Publication Day

Any minute now, Abduction of the Scots Queen is going to be available in paperback at Amazon. It is already available in Kindle format. That means I am off the hook, free, able to ignore the PC for a while if I wish. Freedom, in other words. Yipppeeee!

Not that I would have missed the experience. Having Matho's story out there for everyone to read is a wonderful feeling after I've worked on it for so long. Some might say it's a coming of age story - how a young man goes off to try and earn fortune in the last few years of King Henry VIII's reign. Not that he and Henry ever meet. Henry never figures in the pages except as the man who bellows that he wants the Scots Queen in England so she can marry his son Edward. He has cogent reasons for that, but the story centres on Matho's experiences as he travels north across the border and runs smack bang into Lady Margaret Douglas. Characters include her father, Archibald Douglas, Marie de Guise, the Dowager Queen of Scots and Mathew Stewart, Lord Lennox.

Others might say it's a historical suspense story - will he or won't he succeed at the task he has set? Will he survive trying?

I don't think anyone will claim it is solely a romance, though there are two romance threads running through the story. For good or evil, Abduction is finally done!

Land of the Prince Bishops

John Speed's map 1610

As you drive into Durham you will most likely see a road sign proclaiming that you are entering The Land of The Prince Bishops. The Bishop of Durham has always been Bishop by Divine Providence while other Bishops are  by Divine Permission.

So far from Westminster, Durham's Bishop enjoyed extraordinary powers and could hold his own parliament, raise his own army and appoint his own sheriffs and Justices. Laws, levies, taxes and custom dues were his. He also created markets and fairs, issued charters, claimed salvage from shipwrecks, revenues from mines, administered forests and minted his own coins.

It was said that there were two kings in England, and one of them was the Bishop of Durham. The administrative centre of all this activity was the castle and the buildings on Palace Green, some of which still remain. Henry VIII curbed some of the Prince Bishops powers and in 1538 ordered the destruction of the shrine of St Cuthbert.

Until the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury, St Cuthbert's was the most important shrine in England. It was famous for two reasons - the healing properties he had in life continued after his death, and his body was, as they say, incorruptible. That was back in 668. When Henry ordered the destruction of the shrine, his officers came to Durham intent on taking the gold and jewels, and tried to throw down the saint's bones. Check the link to find out what happened!  ~ http://www.durhamworldheritagesite.com/architecture/cathedral/intro/cuthbert-shrine

Durham's location has always meant the city kept a wary eye on the Scots. The castle is one of the few Norman keeps to withstand a Scots attack. The Battle of Neville's Cross on 17th October 1346 is well documented, and there are several accounts to follow. here are links to just two of them:
http://durhamcow.com/durham-events/battle-of-nevilles-cross/ or
http://www.battlefieldstrust.com/resource-centre/medieval/battleview.asp?BattleFieldId=28

Plague outbreaks reached Durham in 1544, 1589 and 1598.

Starvation

One thing I'm really not very interested in is food. I  barely register the pictures of food on Facebook, and  when I saw the Tudor Feast coming up on tv I hesitated with my finger on the record button. Then common sense clicked in. The programme was to be modern chefs cooking medieval food in the same way as medieval cooks would have done. Apart from the fact that I bet they didn't, watching people handle food revolts me at the best of times, so I took my finger off the button.
Hygiene in those far off days doesn't bear thinking about, particularly when food and eating are involved. Some of the medical concoctions include bat excrement and the like, so if that's what they think will cure you of an ailment, Heaven knows what they cook normally.

On the other hand, people's immune systems were probably vastly superior to ours. They would need to be, for starvation was common in medieval times. If a man's crops failed, what did the family eat? They couldn't rush off to the  supermarket, didn't have the cash to buy even if said supermarket existed. Poaching was forbidden and in some cases punishable by death. Your neighbours were likely as badly off as yourself. A man might walk many miles to find work, return with food and find his family dead of starvation.  In such conditions, the temptation to eat absolutely anything must have been horrifying.

The lowest ranks of society in medieval days were no better than slaves, bought and sold with the land, and starvation was common. Religious houses, and the homes of the rich, presented kitchen scraps at the back gate for the starving poor. Once Henry VIII got rid of the monasteries, those who had once lived within the protection of the religious orders were turned loose on the roads as beggars. Enclosures took away common land, and added to the problems of the lower classes. The odd thing is that these things have never been regarded in the same light as the potato famine in Ireland, the clearances in Scotland or the African slave trade and I wonder why. Perhaps it was because they took place in a time when a social conscience was a luxury few could afford. Perhaps it is because we had no one to blame but ourselves.

Ghosts

The hair on the back of my neck stiffens when I watch this 6 minute video entitled The Ghosts of Hampton Court Palace. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PUlimd-VKY
It's not that there's anything outrageous there - well, maybe one thing that seems a little odd, but the whole thing is so atmospheric. It's one thing to go around the place in daylight, and quite another to contemplate going around it in the dark, after closing time when everyone has gone home. My house creaks as it settles at night, and its not twenty years old yet; imagine the creaks and groans that must come from a place that's five hundred or more years old. I once got locked in the library in a college where I worked - my fault - and that was a creepy place once everyone had gone home. I had to ring the police, who rang the caretaker, who came wandering along, laughing, with his Great Dane. The dog saw me through the glass doors and ran at full stretch along the corridor, barking, and then couldn't stop on the polished wooden floor and landed in an inelegant heap against the doors. I think caretakers and nightwatchmen must have nerves of steel and possibly little imagination, otherwise they'd be basket cases before too long.
I collected one or two more videos that I thought I'd want to watch again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Fpquak1so This one visualises Henry VIII as an old, middle-aged and young man. Curious how the clothes that look so fantastic on a big man look so odd on a young man. 
Then comes a piece with vocals from Claire Ridgeway on what she thinks Anne Boleyn looked like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfTI2ffP9j8. Lastly there's an eight minute piece on the execution of Anne using actors I do not recognise. I still think the Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold was the best Anne Boleyn...'get a child on that sweet, pale girl--if you can!' I can still hear her saying those words, but I think putting up bits of film here would be contravening copyright, so I won't attempt it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en_szNM4Dp4&NR=1&feature=fvwp

The importance of a son

I read somewhere that the last instalment of The Tudors will have Henry’s death bed visited by some of his former wives. Given that most of them are dead, I thought that would be interesting, and started watching the programme once more.
There’s glamour still, lots of sex and the sheen of silken costumes, (in which the ladies must have frozen while the men are bundled up in thick brocade and heavy velvets) but the show is no better now than it was when I first tried it. Henry seems ageless, and strangely Irish. Nowhere does it suggest Catherine Howard’s frantic couplings with Culpepper might have been because pregnancy was what was required and Henry wasn’t doing the job.

The problem of childlessness attracts a lot of attention today, but it cannot match the strain such a matter put on a sixteenth-century Queen. Her one function in life was to bear sons. If she did not, she was a failure. Anne Boleyn reached Henry’s side by education, personality and courage, but then had to accept that everything hung on the production of a son. Her step-daughter Mary, who understandably resented Anne, no doubt laughed at her problem; but she too would fall foul of the same problem in years to come, and so, in a different way, did Elizabeth.

One son – one would think it surely could not be too difficult with a man like Henry. Yet time went by and the living sons did not arrive for Anne Boleyn any more than they had for Katherine. Anne, like Katherine before her, shouldered the blame. Yet large families were not the commonplace we might think in the sixteenth century. Women spent what must have seemed like lifetimes being pregnant, but that did not always translate into living families. And especially it did not mean that a son and heir was a given. Many families of the time produced only daughters, or no children at all, and titles skipped to nephews.

Did Henry have sexual problems? In 38 years he slept, over a period of time, with eight women, including both wives and known mistresses. Only four of the eight conceived and produced healthy children, one for each of four women – Katherine, Anne, Elizabeth Blount and Jane Seymour. Other pregnancies ended in stillbirth, miscarriage or death in the first few days of life.

It certainly raises the possibility that Henry was the root cause of his lack of heirs. It seems clear venereal disease was not to blame, as is sometimes suggested. His medical history and treatments are most unlike those of Francis of France, who definitely had the pox. There are no payments in the household accounts for the particular medications in use at that time for such a complaint. The so called syphilitic leg ulcer was likely caused by osteomyelitis as a result of an injury in the tilt yard. A seventeen-hands horse in half armour falling on someone is apt to leave an impression and the wound never healed satisfactorily. It caused Henry massive pain when abscesses formed deep in the bone.

Medical knowledge of the time could not deal successfully with such an injury. He never rode to the joust again, and increasing immobility coupled with a huge appetite led to an ominous weight gain. Pain led to shifting moods plus outbursts of irritation and temper.

When Anne Boleyn miscarried in July 1534, it probably brought back all the doubts Henry was prey to during his marriage to Katherine. Today we know that anxiety about virility can lead to loss of potency, and he must surely have suspected, deep down, that he was the problem. A wife who produces no sign of pregnancy is one thing, but a wife who becomes pregnant but produces weak and sickly children is another thing again. Henry would know, as would his courtiers, of families where in-breeding produced deformities. They would also know of infertile stallions and bulls. From there it was a small step to the obvious conclusion.
It was more than a year before Anne was pregnant again.
At George Boleyn’s trial, he was asked if his sister, Anne, had told him that the King was unable to attain or sustain an erection. They say that the question was written, and the fact that George answered verbally ensured that he was executed.

Anna of Cleves may not have been Henry’s type, as we say these days, but his reluctance to bed her suggests his at least partial impotence. More conclusive is the fact that Mary Boleyn and Katherine Parr became pregnant the moment they married and bedded other men.

If Catherine’s dalliance with Culpepper had led to pregnancy, Henry might have feared that his son would not inherit the crown of England. The Tudors systematically ridded themselves of all Plantagenet heirs to keep their throne secure. Henry couldn’t take the risk of a Culpepper bastard ousting his son. Nor could he face the public shame of Catherine claiming she carried another man’s son...she had to go.

The sad castle

Harbottle Castle was built by the Umfraville family on the order of Henry II around 1120. A major medieval route into Scotland, Clennel Street, passes Harbottle, and the Roman Road from Low Learchild to High Rochester crosses the valley at Holystone a few miles to the south. Only 12 miles from the border, it was well used to Scottish aggression.

The motte is located on the south side of a kidney-shaped bailey, later divided into two halves by a crosswall defining the inner and outer bailey.
Large sandstone blocks bonded with hard grey-brown gritty mortar made up the crosswall, which was reported as 9 yards high in 1536. It once had a tower at the Nort-east corner. Back in 1318 damage by the Scots under Robert the Bruce was so severe that no building was left at Harbottle to contain prisoners of Redesdale justice and Prudhoe Castle, also an Umfraville property and some distance away on horseback, was used for the next twenty years.
By 1400 Harbottle Castle was habitable and defensible again, and housed 20 men-at-arms and 40 archers. In 1432 conscript builders and labourers restored the castle walls. In 1435 the Umfraville line died out for lack of an heir, and the castle passed through the female line to the Tailbois family in Norfolk. Like most absentee landlords, the family spent neither time nor money at Harbottle. William Tailbois fought for the Lancastrians at the battle of Hexham in 1464, and was executed in Newcastle.
By 1509 Lord Dacre was in residence and in 1515 ex-Queen Margaret Tudor-Stewart fled from Edinburgh to the Border where she was met by Lord Dacre and escorted to Harbottle. She gave birth to Lady Margaret Douglas within a fortnight of her arrival.

By 1523 the castle was in sore decay once more and by 1538 it was declared unfit for the Keeper of Redesdale to inhabit. But as the Anglo-Scottish wars developed around 1543, the Castle was required and repairs were made. Harbottle passed into the care of King Henry in 1546. More repairs, and provision made for artillery. By 1552 it was reported as the best residence for a Warden of the Middle Marches. Elizabeth spent money on it, but by 1604, when the crowns had merged, there was little use for Harbottle and decay began in earnest. By the 1700s stone was quarried away to build new homes in the village.