Tudor population figures

If my sums are correct, the French king was not niggardly when he sent the 30,000 crowns to Scotland in 1543. In today’s terms he sent £15 million in Scots currency, and £3 million in English currency. (But I still haven’t discovered which currency was the right one.) It was to be used as bribes to persuade Scots nobles to turn against Henry of England and cleave instead to France and the Roman Catholic church.

I’ve been searching the internet for Population figures for Europe in sixteenth century, and though the figures differ by a couple of hundred thousand in some reports, and remembering that pre 1800, most are best guesses, here is what I found:

Europe 105 million,

France 10 million,

England 4 million

and Scotland half a million.

Even today the Scots number only 5,222,200 against England’s 51,809,700. Northern Ireland comes in at 1,788,900 and Wales 2,999,3000. Amazingly, there are almost as many people of Scots descent living in the USA as there are in Scotland – four million plus, and in the current generation alone 800,000 people born in Scotland now reside in either England, Wales or Northern Ireland.

What does all this add up to? Nothing much, except that I am so easily carried away by facts and figures!

Bad Sex Awards

Alison Flood in the Guardian comments on the Bad Sex Awards. Does anyone else find it odd that most of the short list are male writers? It seems especially odd when male writers are usually the ones put forward for the prestigous literary awards, and critics write about them in such glowing terms while the poor female romance writers are largely ignored.

Perhaps if we started writing love scenes with dildoes, masks and shamans in the same sentence, our work might be taken more seriously? Or is it that we have to ignore the emotions as we write, and concentrate only on the step-by-step action?

Sometimes writing a love scene is easy, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it seems easy, but on reading it back months later, the toes start to curl and you wish you hadn't been quite so well, detailed.

Publishers, particularly American, demand it and say their readers expect it. So far in the work I'm currently writing I've avoided it, and I think I shall go on avoiding it. Just can't force myself to bring shamans and dildoes into the mix...
doesn't seem to suit Tudor Scotland, somehow.

On reading this back, I think perhaps I shouldn't use the term Tudor Scotland, but Stewart Scotland doesn't quite cut it. And come to think of it, I'm writing about the effect of Henry VIII's policies on Scotland, so it kind of fits.

Lower pic shows the inner courtyard of Aydon Castle.