of their male counterparts. Kit Ross was officially pensioned off, despite the discovery of her gender; Anne Bonney and Mary Read were sentenced to an equal punishment to their male counterpart, Calico Jack Rackham.

So, you know, there are hundreds of years of history of women living successfully as men, competing with men, existing forcefully in a male-dominated society. Succeeding, on their own terms, against men. (If piracy is your thing, obviously.) Being acknowledged as comrades and peers, by men. Women in Restoration England were running their own businesses, their own coffee-shops, although they weren't permitting female customers in those hotbeds of political discourse and dissent. Women in 1649 were presenting petitions to Parliament saying…"Have we not an equal interest with the men of this Nation, in those liberties and securities contained in the Petition of Right, and the other good laws of the land? Are any of our lives, limbs, liberties or goods to be taken from us more than from men, but by due process of law and conviction of twelve sworn men of the neighbourhood?"

And now, four hundred years later, we're denying this again in mainstream historical fiction.

The tomboyish heroine, that old favourite of romantic fiction, who's not satisfied by a life of conventionally girlish pleasures, and who finds freedom and self-expression as an equal in masculine company - she changes, of course, when she meets the right man. (He "makes" her a woman, as often as not. *shudders*)

All those strong women, who lived and worked and loved as women in their own right, who ran businesses and ships and companies of soldiers in their own right - they just needed a man, to make them want to give up their independence and be hobbled by skirts again?

Seriously?

I was talking to Kim Wright from the arts programme Art2Art on Swindon 105.5 FM earlier on (just thought I'd drop that one right there, me on the radio, not swearing, not once. Hardly. Much. At all) - he had the idea that this sudden gender conventionality in fiction was a reaction against women's freedoms in World War 2, where women were suddenly doing men's work, men's equals, threatening established masculine domains, and the womenfolk had to be groomed a little into getting back into their boxes after the war. And, you know, perhaps the reason for the popularity of that aggressively masculine, Chandleresque stuff was that a lot of women were comfortable within those boxes, too. 

And that's fine, if that's what works for you, but it's not right for everyone. We're still promoting the idea of binary genders - of girlie girls and butch men - and pushing the myth that if you are not a pink princess, or a brave hero, you can't have romance, you can't have adventure, you can't be successful. That to be atypical, in fiction, makes a character a curio, a freakshow. There was a Paul Verhoeven film called "Flesh + Blood" in which Rutger Hauer's mercenary band contained, amongst others, two sniggering and not always very kind best mates, who were rough and tough, who always had each other's backs, who were a pair of loutish young gentlemen always spoiling for a fight.

At the end of the film one of them is killed and you realise, by the response of the other, that these two testosterone-fuelled hooligans were a deeply loving and long-established couple.

And it's not relevant to the plot, it's just a throwaway scene where actually, these two brawling roughs are seen to have a capacity for deep emotion - but it's two men who are in love with each other. 

Does that matter? Yes. They're a pair of aggressive street bravos who've systematically gone through life as their own two-person gang, and now all of a sudden one of them is alone, and we see a vulnerable, frightened side to him. 
Does it matter that it's two men? No. Or it shouldn't. As Het Babbitt points out to Hapless Russell in "A Wilderness of Sin", "There is, in my opinion, an insufficiency of people loving each other in this world, dear. As if it were something to be ashamed of."

Takes all sorts to make a world, as they say in Lancashire, but if you're going to write, the world is at your fingertips. Women, and men, in history fought hard to live outside convention, knowing they faced exposure, ridicule, social ostracism, even death, for disclosing themselves. And they still do, we have not yet come so far. We owe it to readers to write those men and women back into historical fiction, not as plaster saints or  wayward sinners, but as real, rounded human beings. Just lke us.

To His Coy Mistress, Some Lines After the Battle New-fought at NASEBY

Why court'st thou death instead of me?

Why, mistress, must thou prove thy worth

By putting all thy foes to flee

Despite the virtues of thy birth?

For lady, spurn me as you must

I know and love thy bravery

That's never failed to keep thy trust

In th'face of the King's knavery

Yet may I hope, my mistress gay,

My plea your fair ear reaches:

You dress yourself in fine array

And put on skirts instead of breeches?

I dare not test, lest what I find

Is frailer yet, a bubbled glass

That shatters in a changing wind

Or withers, like the mower's grass

Yet, lady, your secret's secure

- As yet is mine: that I am yours.

If you wondered what Luce was writing during A Wilderness of Sin....

Losing Her Cherry - what did happen to Margriete Babbitt?

"Kersen" is back in the Kindle short story charts. Which is, of course, right and proper.

But whilst I have been playing with the formatting of "Red Horse" prior to its being unveiled with its lovely new cover courtesy of Jacques le Roux, I have realised something that I think I might have always known.

You see, Margriete Babbitt - nee Gerritszen - aka the Amazon, is all of thirty-seven, thirty-eight when she marries her young mercenary. (He's eighteen, but it's all right... he's tall for his age.)
And that would make her forty-five when she dies. Now Hollie never knew what happened to his first wife: he was away at the time of her death, up to the elbows in mud and blood at the siege of Nuremberg. But I think I might...

Pregnancy and childbirth were a risky business, in the 17th century. It is estimated that between 6 and 7 per cent of women could expect to die from childbirth related causes. A married woman would become pregnant, on average, five or six times.

From 1619 to 1660 in the archdiocese of Canterbury, England, the median age of the brides was 22 years and nine months while the median age for the grooms was 25 years and six months, with average ages of 24 years for the brides and nearly 28 years for the grooms, with the most common ages at marriage being 22 years for women and 24 years for men; in one parish in Devon, the aberage age of marriage fluctuated between 25 and 29 years. Interestingly, the Church dictated that the age when one could marry without the consent of one’s parents was 21 years. A large majority of English brides in this time were at least 19 years of age when they married, and only one bride in a thousand was thirteen years of age or younger. (So much for the myth of the Early Modern child bride!)


So - Griete, married for a second time, a middle-class widow of independent means, already living on the polite peripheries as the owner of a tavern. In her book In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760-1860, Dr Judith Schneid Lewis gives details of a woman whose last surviving child was born when she was 46; Catherine Tothill, wife of William Tothill, Esq., who resided at Shardeloes in Buckinghamshire during the 17th-century, is thought to have given birth to 33 children, the last, presumably, being in her forties. Margriete at forty-four would be an older mother, but not a freakishly old one.

And it would seem that women were aware of their chances, in childbirth. Anne Bradstreet's poem "Before the birth of one of her children" addresses her husband directly on the possibility of her death in labour, with resignation, though not necessarily with fear. It has been suggested that women possibly expected their suffering in travail as an affliction of humanity resulting from Eve's original sin - certainly, most women expected danger in childbirth, and expected to get on with it in as well and with as much Christian fortitude as may be. The midwife, and, if you could afford one, the physician, were instruments of God's will, and although it would be sinful to rely on them to thwart His design, it would be equally sinful to not take appropriate concern over one's bodily welfare.

For a good, thorough reading of the 17th century woman's approach to childbirth, I suggest Sharon Howard's academic paper 'Imagining the Pain and Peril of Seventeenth-century Childbirth: Travail and Deliverance in the Making ot an Early Modern World' (2003)

And as for Margriete?
No, that won't ever be a story in its own right, because she died without her lollopy mercenary-boy with her, and he would have held her hand if he could, and he couldn't.

Some things are too sad for even me.



(Image of The Cholmondley Ladies copyright Tate Gallery)

Touching the Past

Image copyright V&A Museum

I'm a re-enactor, a writer, and a social historian.

You knew all that anyway, right? It says so in my bio, right there, along with the stuff about cats and cake and cavalry backswords (All of which is true.)

Because as I've said before, I don't just want my readers to read a story. And I'm thrilled to say that a lot of my reviews - oo, get me - do actually say that they feel like they know my boys, feel like they're there with them.
Because history isn't just about dates and battles, it's about people, and I don't think people have ever changed. We all want, basically, the same things, to a greater or lesser degree. We want to be warm and dry at night, we want something to eat and something to drink - and possibly, if you're Thankful Russell circa 1644, not in that order. It's called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It goes - once you have realised one level of need, you can move onto the next - called actualisation:

1. Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep.
2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, freedom from fear.
3. Love and belongingness needs - friendship, intimacy, affection and love, - from work group, family, friends, romantic relationships.
4. Esteem needs - achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, self-respect, respect from others.
5. Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.

The level one and two needs, well, they are simple needs, aren't they? The sort of things no one should be without in a civilised world. (She says, channelling her inner Leveller.)

Level three, we're starting to get complicated. (Aren't we. Hollie. Russell.) But this is all by the by, it's stuff for another post. What I'm talking about is embroidery, and re-enactment, and a bit of hands-on history.

I'm making a rather pretty polychrome embroidered coif at the moment. Just for fun, to give myself pleasure, a small, portable bit of embroidery that I can pop in a workbag and take around with me and work on when I've got a spare few minutes. It's based on Margaret Laton's early 17th century embroidered linen jacket and it's trimmed with gold needle-lace and it's got parrots and snails and caterpillars and all kinds of silliness on it. But, as George Wingfield Digby says in his 1963 book "Elizabethan Embroidery", it is "....the integrated expression of a society still creative and joyful about the things it could make and use."
So - it's a thing that gives me pleasure, because I am a competent, creative needlewoman, and because it has some silly little figures on it like the marvellous snail and the chicken, things for the sheer joy of putting them on. And, you know, a woman sat there in 1620-ish and did likewise. She drew on silly bugs and beasties with a fine-nibbed pen and she embroidered them in not-always-realistic colours for the pleasure of owning a pretty thing, and for the joy of wearing something that had given her pleasure to create. (Some of the jackets that survive have been carefully crafted by artisans, professional needlewomen. Just as many weren't - made at home by skilled amateurs. In the case of some of them. not even that skilled, but enthusiastic.)

And so, you know, I've got this little project on the go, and it's pretty, and sparkly, but it also feels nice to the touch. The thing with the embroidery is that it's all textured and nubbly, it's got braid stitch and detached buttonhole stitch, and the peapods open up to reveal three-dimensional peas, and the parrot's head is padded. And that's what it's for. It's for touching, and stroking, and moving in so that the braid sparkles and the sequins shimmer. It's a thing to be worn, not to be looked at. It's a thing that I would expect children at a re-enactment to touch, and look for the animals on, and hold to the light.
I read an interesting article recently about how museums are increasingly becoming glorified playgrounds in an attempt to attract families and although I hate the idea that history is being mass-produced to make it palatable, I love the thought that maybe it will make the past real to more people. Believe me, my coif - 4 hours and counting and I've not even finished drawing up the pattern or putting on the needle-lace yet - it's not a thing that I would treat casually. But I would happily give it to an interested little girl (or an interested little boy, or his dad, or her grandmother, for that matter) to hold and turn over and stroke, no matter how grubby hands are or how rough baby fingers might be with my embroidery. Because that's what it's for. You can't touch Margaret Laton's jacket, because it's 400 years old and fragile, but you could play with my coif, and stroke the snail, and lift the peapods, just like I imagine that long-ago lady's little nieces and nephews once did, laughing at the little golden peas inside as they sparkled in the sunlight.

Margaret Laton's jacket is a distinct level 5 - a lady realising her personal potential, self-fulfillment, personal growth and peak experiences. Impossible to tell if it was made by a professional embroiderer or a competent, accomplished amateur. A lady four hundred years ago, loving being herself, loving the skill of her fingers, probably loving the way it sparkled and shimmered and the way her Hugh might look at her at dinner when she was wearing it. A real person, who had a best jacket that she put on for dressy occasions. Who maybe had little sticky-fingered nieces and nephews admiring her birds and bugs. I imagine her jacket probably smelt of rose-water, or lavender water, and maybe a little bit sweaty under the arms, maybe a little bit of the ghosts of half a hundred suppers. But a woman you could probably sit down and talk to comfortably enough, a woman with whom you might have things in common - who might talk knowledgeably about gardens, and orderly households, and the cost of a loaf of bread. (Her Hugh was a merchant, you see, in the City. A wealthy lady, but one of not the nobility.)

So I'm embroidering my little coif, and embroidering what I imagine Margaret Laton was like, and hopefully, one day, at a re-enactment - this summer, next summer, some time - people will touch that embroidery and think about what sort of lady might wear it, and take pleasure in it.
A lady a bit like me and you, really. Black velvet gown, whitework apron. Looking a bit awkward to have her picture made, but a bit shy, and a bit proud, like a lot of young women on formal occasions, all done up in her finery. Creative and joyful. Not a pretend-person out of a history book, not a formal pretty jacket on a dummy inside a glass case. 

Making museums into children's play areas is a terrible thing, in so many ways. It demeans our history, it patronises its audience. But we all have a right to play - to touch, to engage, to dream. To learn through doing, what it might be like to be someone else. 

So. If you happen to be at the Fairfax Battalia event at Wallingford in late June, come and help me find my bugs and beasties.

A Little Commonwealth - some thoughts on romantic fiction

I hate genre romantic fiction and I can't write it

There, it's said. I joke about it but I was once signed off work for a month with whiplash, and amused myself by reading the entire canon of A N Other writer of Regency romance. (Who will remain nameless.) The first one, I thought, what a hoot, fluff, frolics and frocks. The second one I was starting to know what was coming. By the third one I was actually rather scared.

See - and this is me being serious - though a straight down the line Dissenter and thoroughgoing Independent, with (dare I say) atheistic leanings, I am increasingly inclined to agree with the Puritans' view of marriage, to wit, it's all about companionship and affection and mutual respect. Genesis 2:18 - And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. Since sexual intimacy in marriage was part of God’s plan for man before the Fall, it could not be less so following the Fall, and therefore sex within the confines of a loving relationship was not the ultimate transgression that caused man's expulsion from the Eden.

And this book - these books - portrayed relationships about as far from companionable, equable, loving marriages as my cats are from bars of chocolate. Brave, feisty, innocent heroine meets arrogant, tortured, handsome hero with a dark past. Misunderstanding in which hero thinks heroine is more experienced than she is and treats her with sexual contempt. Heroine falls in love with this pillock in spite of the fact that she is fully well aware that he's a toe-rag. Misunderstanding upon misunderstanding, at the end of which tragedy of errors even hero realises that he's a bloody idiot, does the decent thing and falls in love with the heroine. The End.

That appalled me. Because there is a whole genre of these books, these peddlings of the Cinderella myth - that love is all about passion conquering all, that sexual desire is the be-all and end-all of a relationship, that a man (and it's almost always a man, as if, poor things, they are little better than beasts driven at the mercy of what my mother discreetly used to call their "urges"...) if he really loves a woman should be made unreasoning by violent passion.

I think I can safely say that my Hollie desires his wife. (Makes no secret of it, the libidinous creature, but then after several months apart, she rather misses having her bed warmed by that lolloping great object as well.) Would he ever be driven to lay ungentle hands on her, shout at her, abuse her in a jealous rage? Would he bloody hell as like. I think - I hope - that there has never been any dramatic will-they won't-they tension about the relationship of Het Sutcliffe-as-was and her gallant captain. They meet. They like each other. After a while, they love each other. And isn’t it that way for most of us? We meet someone, we like them, one day we wake up and realise that we love them, want to spend the rest of our lives with them. We don’t want to hurt them, or frighten them, or control them, or humiliate them.

And yet we encourage our fictional heroes to be emotionally retarded - to be abusive. To commit acts of sexual violence on women. The number of "forced" kisses and torn gowns I've come across in that certain genre, defies belief. It's a funny thing, but I'm in a line of business where I work with victims of crime. Dealing with a young man at the moment who's come my way because he "forced" himself on a girl. He didn't rape her, didn’t hurt her physically, but frightened her and distressed her: he touched her in places she did not want to be touched. In certain books, if he'd been a strong, silent alpha-male, that would be her fault, you see - that the strength of his desire was such that he just had to have her. That she encouraged him, led him on. It's a compliment, girls. Did you not know that you only have to leave the house for those poor lust-maddened menfolk to be tearing at your clothes, such is the power of your womanhood?

That's not emancipation, that's just tricking out an old whore in new paint, and calling it escapism. And life throws up enough intrigue and uncertainty, without a need to invent some more.

I leave you with a quote from the 1598 "Godly Form of Household Government", by Robert Cleaver -

"Matrimony, is a lawful knot, and unto God an acceptable yoking and joining together of one man, and one woman, with the good consent of them both: to the end that they may dwell together in friendship and honesty, one helping and comforting the other, eschewing whoredom, and all uncleanness, bringing up their children in the fear of God: or it is a coupling together of two persons into one flesh, not to be broken, according unto the ordinance of God: so to continue during the life of either of them."

Take out the religious references, if you like. But - to dwell together in friendship and honesty, one helping and comforting the other?

In all honesty, can you see Christian Grey and Anastasia in twenty years' time, one helping and comforting the other?

Because I'm damned if I can. 

Mistress Het's Physick Garden Created - #1

I've always wanted a 17th century garden.

We live in an old granite cottage, in a sheltered dip where the Cornish gales blow overhead. We have a long front garden, and a small enclosed back yard.
There are certain things in our current garden which are givens -
- an apple tree, coming now to the end of its useful fruiting life, but rather lovely.
- two Williams pear trees, planted to mark William's birth five years ago.
- an olive bush
- two sheds, somewhat non-negotiable, full of Living History kit
- a small and somewhat barren vegetable patch; the space can be re-used, but the raised bed itself is a fixture
- a very elderly rosemary bush
- three old-fashioned scented roses
- a flourishing bay tree
- naturalised wallflowers and primroses
The gardens of period town houses were generally modest and of a functional nature, based on medieval patterns, to provide plants of medicinal, culinary and household uses. Illustrations of town gardens from this period frequently show the garden adjacent to the house and enclosed by walls, hedging, fencing and/or painted rails. A wide variety of herbs, vegetables (known as pot herbs) and flowers were grown, probably in geometrical, raised beds surrounded by gravel. Small fruit trees, sometimes trained as espaliers on the sunny walls, and arbours covered with vines were common features.
I have prostrate rosemary and boxes of herbs at my front gate (in need of some overhaul) as well as a large rosemary bush at the front door to keep the witches away. I have bronze (Florentine) fennel, feverfew, lovage, savory, lemon thyme, sops-in-wine, houseleek....I also have three cats and a small boy who likes to dig holes.
So, then, the first challenge is to populate my shady corner by the shed, currently inhabited by some straggly "architectural" plants and a patch of wet and well-trodden soil. The idea is to build a raised bed by the shed and then put a narrow gravel path in front of it and behind the shed.

Suitable period plants for shade - their properties are taken from Culpeper (I do like his habit of calling cultvated plants "tame"...):
Sweet Woodruff -
Virtues. The Woodruffe is accounted nourishing and restorative, and good for weakly consumptive people; it opens obstructions of the liver and spleen, and is said to be a provocative to venery.

Angelica -

Government and virtues. It is an herb of the Sun in Leo; let it be gathered when he is there, the Moon applying to his good aspect; let it be gathered either in his hour, or in the hour of Jupiter; let Sol be angular: observe the like in gathering the herbs of other planets, and you may happen to do wonders. In all epidemical diseases caused by Saturn, that is as good a preservative as grows; it resists poison, by defending and comforting the heart, blood, and spirits; it doth the like against the plague and all epidemical diseases, if the root be taken in powder to the weight of half a drachm at a time, with some good treacle in carduus water, and the party thereupon laid to sweat in his bed; if treacle be not to be had, take it alone in carduus or angelica-water. The stalks or roots candied and eaten fasting, are good preservatives in time of infection: and at other times to warm and comfort a cold stomach. The root also steeped in vinegar, and a little of that vinegar taken sometimes fasting, and the root smelled unto, is good for the same purpose. A water distilled from the root simply, as steeped in wine, and distilled in a glass, is much more effectual than the water of the leaves; and this water, drank two or three spoonfuls at a time, eases all pains and torments coming of cold and wind, so that the body be not bound; and taken with some of the root in powder, at the beginning, helps the pleurisy, as also all other diseases of the lungs and breast, as coughs, phthisic, and shortness of breath; and a syrup of the stalks do the like. It helps pains of the cholic, the stranguary and stoppage of the urine, procures womens' courses, and expels the afterbirth: opens the stoppings of the liver and spleen, and briefly eases and discusses all windiness and inward swellings. The decoction drank before the fit of an ague, that the patient may sweat before the fit comes, will, in two or three times taking, rid it quite away: it helps digestion, and is a remedy for a surfeit. The juice, or the water, being dropped into the eyes or ears, helps dimness of sight and deafness; the juice put into the hollow teeth, eases their pains. The root in powder, made up into a plaister with a little pitch, and laid on the biting of mad dogs, or any other venomous creature, does wonderfully help. The juice or the water dropped, or tents wet therein, and put into filthy dead ulcers, or the powder of the root (in want of either) does cleanse and cause them to heal quickly, by covering the naked bones with flesh; the distilled water applied to places pained with the gout, or sciatica, gives a great deal of ease.
The root is used in many of our shop compositions as in the plague water, &c. and the dried leaves are a principal ingredient in the ladies red powder, famous for the cure of fevers.

Lemon Balm -
Government and virtues. It is an herb of Jupiter, and under Cancer, and strengthens nature much in all its actions. Let a syrup made of the juice of it and sugar (as you shall be taught at the latter end of this book) be kept in every gentlewoman's house, to relieve the weak stomachs and sick bodies of their poor sickly neighbours: as also the herb kept dry in the house, that so with other convenient simples, you may make it into an electuary with honey, according as the disease is, as you shall be taught at the latter end of my book. - The Arabian physicians have extolled the virtues thereof to the skies; although the Greeks thought it not worth mentioning. Seraphio saith, it causes the mind and heart to become merry, and reviveth the heart, faintings and swoonings, especially of such who are overtaken in sleep, and driveth away all troublesome cares and thoughts out of the mind, arising from melancholy or black choler: which Avichen also confirmeth. It is very good to help digestion, and open obstructions of the brain, and hath so much purging quality in it (saith Avichen) as to expel those melancholy vapours from the spirits and blood which are in the heart and arteries, although it cannot do so in other parts of the body. - Dioscorides saith, That the leaves steeped in wine, and the wine drank, and the leaves externally applied, is a remedy against the stings of a scorpion, and the bitings of mad dogs; and commendeth the decoction thereof for women to bathe or sit in to procure their courses; it is good to wash aching teeth therewith, and profitable for those that have the bloody flux. The leaves also, with a little nitre taken in drink, are good against the surfeit of mushrooms, helps the griping pains of the belly; and being made into an electuary, it is good for them that cannot fetch their breath: Used with salt, it takes away wens, kernels, or hard swelling in the flesh or throat: it cleanseth foul sores, and eases pains of the gout. It is good for the liver and spleen. A tansy, or caudle made with eggs, and juice thereof while it is young, putting to it some sugar and rosewater, is good for a woman in child-bed, when the after-birth is not properly voided; and for their faintings upon or in their sore travail. The herb bruised and boiled in a little wine and oil, and laid warm on a boil, will ripen it, and break it.  

Sweet Cecily -
Government and virtues. The garden chervil being eaten, doth moderately warm the stomach, and is a certain remedy (saith Tragus) to dissolve congealed or clotted blood in the body, or that which is clotted by bruises, falls, &c. The juice or distilled water thereof being drank, and the bruised leaves laid to the place, being taken either in meat or drink, it is good to help to provoke urine, or expel the stone in the kidneys, to send down women's courses, and to help the pleurisy and pricking of the sides.
The wild chervil bruised and applied, dissolveth swellings in any part, or the marks of congealed blood by bruises or blows in a little space. 

Fennel -  
Government and virtues. One good old fashion is not yet left off, viz . to boil fennel with fish; for it consumes that phlegmatic humour which fish most plentifully afford and annoy the body with, though few that use it know wherefore they do it; I suppose the reason of its benefit this way is, because it is an herb of Mercury, and under Virgo, and therefore bears antipathy to Pisces. Fennel is good to break wind, to provoke urine, and ease the pains of the stone, and helps to break it. The leaves or seed, boiled in barley-water and drank, are good for nurses, to increase their milk, and make it more wholesome for the child. The leaves, or rather the seeds, boiled in water, stays the hiccough, and takes away the loathings which oftentimes happen to the stomachs of sick and feverish persons, and allays the heat thereof. The seed boiled in wine and drank, is good for those that are bit with serpents, or have eat poisonous herbs, or mushrooms. The seed, and the roots much more, help to open obstructions of the liver, spleen, and gall, and thereby help the painful and windy swellings of the spleen, and the yellow jaundice; as also the gout and cramps. The seed is of good use in medicines, to help shortness of breath and wheezing, by stopping of the lungs. It assists also to bring down the courses, and to cleanse the parts after delivery. The roots are of most use in physic drinks and broths, that are taken to cleanse the blood, to open obstructions of the liver, to provoke urine, and amend the ill colour in the face after sickness, and to cause a good habit through the body. Both leaves, seeds, and roots thereof, are much used in drink or broth, to make people lean that are too fat. The distilled water of the whole herb, or the condensate juice dissolved, but especially the natural juice, that in some counties issues out of its own accord, dropped into the eyes cleans them from mists and films that hinder the sight. The sweet fennel is much weaker in physical uses than the common fennel. The wild fennel is stronger and hotter than the tame, and therefore most powerful against the stone, but not so effectual to encrease milk, because of its dryness.

The left side of the bed gets full sun almost all day, but it's still quite damp down there. My fennel is presently in a small trough and is feeling a bit sorry for itself, so the opportunity to get out and stretch its roots somewhat will be welcome! But if I put the tall, feathery plants to the back of the bed - fennel and angelica and cecily - that's a fairly architectural display in its own right. And for a truly seventeenth-century look, it's important that the plants are as elegantly arranged as possible in order of height, unlike our modern fashion for a brave disorder.

So.... the planning begins, and I will keep posting updates.

Surely some mistake, Colonel Rainsborough - Royalist propaganda or war criminal?

“For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under…”.

Thomas Rainsborough, Putney Debates, 1647

When I first started writing the Uncivil Wars books I had a fairly clear picture of the martyred Leveller colonel Thomas Rainsborough, in my head.

The known facts of his early life are fairly scant. He was born in Wapping in 1610 - son of Vice-Admiral William Rainsborough, a captain in the Royal Navy and Ambassador to Morocco. Vice-Admiral Rainsborough was offered a baronetcy for his efforts to end white slavery - an honour which he then declined. Republicanism, then, we can infer, was in the Rainsborough genetic make-up.

Thomas, then, began his career before the civil war in the family business; he and his brother William were involved in an early naval expedition to the Puritan Providence Island colony, off the coast of Nicaragua - and, it may be suggested, a degree of mild pirating of those antipathetic towards England's interests.

However, after an early command of the Swallow and the Lion in the embryonic Parliamentarian navy (Hull, 1643 - where he first meets Hollie Babbitt in "Command the Raven) he then transferred to the Eastern Association - Oliver Cromwell's haunt, although bearing in mind that Old Noll was no more than a plain Colonel of Horse himself at this point - where he was himself commissioned an infantry Colonel by the Earl of Manchester. In May 1645, he became a colonel in the newly-formed New Model Army. He fought and distinguished himself at Naseby. He went with Fairfax into the West Country and distinguished himself again at the battle of Langport.

And then at the siege of Bristol, after fierce fighting as the town surrendered, Rainsborough's troops massacred the defenders of Prior's Hill Fort. Allegedly.

It says so on Bristol local history sites. It says so in assorted fictional accounts. What it doesn’t say is where primary source evidence on this massacre might have been found. None of the accounts I have discovered (bearing in mind I don’t live in Bristol, so my hands are somewhat tied regarding physical archives…damn it all) annotate this.

However. So. Maybe that upright seagoing Republican with the staunch Puritan friends who came back from New England to fight for Parliament alongside him, maybe he did give the orders to massacre the defenders of Prior's Hill Fort. Also note that every account I've discovered uses the word "massacre". Now that's either very definite…or they’re all using the same source material. Interesting.

Now. Rainsborough was then elected recruiter MP for Droitwich in Worcestershire in January 1647, but was allowed to continue with his military duties. Probably just as well, because in his absence in May 1647 his troops mutinied at Portsmouth in protest at Parliament's plans to disband the New Model without addressing the soldiers' grievances. Petty grievances, of course, set against the weightier matters of national governance - matters like not being paid for eight weeks, or being sent to fight abroad (in the case of Rainsborough's troop, in Jersey) without seeing any of their back pay, or the unsettled matter of punishment for "war crimes" such as stealing horses under martial direction for use in cavalry regiments. That particular war crime had ended in the hanging of several soldiers after the first Civil War. I imagine there were any number of uncomfortable troopers around with that particular sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. (There - and you thought Eliot and Ward were made up, didn’t you? Nope…that pair of light-fingered buggers are very much based on historical persons.)

Rainsborough's troops were preparing to march on Oxford and seize the artillery based there, until the man himself came back and met with them at Abingdon and talked them out of it.

That's twice that Rainsborough is recorded as being charismatic, and personally involved, enough to influence people who have pretty good reasons not to do what he ends up getting them to do: the officers from New England had the reasonable excuse of several thousand miles of implacable Atlantic between themselves and the troubles back home, and Rainsborough's own troops wouldn't have been the first to disregard their commander - look at Waller's disobedient London-raised troops, who were reluctant to fight outside their home turf regardless of his orders.

So, then, we see Rainsborough as clearly a very charismatic, very engaging, very hands-on man, fully engaged with his own men on a direct and personal level. Evidently a very popular leader and seen as both influential and reliable - he was one of the officers that presented the Heads of the Proposals to King Charles in July 1647. Turned down flat, in the most high-handed manner imaginable, by the King. 1647 really marked the beginning of Rainsborough's overt involvement in the Army's political activities, and his role as a leading Leveller light. He led the advance guard of three regiments of foot and one of horse when the Army marched to occupy London, successfully seizing Southwark - where, it must be noted, he had previously inherited property, and was presumably well-known to the locals, being a Wapping boy himself, so unlikely to be seen as some kind of brutal interloper.

During October and November 1647 he was lively at the Putney Debates, siding with the Leveller radicals in calling for negotiations with the King to be broken off immediately and for a new constitution of their own terms to be implemented. (That rebuttal of the Heads of Proposals must have still rankled.) He was also arguing for manhood suffrage, which didn’t go down well with Cromwell and Ireton either. And then in November 1647, he attempted to present a copy of the Levellers' manifesto, and was ignored by General Fairfax.

January 1648 saw a return to naval service, given command of a squadron guarding the Isle of Wight where the King was held prisoner.

But. What we have been seeing before is a humanitarian man, vociferous in his support for the common soldier...who was so absolutely unpopular with the Navy that a number of Parliamentarian warships declared for the King in the spring of 1648 rather than carry on serving with him, and Rainsborough was put ashore from his own flagship by his crew. Parliament had to re-instate the Earl of  Warwick in his place to restore the loyalty of the seamen. It destroyed Rainsborough's authority within in the navy, and he transferred back to the Army and took command of a newly-raised London regiment at the siege of Colchester.

And this is where I really begin to struggle with Rainsborough. Because the siege of Colchester was a filthy, vicious, uncharacteristically cruel assault, wholly out of character for both Thomas Fairfax and what we have seen of Thomas Rainsborough. The siege began in June 1648 and lasted for 11 weeks - a siege in which townspeople consistently loyal to Parliament, were barricaded in with an occupying force who were not precisely sympathetic.

Again, anecdotal evidence for Fairfax's atrocities includes the torture of a messenger boy, the desecration of Sir Charles Lucas's family vaults during manoeuvres; the inhabitants were certainly starving, reduced to eating cats, dogs, candles and soap - civilian and military alike. Fairfax is alleged to have agreed that his troops could cut off the hands of Royalist soldiers to take rings as booty. It is certain that a starving deputation of women and children was sent to Fairfax to ask for mercy, and were refused. It is again anecdotal that a second deputation of starving townswomen presented themselves to Rainsborough and were stripped, for the amusement of his troops.

Edited: at the end of the siege, Colchester was fined the MASSIVE sum of £14,000 - reduced to £12,000. Previous to the siege the town had been one of the biggest ports in Essex. Afterwards - a rural backwater. Fairfax broke the town utterly.

So. As Hollie Babbitt might put it, not much bloody further on, are we, after all that?

On the one hand, we have Rainsborough the compassionate republican, demanding fair and equal treatment for the poorest he that is in England. On the other we have a war criminal, even by the standards of the 17th century.

But. (I like big buts, and I cannot lie.)

I like a mystery, and I likes both Fairfax and Rainsborough, and it may take me a while, but I'll get to the bottom of this one. The Lord has smiled upon my endeavours.... Him Indoors is an Essex boy!

Kitty, My Rib - the story of Katie von Bora

Now I have two heroines in this world, and one of them is Elizabeth Cromwell (well, dear, if you wanted orange sauce, you shouldn't have made war on Spain, should you?) and the other is Katharina von Bora, die Lutherin. After those two stubborn, domesticated, marvellously level-headed females is Het Babbitt patterned.


There is an argument which I often hear, and it goes something like - but women in the 17th century, they were the weaker vessel, right? Poor dependents, meek and milky and subservient.... right?
Well - some names to look up, to begin with, then. Bess of Hardwick. Elizabeth Cromwell. Elizabeth Lilburne. Brilliana Harley. Anne Fairfax.

All noblewomen? Hardly. Elizabeth Lilburne and Elizabeth Cromwell were merchant's daughters - and Bess of Hardwick knew how to make a penny work for its living, by all accounts.

But die Lutherin is sadly neglected. Her 16th-century life-story reads like something from a lurid romantic fiction - convent-educated, she was brought up in cloisters until at the age of 24, she started to become interested in the growing reform movement and became unhappy with her secluded life within the Cistercian monastery. Now, the weaker-vessel argument would have die Lutherin meekly submitting to male domination, right? Um, nope. She wrote to Martin Luther, a 41 year old rebel, subversive and politically active cleric. An excommunicated priest, mind, who was not known for his tactful expression of his opinions. Katie von Bora wrote to Martin Luther - a man she had presumably never met formally in her life - and asked him to bust her and another twelve nuns out of the Cistercian monastery.

And he did. They were smuggled out in the back of a cart, in herring barrels. A credible fiction author could not make this up.

Luther, despite being the man behind the Reformation, now had twelve rogue nuns on his hands. Their families wouldn't take them back, this being a breach of canon law, and so he found them all husbands. In the end, there was only Katie left. He found her husbands. Nope. Eventually she gave him the ultimatum - sorry, Martin, the only man I'm taking is either you or Nicolaus van Amsdorf, your friend. (Check out the portraits. She made a good call in Martin.)

Katie von Bora then took on the massive tasks of a) running the enormous monastery estate atWittenburg, where they boarded at the Cistercian monastery, b) running the brewery there, c) running the hospital, d) looking after all the students and visitors coming for audience with the notorious rogue priest behind the Diet of Worms, and e) keeping an eye on Martin, who had not been exactly the most promising of eager bridegrooms - he admitted himself that before his marriage his bed was often mildewed and not made up for months on end. By the sound of Katie, she'd have put up with neither the mildew, the unmade bed, nor the grubby husband.

The Luthers had six children (not all of whom survived to adulthood, sadly), Katie had one miscarriage, and they brought up another four orphans. This was not, clearly, a nominal marriage of platonic and dutiful affection. Martin freely admitted prior to his marriage that despite his clerical celibacy he was aware of the existence of the female form, even in spite of the mouldy bed. Had it not been for the admittedly rather pretty Mistress van Bora, it's not impossible that the Protestant clergy would have remained formally celibate for many years - not that Martin and Katie were the first, but their wedding set the seal of approval on clerical marriage. It was a long and happy marriage, if often short of money, and even then it seems that she had the habit of accepting gifts from benefactors on his behalf, and putting the money away for the rainy day that seemed to follow the Luther household around.

They were married for almost twenty years, and he had counselled her to move into a smaller house with the children when he died, but she refused. A sentimental attachment to the marital home where she'd been happy and useful for so long? Struggling financially without his salary, she stayed stubbornly put until soldiers in the the Schmalkaldic War destroyed farm buildings and killed the animals on their farm, and she was forced to flee, living on the charity of the Elector of Saxony until it was safe for her to return to Wittenburg. Bubonic plague then forced her to flee a third time, this time to Torgau, but she was thrown from her cart near the city gates and very badly bruised, and died less than three months later.

She was not buried near to her Martin in Wittenburg, but since one of the Lutheran doctrines was that "It is enough for us to know that souls do not leave their bodies to be threatened by the torments and punishments of hell, but enter a prepared bedchamber in which they sleep in peace," - she probably didn't mind too much.


Ladies  and gentlemen, a toast to die Lutherin, Katie von Bora - the role model for the Mrs Cromwells and Mrs Fairfaxes, the domestic rock on which a political citadel stood firm.