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From tragic Tudor queens to restless Roman soldiers: Britain's 8 most haunted houses
From tragic Tudor queens to restless Roman soldiers, Caitlin Blackwell Baines introduces us to the terrifying cast of phantoms said to dwell within the nation’s spookiest homes
1. Stirling Castle, Scotland From elusive sea monsters to shrieking banshees, Scotland is home to a host of supernatural beings – including, of course, ghosts. One of their best-known spectral celebrities is the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, who is said to haunt a staggering 10 properties, making her, perhaps, the best-travelled ghost in the nation. Among her main haunts is Stirling Castle, her childhood home in central Scotland. Perched atop a volcanic crag, surrounded by cliffs overlooking the River Forth, Stirling Castle was constructed in the early 12th century, originally as a military stronghold, acting as a strategic line of defence during the Wars of Scottish Independence (1296–1357). However, almost from the very beginning, Stirling was also a favourite royal residence. By the time a young Mary Stuart lived there in the 1540s, it was as much a palace as it was a fortress: her father, James V, had transformed it into one of the most opulent homes in Renaissance Britain. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Stirling-Castle-Bannockburn-1-8d83973.jpg" width="1200" height="960" alt="A large brown castle stands on a tree-covered hill, against a dark grey cloudy sky" title="Stirling Castle is one of several historic buildings said to be haunted by the ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots – the ill-fated monarch who was imprisoned – and executed – upon the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I (Image by SpookyScotland.net)" /> Whatever happy childhood memories Mary may have had of Stirling would be tainted by the events of 21 April 1567. It was here on this day that the embattled queen would see her infant son (the future King James VI & I) for the last time. Soon after, she was forced to abdicate, flee the country, and eventually, in 1587, she was executed for treason under the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I. Perhaps it is for this reason that the melancholy monarch returns to the castle, perpetually searching for her long-lost child, even in the afterlife. She is said to be kept company by a dutiful servant – a young woman in green, who purportedly died in a fire while attempting to save her mistress. They are also joined by Stirling’s notorious ‘Highland Ghost’ – a mysterious man adorned in full Highland regalia, who is often mistaken for a costumed tour guide. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Raynham-Hall-ghostWHB5WT-f2f1e5a.jpg" width="4218" height="5059" alt="A black and white photograph of a staircase with a white ghostly figure in the middle" title="This photograph of Raynham Hall’s ‘Brown Lady’ – purportedly the ghost of former resident Lady Dorothy Townshend – caused a stir when it was first published in 1936 (Image by Alamy)" /> 2. Raynham Hall, Norfolk At its height in the Georgian period, Raynham Hall was nationally renowned for its innovative architecture, priceless art collection and powerful owner. Though originally constructed in the early 1600s, the stately red-brick manor we see today was largely the work of eminent early 18th-century architect William Kent, acting under the direction of Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend, a leader in the House of Lords. Like the house he lived in, Townshend was an imposing figure, known for his fiery temper and blustering delivery in parliament. And rumour had it, his aggressiveness was not solely reserved for political opponents. His long-suffering wife, Dorothy, may have also been a target of his ire. The story goes that Lady Dorothy Townshend (née Walpole, sister of prime minister Robert) endured an unhappy marriage. Some say she was unfaithful, while others claim it was her extravagant spending that incurred her husband’s wrath. In any case, she purportedly died under mysterious circumstances and continues to roam Raynham’s halls to this day. Read more | Five shocking tales from Britain’s royal palaces Over the years, there have been numerous reported sightings of Lady Townshend – or ‘The Brown Lady’ as she has come to be known, on account of the colour of her silk brocade dress – but perhaps none so dramatic as the encounter of photographers Hubert Provand and Indre Shira. In the autumn of 1936, while on assignment for Country Life magazine, Provand and Shira prepared to take a photo of Raynham’s main staircase. Just as they were setting up the shot, they suddenly caught sight of an ethereal, veiled form floating down the stairs. Acting fast, they snapped their photo and captured what is widely considered to be one of the most famous examples of ‘spirit photography’ in history. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/50-Berkeley-SquareK07JMM-ffef8a3.jpg" width="743" height="1153" alt="A black and white photograph of a dark front door. Either side of it are iron railings, and there is an arch over the two steps leading up to it" title="Dare you open the door? Visitors to 50 Berkeley Square have been reporting strange goings-on since the mid-19th century (Image by Alamy)" /> 3. 50 Berkeley Square, Mayfair, Greater London With its elegant Georgian townhouses, luxury boutiques and Michelin star restaurants, the upscale district of Mayfair in central London may not seem like the natural setting for a ghost story. And yet, it is home to a property once christened the ‘Most Haunted House in London’. The offending structure can be found on Berkeley Square, a residential block first laid out in the mid-1700s by architect William Kent (the man behind Raynham Hall). From the outside, there’s nothing much to distinguish the townhouse at No 50 from its neighbours – but don’t let its staid, neoclassical façade fool you. The first reports of unusual activity at No 50 occurred in the mid-1800s. Nearby residents noticed strange sounds and smells, lights flickering in the windows at all hours of the night, and the noticeable signs of decay and abandon. Sceptics chalked this up to the eccentric habits of its owner, Thomas Myers, a recluse left heartbroken by the rejection of his fiancée. Nevertheless, rumours soon swirled that the house was haunted. View Green Video on the source website Some believed the ghost was a young woman who had jumped from an upper-storey window. Others claimed it was Myers himself, who had locked himself in the attic and driven himself mad. Still others maintained it was a preexisting entity that had possessed both Myers and the suicidal woman. Whatever the case, most Londoners came to fear and avoid No 50 – all save for a brave and foolhardy few. One such daredevil was Lord George Lyttleton, a Conservative statesman, who, in 1872, accepted a bet to stay a night alone at the house. Though incredulous of the stories, Lyttleton packed a pistol and was probably quite pleased he had done so, for when a dark, tendrilled apparition advanced towards him, he was able to defend himself. Firing a few rounds, he was certain he’d hit his mark. Yet, when the smoke settled, it revealed only spent shell casings and an empty attic. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Chillingham-Castle2BYB32Y-e4a1674.jpg" width="5081" height="3381" alt="A black and white photograph of a large castle with crenellated towers" title="This photograph of Chillingham Castle may be in black and white, but the building’s paranormal history is certainly colourful: its most famous ghoul is a boy in blue who appears to visitors inside a pink bedroom (Image by Alamy)" /> 4. Chillingham Castle, Northumberland Touted as Britain’s ‘Most Haunted Castle,’ Chillingham has a long and violent history. Once one of nearly 100 fortifications that dotted the bleak borderlands of England and Scotland, this 13th-century fortress served a pivotal role in the centuries-long rift between the two warring kingdoms. It was here, in 1298, that King Edward I launched his attack on William Wallace during the First War of Scottish Independence. Over the years, hundreds of England’s enemies were killed at Chillingham, many of them by torture in the castle’s dungeon and torture chamber – a cramped windowless pit located in a cellar beneath what is today a public tearoom. Strangely, however, these prisoners are not among the castle’s best-known ghostly residents. Instead, the most familiar phantom faces are those of women and children. There is the mysterious ‘Radiant Boy’ – an unknown child in blue who materialises before guests in the castle’s ‘Pink Bedroom’. And the legendary ‘Grey Lady’ – believed to be the ghost of Lady Mary Berkeley, whose husband, Ford Grey, 1st Earl of Tankerville, reportedly jilted her for her younger sister, leaving her alone and heartbroken in the castle. Modern visitors report the sounds of sobbing, the rustling of a heavy gown dragging along the castle’s corridors, and the faint aroma of rosewater. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Blickling-HallBPB4N5-54b2853.jpg" width="5637" height="3775" alt="A large red brick palace lit up from below by floodlights. Behind it, there are many trees in shadow and the sky is deep blue" title="Anne Boleyn is said to haunt several palaces and stately homes, including Blickling Hall near Norwich. The Tudor queen is thought to have been born at the manor that previously stood on the site (Image by Alamy)" /> 5. Blickling Hall, Norfolk Blickling Hall might be considered the English counterpart to Scotland’s Stirling Castle – though, on the face of it, they would seem to have little in common. Where Stirling is a medieval citadel looming over the gateway to the Scottish Highlands, Blickling is a Jacobean manor nestled in the heart of the Norfolk Broads. Just 20 miles east of Raynham Hall, one would think it would have more in common with its ‘haunted’ East Anglian neighbour. But as the presumed birthplace of Anne Boleyn, Blickling has a far stronger symbolic link to the childhood home of Scotland’s own tragic queen. Read more | Your history guide to Frogmore Cottage: who has lived there before? The existing structure, built for Sir Henry Hobart in 1616, was erected atop the ruins of a Tudor manor house once belonging to Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire – whose youngest daughter had the unfortunate honour of becoming Henry VIII’s second wife. On 19 May 1536, after just three years of marriage, Anne Boleyn was beheaded for adultery and treason. Like her Scottish counterpart, Anne is thought to haunt a number of historic properties, including Hever Castle (another childhood home), Windsor Castle (a brief residence), the Tower of London (the site of her death), and, of course, Blickling. Here, she is said to appear every year on the anniversary of her death, in a carriage driven by headless horses. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Heol-FanogGettyImages-1281060558-a4fffad.jpg" width="6000" height="4000" alt="A black farmhouse stands on a hill, with a single light shining in the middle. The farmhouse has a chimney at either end of the roof and behind it, the sky is dark grey" title="A spooky farmhouse. One such building, Heol Fanog (Welsh for ‘Road to the Peaks’), gained notoriety in 2022 when it became the subject of hit podcast The Witch Farm (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. Heol Fanog, Brecon Beacons, Wales A relatively recent entry into the annals of haunted historic Britain, Heol Fanog farmhouse in South Wales has gained contemporary notoriety thanks to the exposure of the hit BBC Sounds podcast, The Witch Farm (2022). The series focuses on the occupancy of the Rich family, who lived on the farm for a seven-year period from 1989, during which time they claim to have experienced a litany of terrifying events. From cold spots to disembodied footsteps, inexplicable power surges to noxious odours, and even full-blown apparitions and demonic possessions, the experiences of the Rich family have been likened to that of the Lutz family of Amityville Horror fame. While these stories are relatively new – and, indeed, the farmhouse itself is less than a hundred years old – legends about the isolated rural property have circulated for well over a century. The area’s strong association with witchcraft, occultism and Celtic mysticism, combined with the dark legacy of a gruesome local murder in the 19th century, have earned the property its nickname: ‘The Witch Farm’ or ‘Hellfire Farm’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Hampton-CourtG37YX0-eab2b03.jpg" width="4458" height="2903" alt="Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, is supposedly one of Hampton Court’s many resident phantoms. Early 20th-century postcards depicted the queen’s ‘ghost’ using a crude double-exposure effect (Image by Alamy)" title="Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, is supposedly one of Hampton Court’s many resident phantoms. Early 20th-century postcards depicted the queen’s ‘ghost’ using a crude double-exposure effect (Image by Alamy)" /> 7. Hampton Court Palace, Greater London Historic Royal Palaces certainly have their hands full. In addition to managing some of the nation’s highest profile heritage landmarks, catering to some 4 million visitors each year, they also have ghosts to contend with. Several properties in their portfolio – including the Tower of London, Kensington Palace and Kew Palace – are allegedly haunted. And while it’s hard to say which one of them is the most haunted, Hampton Court is definitely a strong contender. Construction on the iconic Tudor palace began in 1515 under the direction of Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York – Henry VIII’s chief advisor. At the time, Wolsey was one of the kingdom’s richest and most influential figures and he intended to build a home to reflect his position. In this he succeeded; however, within just a few years of his home’s completion, Wolsey had fallen from favour. Shortly before he died in 1530, he was ordered to surrender the palace to the king. Just 15 miles from London, the palace quickly became a favourite royal retreat. Read more | Seven of history's most disturbing ghost ship stories that will haunt your dreams While many monarchs have resided in Hampton Court over the centuries, the palace is indelibly linked with the reign of Henry VIII. As such, it should come as no surprise that the most familiar phantoms are members of the Henrician court. There’s Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife, who died from complications of childbirth, and allegedly still holds a solemn vigil on the palace’s Silverstick staircase; Catherine Howard, Henry’s fifth wife, whose ghost is said to run screaming down the aptly-named ‘Haunted Gallery’, endlessly replaying a failed attempt to reach her husband to beg him to spare her from execution; and maybe even Old King Hal himself. Some believe it was the ghost of the king who was captured on the viral CCTV footage that made headlines around the world in the winter of 2003. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Treasurers-HouseTopfoto0780551-5b87db0.jpg" width="3442" height="2284" alt="A cellar with dirty brick walls. To the left, there is an empty fireplace with a dark tunnel, and on the right, there are two boxes stacked on one another" title="The infamous cellar at the Treasurer’s House, York. In 1953, a young plumber’s apprentice claimed to have witnessed Roman soldiers marching through a wall (Image by Topfoto)" /> 8. Treasurer's House, York, North Yorkshire Beneath the soaring spires of York Minster, scores of visitors amble along pedestrian thoroughfares lined with gastropubs, gift shops and historic buildings. The din of casual conversation is occasionally interrupted by the booming oratory of tour guides who lead groups of tourists down winding cobble-stoned lanes and narrow alleyways (idiosyncratically referred to as ‘snickleways’ by the locals). These merry little bands are on the hunt for haunted houses, and in York – reputedly the ‘Most Haunted City in Britain’ – they will not be disappointed. Dozens of properties compete for the title of ‘Most Haunted House’ in York, and while there is no clear victor, there is one property that can lay claim to what is, perhaps, the best authenticated ghost story in British history. That is the Treasurer’s House – a Grade I listed National Trust property with foundations dating all the way back to the early 12th century. Its best-known ghost story, however, has nothing to do with its medieval history. In 1953, an 18-year-old apprentice plumber called Harry Martindale was hired to install a boiler in the property’s ancient cellar. Working alone and in silence, Martindale was startled by the distant sound of a trumpet. The sound grew closer, and suddenly, what appeared to be a Roman soldier with a plumed helmet emerged from a wall, followed by a cart horse and a band of other soldiers, all dressed in green and carrying round shields. If this weren’t strange enough, the soldiers appeared to be cut off at the knees. Though Martindale’s claims were initially dismissed as hallucinations, the subsequent discovery of the Via Decumana, a Roman road lying about 15 inches below the cellar floor, gave credence to his story. What’s more, his description of the soldiers’ attire – originally deemed inaccurate based on existing historical knowledge – was later confirmed to be consistent with the regiment stationed at the Roman outpost of Eboracum (i.e. modern-day York). Caitlin Blackwell Baines is an art historian and author who specialises in Georgian art and architecture. She is the author of How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession (Profile Books, 2025) This article was first published in the Apple News October 2025 bonus issue
The siege of Basing House: how the Civil War was won
When some 6,000 parliamentarians tried to prise a few hundred royalists out of Basing House in 1643, they began a brutal siege that would drag on for years and see thousands slaughtered. Jessie Childs tells the story of a desperate struggle that became a defining episode of the Civil War
On a plant-finding expedition to Kent in 1633, the apothecary Thomas Johnson looked out from the tower of Canterbury Cathedral and despaired at the inadequacy of the town’s defences. “Our people,” he lamented, “like the Spartans of old, set more store upon arms than upon walls for protection.” A decade later, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson was shoring up the defences of Basing House in Hampshire, ahead of an imminent parliamentarian attack – and presumably wishing that someone had listened to him earlier. We have always preferred the glamour of the battle to the dog-work of a siege. We hear the rumble of the cavalry charge and the first dry rattle of new-drawn steel more keenly than the sound of digging and guard duty. We imagine the king’s battle standard rescued at Edgehill and the royalist horse reduced to “stubble” by Cromwell’s troops at the battle of Marston Moor, but a half-starved garrison negotiating terms of surrender is rarely part of the picture. Yet the Civil War was not only won on Marston Moor, nor even at the battle Naseby when Charles I lost his artillery and a large part of his officer corps in June 1645. It was won three months later, at Bristol, when his nephew Prince Rupert yielded England’s second city and, with it, his command of the royalist army. It was won when further strongholds were taken and destroyed, securing parliament’s supply lines and, ultimately, giving the king nowhere to hide. Read more | 10 key battles of the Civil War From Hull, where arguably the war began in July 1642, to Harlech, where the last royalist garrison surrendered in March 1647, the first Civil War was predominantly fought around walled towns, medieval castles and fortified manor houses. Each side had areas of dominance, but this was not a regional conflict in the sense, say, of the American Civil War, with a geographically defined North and South. Once it became clear that the war between king and parliament would not be decided by one big battle, it mushroomed into hundreds of local contests for resources, supply lines and communications. In Ireland, too, the fighting was characterised by batteries and blockades, skirmishes and storms. “We make war more like foxes than like lions,” wrote Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, “and you will have 20 sieges for one battle.” Civil War: neighbourhoods become frontlines This all matters because the nature of the Civil War helps to explain the pity of it, the scope of it, and its consequences – not least for the king. The causes of the war were by no means clear-cut, but the execution of Charles I was the result of enough people in power believing that only a ruthless tyrant could renew hostilities, as Charles had done in 1648 (again suffering defeat), after so much slaughter. Charles, the army leaders decided, was a “man of blood” against whom the Lord had witnessed and by whom an account must be made “for that blood he had shed and mischief he had done”. Read more | Why Charles I had to die We hardly have to look back to the 17th century to know that when neighbourhoods become frontlines, civilians pay the price. Sieges terrorised local communities, spread disease and sucked the produce from the land. Houses were destroyed to provide field of fire, “contribution money” was collected by both sides, and farms were stripped bare. The almsfolk at the hospital of St Mary Magdalen near Winchester lost 36 sheep to the royalists over Christmas 1643. They didn’t complain at the time, but the following March they were forced to petition General Ralph Hopton after royalists broke in and took all their seed barley and every bit of wood – the gates, doors, wainscot, tables, cupboards, even the pews in their chapel. “Your poor petitioners,” they wrote, “being very aged and impotent persons [are] thereby made destitute of the means of having either temporal or spiritual food.” Hopton signed a protection order, but by then there wasn’t even a stable door left to close. Timeline: key moments in the Civil War 22 August 1642 Following years of escalating tensions between Charles I and his opponents – fanned by his dismissal of parliament, imposition of taxes and attempts to impose religious uniformity – the king raises his standard at Nottingham. This signals the official start of the Civil War between royalist and parliamentary forces. 23 October 1642 The war’s first big battle at Edgehill (Warwickshire) produces no decisive winner and consigns the country to a long conflict fought locally around fortified strongholds. 10 August 1643 King Charles besieges Gloucester but withdraws the following month upon the approach of the Earl of Essex, chief commander of the parliamentarian army. The armies clash at Newbury on 20 September; the result is inconclusive. 1 July 1644 Charles’s nephew Prince Rupert relieves York for the royalists, but is defeated the following day by a joint Scottish and parliamentary force on Marston Moor. 31 May 1645 Rupert sacks Leicester in the presence of the king. The royalists march south and meet the New Model Army at Naseby on 14 June, where Charles loses his artillery and many of his officers. 10 September 1645 Bristol, England’s second city, falls to the New Model Army. “Doubtless God is with them,” one Puritan preacher declares. 5 May 1646 Charles surrenders to the Scots at Southwell, Nottinghamshire (hoping they will be more sympathetic captors than parliament), and orders his garrisons to surrender. Handed on to parliament in 1647, the king is eventually executed on 30 January 1649. 11 September 1649 Oliver Cromwell’s forces storm Drogheda and slaughter its royalist defenders in what was the most notorious episode in his bloody, siege based campaign in Ireland. 3 September 1651 Cromwell storms Worcester. Charles II goes on the run and eventually escapes to France. He will not return for nine years. On 16 December 1653, Cromwell is appointed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. Why was Basing House important? A series of sieges at Basing House, 20 miles north-east of Winchester, illustrates the hard lessons parliament had to learn before it could win the war. Basing House was the mist-shrouded mansion of John Paulet, 5th Marquess of Winchester. Said to be “the greatest of any subject’s house in England”, it was encircled by a deep ditch and thick, earth lined walls. Situated 40 miles south of the king’s headquarters in Oxford, and 50 miles south-west of parliamentarian London, it disrupted military and commercial traffic between the capital and the west and channelled resources and intelligence up to Oxford. Symbolically, too, Basing House – a refuge for prominent royalist families and their treasure chests – was vital. It came to be viewed from London as a microcosm of Stuart degeneracy. The marquess was Catholic – a “papist” to use the contemporary slur – while his wife, Honora, was half-Irish. Their beleaguered guests included actors, artists, writers and the architect Inigo Jones who helped with the fortifications. To Puritans, Basing House was “a limb of Babylon”, “a nest of the vilest vermin in all the kingdom”. It was here, announced one preacher, that “religion and laws and liberties and the very being of our English nation lie at stake”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/09/2HJW0J3webready-a9581a7.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="King Charles I holds a a council of war before the Battle of Edgehill in 1642, the first major battle of the Civil War (Photo by CBW/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="King Charles I holds a a council of war before the Battle of Edgehill in 1642, the first major battle of the Civil War (Photo by CBW/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> The first assault on Basing House It took parliament more than two years to figure out how to take it. The first major assault on Basing House – after a failed local attack in July – was commanded by William “the Conqueror” Waller, a Puritan general who detested “this war without an enemy”, but was nevertheless certain that God would help him win it. He set down before Basing House on 6 November 1643 with around 6,000 men. The garrison comprised 400 defenders. It was, Waller was told, “but a slight piece”. The marquess refused Waller’s summons to surrender and presented stiff resistance the following day. A sortie led by the apothecary Thomas Johnson resulted in the farm outhouses being set alight and Waller’s men either burned to death or in flight. The following week, Waller decided to have “another fling at Basing”. Again, his ratio was good, but almost half his force was made up of Londoners who were not keen on service beyond the capital. Everything that could go wrong for Waller went wrong on 12 November 1643. Listen | Jonathan Healey delves into the turbulent 17th century, which witnessed regicide, civil war and the political awakening of society The Londoners’ lack of morale and discipline was exposed when they were blasted with case shot (canisters filled with musket balls) and refused to drive on. Another unit forgot their musket drills, so that the second ranks fired before the first had time to turn away and the “third ranks fired upon them, and so, consequently, the rear fired upon their own front and slew and wounded many of their own men”. Waller fared better on the house’s east front, but his scaling ladders were too short, his petard (a bell-shaped bomb) was clamped to the wrong place and, again, the resistance was epic. A sniper inside the house picked off charging assailants, while women threw down bricks and stones from the roof. “Come up Roundheads if ye dare!” they screamed. At four in the afternoon, darkness and driving rain forced Waller to withdraw. One soldier, left behind with a shattered leg, cried out for help. What, shouted the defenders of the house, had the king ever done to him to make him rebel? At which question, one royalist newsbook reported, “this desperate wretch pulled out his knife and cut his own throat”. The following morning, Waller wanted to resume the assault. But, having slept out in the cold and sodden fields, and hearing that a royalist relief force was on its way, the Londoners chanted “Home! Home!” and Waller was forced to relent. His report made clear that, although God had chastised them with this beating, parliament should have supplied better men. The second assault on Basing House The second attempt on Basing House was a summer blockade imposed by the local Roundhead, Richard “Idle Dick” Norton. It lasted for 24 weeks and was hell for both sides. Smallpox, starvation, heavy shelling and internal tensions brought the royalists to the brink of collapse, but the garrison commander, a gnarly merchant called Marmaduke Rawdon, promised the marquess that his men would never surrender for as long as there was “a horse in the house, dog, cat or rat, or anything that is eatable”. He asked only for some wine and good tobacco from the marquess’s stores. By autumn, the defenders looked more like “prisoners of the grave than the keepers of a castle”. But marshland in front of the house ensured that it was never fully surrounded and, sometime over the summer, the Marchioness of Winchester slipped out to Oxford where she implored her fellow Catholic, Henry Gage, to save them. Read more | From the home front to the front line: what were the roles of women in the Civil War? Anyone who thinks that 17th-century soldiering was primitive work should study this exceptional operation. At 10pm on 9 September 1644, Gage led a royalist relief force on two night-marches through enemy-held territory. Each man was disguised with an orange-tawny scarf – parliament’s colours – and the troopers shared their horses with the footsore infantry. Gage was the first to do this, inspiring the rest. On the outskirts of Basing House, having swapped their orange scarves for white ribbons, they fought a skirmish with the besiegers – as fierce as any battle for those involved – and managed to cut through the lines and into the house. After raiding Basingstoke on market day, Gage provisioned the garrison, stayed for the night and then, having conducted a disinformation campaign to make the parliamentarians think he would be sticking around for longer, quietly slipped away. He took a different route back to Oxford, swimming the horses over the river Kennet (the troopers took the musketeers up on their saddles) and evading every high-alert patrol. It was, thought one royalist, “the most soldier-like piece these wars have ever yet afforded”. Five leading players in the battle for Basing House ROYALIST: Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Johnson A valiant soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Johnson was an apothecary from Yorkshire, and the first person known to have sold bananas in London. A keen plant-hunter, he planned to write a catalogue of the plants of England and Wales. He was one of the most brave and popular officers at Basing House, as valued “for his valour and conduct as a soldier” as “his excellency as a herbalist and physician”. Shot in the shoulder in September 1644, he died two weeks later. ROYALIST: Honora, Marchioness of Winchester The chatelaine of Basing House, Honora was the grand daughter of Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, and the half-sister of Robert Devereux, the 3rd Earl of Essex and lord general of the parliamentarian army. She defended Basing House during the first attack, tearing lead off the roof to cast bullets, and held her broken family together after the Civil War. ROYALIST: Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon Marmaduke Rawdon was the military governor of Basing House. He was a leading London merchant and one of the first colonisers of Barbados. A staunch royalist, he wore a medallion of Charles I around his neck – but his Protestant beliefs made him clash with the Catholic Marquess of Winchester. Rawdon was expelled from the garrison before its last stand. ROYALIST: Inigo Jones The great designer and architect Inigo Jones was later described as having been “a very aged, infirm man” at the time he came to Basing House. According to one newsbook, he was brought in to help design the house’s fortifications. At the final storm, he was stripped of his clothes by a parliamentarian soldier (an accepted privilege of plunder) and carried out of the house wrapped in a blanket. He died seven years later, just before his 79th birthday. PARLIAMENTARIAN: Hugh Peter Hugh Peter was a Puritan preacher and a chaplain in the New Model Army. His graphic report of the fall of Basing House depicted the royalist stronghold as a nest of idolatry. The captured women were “entertained by the common soldiers somewhat coarsely”, he said, “yet not uncivilly; they left them with some clothes upon them”. A vigorous promoter of the regicide (though not a signatory of Charles I’s death warrant), he was executed on 16 October 1660. The road to victory at Basing House A month later, parliament’s southern armies converged around Basing House. They totalled 19,000 men and comprised Waller’s force, Lord General Essex’s main field army and the formidable Eastern Association commanded by the Earl of Manchester and his cavalry officer, Oliver Cromwell. Their scouts told them to expect the king on 21 October, and they drew up in battle array. The following day, though, upon hearing that Charles had wheeled about towards Newbury, they took the road after him. There was no trust between the parliamentarian generals at this point and the resulting second battle of Newbury on 27 October failed to deliver a killer blow to the royalist cause. After a hard reckoning and the introduction of a Self-Denying Ordinance (passed later, in April 1645) that required all peers and MPs to resign their military offices, parliament formed the New Model Army. It had a new commander-in-chief, Sir Thomas “Black Tom” Fairfax, and stricter discipline. Fairfax ensured that the men were paid centrally and regularly. Fornicators were whipped, and plunderers were shot. In its first year of campaigning, the New Model Army fought two major battles and a dozen sieges and storms. The siege of Basing House Cromwell, now lieutenant general of the cavalry, took a detachment to Basing House on 8 October 1645. Heavy bombardment produced two effective breaches in the house’s walls. On the 14th they stormed the house and took it in the better part of an hour. Whereas the garrison had been divided by religion and had lost its Protestant regiments, the New Model Army was united by an intense religious fervour. Cromwell prayed the night before the storm to the drumbeat of Psalm 115, reflecting on the lines decrying idols: “They that make them are like unto them, so is every one that trusteth them.” Listen | Ronald Hutton discusses Oliver Cromwell’s rise to power, exploring the brilliance and cruelty of the future Lord Protector Confidence stemmed, too, from numerical advantage (about 6,000 besiegers to 300 defenders), heavy artillery and the knowledge that no outside force could now save Basing House. The local royalist garrisons had fallen, and New Model discipline won local support. The fighting was savage and about half the defenders were slain. Some Jesuit priests were executed in cold blood and one woman, the daughter of a clergyman, was killed trying to save her father. However, the attackers showed restraint in some quarters. More than 100 prisoners were taken, including 15 “Irish rebels”. The New Model Army’s combination of numbers, guns, motivation, morale and controlled ruthlessness proved a winning formula. “God exceedingly abounds in His goodness to us,” wrote Cromwell that night as a fire took hold of the house. He recommended that it be demolished, “utterly slighted” – a policy that helped ensure strongholds could not be retaken. Acts of courage and atrocity The news of the fall of Basing House was received in Oxford with a cry of anguish “as if they had lost their gods”. In London, the bells rang out in celebration. Babylon had fallen. It was not the end of the war, but it helps explain how it was won. There is another reason why we should set more store upon walls than weapons. The length and intensity of a siege brings the face of war into sharp relief. Wonderful things happened at Basing House: acts of courage, creation, love, even a wedding. But it also witnessed desertions, betrayals and atrocities including a rudimentary form of chemical warfare: the parliamentarians set fire to hay bales saturated in sulphur and arsenic, and directed the fumes towards the house. For the royalist clergyman Humfrey Peake, a siege was mental as well as physical torture. He was tormented by the “sad spectacle” of death, the “intolerable stench” of it and the “hideous shapes” of death’s soldiers mustering against him. His nerves were shredded by the “panic terrors” of others, their “shrieks and cries and noise and tumult”, and the “sad unrest” that shows people “what they are”. Of the many ways in which men try to ruin one another, Peake concluded, “this of a siege is the sharpest and the saddest”. More than a flash of courage or cowardice on the battlefield, a siege drills deep down into the human condition and draws out the best and worst of humanity. This article was first published in the June 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine
The Pendle witches: what happened in the infamous Lancashire witch trial?
HistoryExtra Academy history of witchcraft course
In 1612, the hangings of those accused of being the Pendle Witches caused a public sensation. Dr Robert Poole and Charlotte Hodgman visit Lancaster Castle in Lancashire, where one of the most famous, and sensational, witch trials in British history took place, in 1612, and explore the history of the chilling event…
“One voice for 10 dragged this way once by superstition, ignorance. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” So begins the first verse of Carol Ann Duffy’s 2012 tribute to the so-called Pendle witches – the eight women and two men who were sent to the gallows following one of the most sensational witch trials in British history. What caused the Pendle Witch Trials? The story starts with a young woman named Alison Device, who, in the spring of 1612, was out walking near Nelson, in the borough of Pendle, when she met a pedlar who refused to sell her some pins. What happened next is somewhat confused, but the pedlar appears to have become very frightened and fell down from what we would now recognise as a stroke – numb down one side and unable to speak. The terrified pedlar was taken to a nearby pub and his son was sent for. On his arrival, he found his father a little recovered, but ranting about a black dog who had come to him while he lay paralysed. Convinced that the pedlar’s condition was due to witchcraft, the two men sent for Alison herself, clearly hoping that she could undo the harm she had caused. On her arrival, she apologised to the pedlar, admitted to bewitching him but claimed she was unable to reverse the magic, stating that her grandmother was a witch and that bad things happened around her. Local magistrate Roger Nowell was sent for, and an investigation into witchcraft began. “When Nowell started delving further, events spiralled,” says Dr Robert Poole, guild research fellow at the University of Central Lancashire, and an expert on the case. “A Puritan magistrate, Nowell had his own political and religious reasons for wanting to hunt down witches, along with religious dissenters and papists. He interviewed Alison’s mother, Elizabeth, and grandmother, Old Demdike, before casting his net wider and involving neighbours in his investigations, too. The whole trial snowballed from there. “One thing the investigations threw up was that witchcraft accusations in the community went back 20 years. It seems Old Demdike and her ‘rival’, Old Chattox, had been used by their neighbours for years to perform magic as a means of curing sick cattle, and even to resolve family feuds. The women were clearly utilised by their neighbours – all of whom seem to have believed in magic – but it was only when Nowell started investigating for his own reasons that we see accusations of witchcraft and trials. “The floodgates of accusations opened and neighbour started to incriminate neighbour (although the families themselves stayed loyal to each other initially) and before long over a dozen alleged witches from the Pendle area were arrested and sent to Lancaster Castle.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2016/01/dreamstime_m_39448097-84a9243.jpg" width="2105" height="1425" alt="The gatehouse of Lancaster Castle" title="The formidable gatehouse of Lancaster Castle would gave greeted the Pendle witches when they arrived in 1612. The group, who had travelled some 50 miles on foot, were then thrown into a dark, damp cell and left for months. (Dreamstime)" /> On their arrival, the alleged witches were held in a cell deep below the well tower. The building – also known as the Witches’ tower – still stands, and visitors can peer through the iron-barred door, down the dark, stone stairs that lead to the cell below. The small, bare room, with damp walls and metal rings in the floor, has hardly any natural light and is virtually unchanged in 400 years. The accused were held there for several months while they awaited trial. One of the prisoners, Old Demdike, died – most likely in the cell – before being called to the stand. Although not currently accessible to the public, just a peek down into the darkness is enough for most visitors to imagine the appalling conditions these men and women were confined in. Largely ignored by their gaolers, living in filth and squalor with little comprehension of what was happening to them, it is little wonder that many began to ‘see’ the black dogs, devils and spirits they later confessed to having encountered. Lancaster Castle: the location of the Pendle Witch Trials Lancaster Castle, where the alleged witches were tried at the August assizes of 1612, must have been a formidable sight to the men and women who had travelled to Lancaster on foot from the remote village of Pendle, some 50 miles away. Dating back to the Roman period, the castle has held prisoners for much of its long history – serving as a female penitentiary and debtors’ prison in the 19th century, as well as incarcerating religious and political prisoners, such as Quaker founder George Fox, and Catholic recusants of the 17th century. Until 2011, the castle also housed modern-day prisoners, as HMP Lancaster, and is still a working crown court. From its hilltop location overlooking the town, the 15th-century gatehouse towers above all who walk into its dark interior. Its thick, stone walls, impressive battlements and portcullis would have offered little comfort to the weary group of men and women who arrived for trial just over 400 years ago. (Visitors to Pendle can take the ‘Walking With Witches Trail’, which follows their route across the Ribble Valley, to Lancaster Castle.) “The trial of the so-called Lancashire witches was England’s biggest peacetime witch trial,” says Poole. “But for me, one of the most remarkable things about the Pendle witch trial is that it sprang from such small beginnings.” What happened in the Pendle Witch Trials? “The Lancashire trial was essentially a show trial,” comments Poole. “A call for other witches to be tried had been sent out across the county over the summer – perhaps to demonstrate the true extent of the menace of witchcraft in Lancashire – and a total of 19 witches appeared before the judges at the August assizes. “But the trial itself – like others of the day – was far from fair and none of those on trial had counsel to defend themselves. All of the accused had given written testimonies which were read out in court as their evidence. These men and women had to sit and listen to their words being selectively quoted against them.” The trial began on 18 August, beginning with Old Chattox, who was accused of the murder of Robert Nutter some 18 years previously. The trial accounts, written by clerk of the court Thomas Potts, tell of the devil visiting in the form of a black dog; of flying ponies and of curses that could not be undone. It remains the best-documented account of an English witch trial, despite the evident bias of its author, who was writing for an audience willing to believe in the existence of such evil. “What we see with the events in Lancaster is a witch hunt rather than a genuine trial,” says Poole. “Today, the castle is a symbol of royal authority, with the arms of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster displayed on its walls. But Lancashire in the early 17th century was regarded as one of the dark corners of the land. It had never been properly evangelised by the new Church of England, and Roman Catholic style beliefs and superstitions persisted. It was seen as a place of Jesuits and illegal underground Catholics. The Protestant authorities in Lancashire were embarrassed by this. “It is against this backdrop that Roger Nowell began his investigations in early 1612. The staunchly Protestant James VI and I had been on the throne of England for nine years and had a strong belief in witchcraft and magic. What better way to impress the king and put Lancashire on the map as somewhere that was engaging fully in the persecution of witches, than to stage a huge show trial using the most up-to-date witch-hunting techniques?” Another fascinating aspect of the trial is that most of the accusations of witchcraft came from children. James and Jennet Device saw their mother, grandmother and sister taken into custody, and concocted a story about witchcraft in the family. In a bid to avoid being accused themselves, the pair ‘confessed’ to a number of matters relating to witchcraft in the family. Nine-year-old Jennet, however, went a step further, and incriminated her older brother, James, who was arrested and tried alongside his mother and sister, Alison. “Ultimately Jennet’s accusations and the confessions of the alleged witches themselves saw 10 of those accused sentenced to hang, with another placed in the pillory,” says Poole. “Many of the witches blamed wicked spirits for tempting them into revenge when they had been ill-treated – believing that this would exonerate them. But what most would not have known is that the witchcraft act had changed in 1604, making it illegal to have anything to do with any wicked or evil spirits. No matter how justified their actions may have been, by admitting to having even encountered evil spirits, the accused had effectively placed their heads in the noose.” Who was executed in the Pendle Witch Trials? On 20 August 1612, eight women and two men were led by cart to a location near what is now Williamson Park. Poignantly, with what was probably their first view of the sea, over Morecambe Bay, they were hanged. “The events surrounding the Lancashire witch trials have traditionally been treated as an outbreak of witchcraft in 1612, but what we are actually seeing are long-standing accusations, which haven’t been prosecuted until a political and religious reason was found,” says Poole. “The trial accounts, published in 1613 as The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, were dedicated to Sir Thomas Knyvet, who played a key role in thwarting the gunpowder plot in 1605. The claim in Lancashire was that a group of witches were planning to release the imprisoned witches by blowing up Lancaster Castle. This was Lancashire’s own gunpowder plot, ‘foiled’ by good Protestant men who were using James VI and I’s own techniques to rid the county of evil.” Witch trials in Britain: 5 more places to explore Brandeston village, Suffolk Where a witchfinder general instilled fear During the Civil War, witch-hunting gained momentum again, and self-appointed ‘witchfinder generals’ sprang up. The most notorious of these was Matthew Hopkins, who was responsible for one fifth of the total number of executions in England over the period. One target was John Lowes, vicar of Brandeston, who was ‘swum’ in the moat at Framlingham Castle and hanged in 1642. The castle is still open. Exeter Castle, Devon Where English witches died England’s last executions for witchcraft took place in 1682 at Exeter Castle. Three women from Bideford were accused of using witchcraft against Grace Barnes, who subsequently became ill. Little of the original castle remains but a plaque near the gatehouse names Temperance Floyd, Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards as the last to be executed in England for witchcraft. Dornoch, Sutherland Where a witch was burned The last execution for witchcraft in Britain took place in Dornoch in 1722, although the exact execution date is unknown. Janet Horne was supposedly stripped, covered in tar and paraded through Dornoch in a barrel before being burned. A ‘Witch’s Stone’ south of the town’s square is said to mark the site where Horne was burned. Sible Hedingham, Essex Where a witch was ‘swum’ The last recorded case of ‘swimming’ a witch (a popular way of trying witches after the repeal of the witchcraft statutes in 1736) took place in Sible Hedingham in 1863. The accused, a man named Dummy, was tied up and thrown into the brook (which still flows through the village) as an ‘ordeal by water’. He later died of shock and pneumonia. Tring, Hertfordshire Where local justice was administered In 1751, Ruth Osborne and her husband, John, were accused of witchcraft, dragged from their place of shelter in Tring Church and publicly ducked. Ruth later died; her inquest was held at the Half Moon pub, which still exists, as does the church. Historical advisor Robert Poole is the author of The Wonderful Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster (Carnegie Publishing, 2011) This article was first published in the August 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine Discover more learning from week three of the HistoryExtra Academy history of witchcraft course HistoryExtra Academy video lecture: witch trials, with Professor Marion Gibson – watching time 20 mins Rough injustice: what really happened at a witch trial? – reading time 6 mins The war on witches – reading time 12 mins Podcast series: Salem: Investigating the witch trials – 9 episodes Witches in the dock: 10 of Britain’s most infamous witch trials – reading time 10 mins Video: Malcolm Gaskill on The Ruin of All Witches – watching time 1 hour When the devil stalked Salem: the story of the Salem witch trials – reading time 11 mins
Caer Cadarn and Camelot: where was King Arthur's castle?
Camelot, the legendary court and castle of King Arthur, was a peerless seat of chivalry. But did it actually exist?
Camelot first appears in Chrétien de Troyes’ late 12th-century French romance Lancelot or The Knight in the Cart. Given that this story was very much his creation, the name is likely to have been made up, presumably based on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Camblan’ or Wace’s ‘Camble’, with ‘-lot’ added to fit the rhyme (meaning ‘share’, ‘fate’). There have however been numerous attempts to identify King Arthur's Camelot. Winchester was a candidate in the later Middle Ages, then South Cadbury Hillfort in the reign of Henry VIII, based presumably on nearby names such as the river Cam. Colchester in Essex and the Roman fort at Slack near Huddersfield have also been put forward as possible Camelots, because they were called Camulodunum (literally ‘fortress of the god Camul’) in Roman Britain. Before taking any of these too seriously, we surely have to show that there is a good chance that Chrétien had drawn the name from a reliable and near-contemporary source. That seems highly unlikely. View oEmbed on the source website Nick Higham is emeritus professor in early medieval and landscape history at the University of Manchester. His books include King Arthur (Stroud, 2015) This content first appeared in the May 2017 issue of BBC History Magazine
How to build a medieval castle: 9 top tips
The Norman Conquest triggered a boom in castle building, but the process of creating a fortress from scratch was far from simple. So what was the best way to build a medieval castle? John Goodall reveals his guide...
Choose your site carefully It is crucial that you build your castle at a prominent site in a position of strategic importance Castles were commonly erected on naturally prominent sites, usually commanding a landscape or a communication link, such as a ford, bridge or pass. It is rare to have a medieval account of the circumstances behind the choice of a castle site but they do exist. On 30 September 1223, the 15-year-old king Henry III arrived in Montgomery with an army. The king, having campaigned successfully against the Welsh prince Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, was intent on creating a new castle in the area to secure the border of his realm. Carpenters in England had been charged with preparing timber for the new fortifications a month previously, but the king’s advisers determined where the castle should be sited. After surveying the area carefully they chose a spot on the very edge of a promontory above the valley of the river Severn. It was, in the words of the chronicler Roger of Wendover, a position “that seemed untakeable to everyone”. He also observed that the castle was “for the security of the region on account of the frequent attacks of the Welsh”. Top tip: Identify the places where the topography dominates transport routes: these are natural sites for castles. Bear in mind that the castle’s design will be shaped by the building’s position. A castle on a high outcrop will, for example, have dry moats. England's 8 most amazing castles Agree on a workable design A master mason who can draw plans is a must – while an engineer who knows all about weapons is useful too Experienced soldiers may have had ideas of their own about the design of their castle, in terms of the form of the buildings and their arrangement. But it’s unlikely they would have had any specialist knowledge in design or building. What was needed to realise a vision was a master mason – an experienced builder whose distinguishing skill was the ability to draw. With an understanding of practical geometry he used the simple tools of a measuring rod, set-square and compass to create architectural designs. Master masons would present a drawn proposal for the castle for approval and when building commenced would oversee its construction. When Edward II began building a great residential tower at Knaresborough Castle in Yorkshire for his favourite, Piers Gaveston, in 1307, he not only approved the design, created by the London master mason Hugh of Titchmarsh – presumably expressed as a drawing – but also demanded from him regular reports on the progress of the work. From the mid-16th century, a new group of professionals, termed engineers, increasingly came to dominate the design and construction of fortifications. They had a technical understanding of the use and power of cannon, both in protecting and reducing castle defences. Top tip: Plan arrow slits carefully for a wide field of fire. Shape according to the weapons you use: longbow men need large splays (the oblique angles in the side of an opening in a wall); crossbow men less so. Source a large, and skilled, workforce You’ll need thousands of men – not necessarily all there by choice The labour required to build a great castle was vast. We have no documentary evidence for the numbers involved in the first great round of castle-building in England, after 1066, but the scale of many castles of this period makes it clear why some chronicles speak of the English population as being oppressed by the castle construction of their Norman conquerors.In the later Middle Ages, however, surviving building accounts offer detailed information. During his first invasion of Wales, in 1277, Edward I began building a castle at Flint, north-east Wales. This was erected at speed, using the massive resources of the crown. Within a month of starting work, in August that year, 2,300 men were employed on site, including 1,270 diggers, 320 woodmen, 330 carpenters, 200 masons, 12 smiths and 10 charcoal burners. All these men were pressed into service from across the realm and accompanied into Wales with guards to prevent desertion. In every period, foreign specialists were employed where necessary, often in senior roles. The millions of bricks needed to remodel Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire during the 1440s, for example, were supplied by a certain Baldwin the ‘Docheman’ or Dutchman, evidently an immigrant. Top tip: Depending on the size of your workforce and the distance it has travelled, it may be necessary to provide accommodation on site. Secure the building site A work-in-progress in hostile territory is extremely vulnerable to attack from the enemy before it is ready In order to build a castle in hostile territory it was essential to protect the site from attack. One way of doing this was to enclose the construction area within a timber fortification or low stone wall. Such medieval defences have sometimes been preserved in the completed building as an outer apron wall, as can be seen at Beaumaris, Anglesey, begun in 1295. No less important was the need to secure communications with the outside world for the delivery of building materials and supplies. In 1277, for example, Edward I canalised the river Clwyd at vast expense from the sea to his new castle at Rhuddlan. Here, the apron wall built to protect the building site extended down to the quay on the banks of the river. There might also have been concerns for security during major alterations to an existing castle. When Henry II remodelled Dover Castle, Kent in the 1180s, his building operation appears to have been carefully staggered so that the fortifications were continuously defensible throughout the construction process. According to surviving royal accounts, work to the inner bailey wall was only begun when the great tower or keep was sufficiently complete to be garrisoned. Top tip: Castle-building materials are big and bulky. If at all possible, try and move them by water, even if you have to build a dock or canal to do so. 10 things you might not know about the Middle Ages Landscape the area Building a castle might involve moving a massive amount of earth, at great cost It is often forgotten that castle fortifications were as much works of landscaping as of architecture. The resources involved in moving earth without pieces of machinery was necessarily enormous. Even after long neglect, the scale of Norman earthworks in particular can be extraordinary. It has been estimated, for example, that the vast artificial mound, termed a motte, erected in around 1100 at Pleshey Castle, Essex, required 24,000 days of labour to raise. Some aspects of landscaping were also highly skilled, notably the creation of moats filled with water. When Edward I remodelled the Tower of London in the 1270s, he employed a foreign specialist, Walter of Flanders, to create a huge new tidal moat around the site. The ditching work that Walter supervised cost more than £4,000 to complete, an enormous sum that was nearly a quarter of the cost of the entire project. As the use of cannon improved in siege warfare, earth became yet more important as a means of absorbing the impact of cannonballs. Curiously, the ability to move vast quantities of earth allowed some fortification engineers to find work creating gardens. Top tip: Save on labour, expense and time by digging the masonry of your castle walls from the ditches around the castle site. Lay the foundations Transfer the mason’s plan carefully to the ground Using measured lengths of rope and pegs, it was possible to set out the foundations of a building in full scale on the ground. This was done by walking out the actions of a master mason’s drawing tools, his compass and set-square, to realise the plan. With foundation trenches dug, work began on the masonry structure. To save money, responsibility for construction was often deputed to a senior, rather than master, mason. The measurement of masonry usually used in the Middle Ages was the rod (16ft 6in, or 5m). At Warkworth, Northumberland, for example, the complex great tower is laid out on a grid of rods, probably for purposes of costing. Medieval building processes are often well documented. In 1441–42, a tower at Tutbury Castle, Staffordshire was demolished and the plan for its successor laid out with ropes and pegs. The overseer, the Earl of Stafford, was for some reason dissatisfied. The king’s master mason, Robert of Westerley, was sent to Tutbury where he consulted with two senior masons to design a new tower on a different site. Westerley then left and over the next eight years a small group of workmen including four junior masons realised their new tower. Senior masons could also be brought in to attest to the quality of work, as occurred at Cooling Castle, Kent, when the royal mason Henry Yevele surveyed work undertaken from 1381–84. He criticised departures from the original design and rounded down the bill. Top tip: Don’t be cheated by your master mason. Make him design his building in such a way that it can be accurately costed. Fortify your castle Finish with sophisticated defences and high-spec carpentry Until the 12th century, the fortifications of most castles were comprised of earth and timber. While stone buildings predominated thereafter, wood remained a very important material in medieval warfare and fortification. Stone castles were commonly prepared for hostilities by the addition of fighting galleries along walls (termed ‘brattices’ or ‘alures’) as well as shutters that could be hung between battlements to afford the defenders protection. All these fittings were made of wood. So too were the heavy weapons that were used to defend castles, including catapults and heavy crossbows termed ‘springalds’. This artillery was generally designed by a highly paid professional carpenter, sometimes termed an engineer or ‘ingeniator’. Such expertise didn’t come cheap, but it could be worth its weight in gold. This was certainly the case in 1266, when Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire resisted Henry III for nearly six months, its catapults and water defences frustrating every attack. There is even the occasional record of campaign castles being made entirely from wood, which could be transported and re-erected where needed. One such was built to cover a French invasion of England in 1386 but was captured on a ship by the Calais garrison. The castle was described as comprising a dense wall of timber 20ft high and 3,000 paces long. At every interval of 12 paces there rose up a 30ft tower capable of holding 10 soldiers, and there was some form of unspecified protection for gunners. Top tip: Oak timber hardens with age after felling and is most easily worked when it is green. Pollarded trees (those with the upper branches removed) supply long clean limbs that can be easily transported and worked into shape with least labour. Deal with water and sewage Don’t forget the mod cons. You’ll appreciate them if the castle is ever besieged It was essential that castles were provided with an effective water supply. This could take the form of one or more wells dug to serve particular buildings such as the kitchen or stable. It can be hard to appreciate the sheer scale of medieval well shafts without descending them. That at Beeston Castle, Cheshire has a shaft 100m deep, which is lined in cut stone for the first 60m. There is also occasional evidence for the sophisticated use of water in domestic apartments. The great tower at Dover Castle possesses a system of lead pipes delivering water throughout the interior. It was fed from a well using a winch system and possibly from rainwater too. The effective disposal of human waste was another problem confronting castle designers. Latrines were grouped together within buildings so that the shafts descending from them could empty out of a common outlet. They were also set down short corridors to contain smells and were often furnished with fixed wooden seats and detachable lids. Castle latrines are often today popularly termed ‘garderobes’. In fact, the vocabulary for describing latrines in the Middle Ages was both colourful and broad. It included the words gong or gang (from the Anglo-Saxon meaning ‘the place to go’), privy and jake (a French form of ‘john’ or ‘johnny’). Top tip: Ask your master mason to plan comfortable and private en-suite facilities off the principal bed chamber, following the example of Henry II at Dover Castle. 5 British castles with Romantic histories Decorate as required A castle doesn’t just have to be well defended – its high-status residents demand a certain swankiness too Castles needed to be defensible in times of war but they also served as luxurious homes: the medieval nobility expected their accommodation to be both comfortable and well appointed. Throughout the Middle Ages these individuals travelled continuously with their attendant households, taking possessions and furniture with them from residence to residence. Important domestic interiors, however, commonly possessed permanent decorative fixtures such as stained-glass. The decorative tastes of Henry III are recorded in particular and beguiling detail. In 1235–36, for example, he directed that his hall in Winchester Castle, Hampshire be painted with a map of the world and a ‘wheel of fortune’. This decoration has since been lost but the majestic interior does preserve the reputed round table of King Arthur – probably created between 1250 and 1280. The wider setting of castles was also important for grand living. Parks were laid out for the jealously guarded aristocratic privilege of hunting, and there was a demand for gardens, too. The surviving building accounts for Kirby Muxloe Castle, Leicestershire reveal that its patron, Lord Hastings, began laying out the gardens at the very start of the building operations in 1480. In the Middle Ages there was also a taste for rooms with fine views. One 13th-century group of rooms in castles that include Leeds in Kent, Corfe in Dorset and Chepstow, Monmouthshire, were named ‘gloriette’ after their splendour. Top tip: Make sure the castle interior is splendid enough to attract visitors and friends. Entertainment can win battles without the danger of fighting. John Goodall is an award-winning author, and architectural editor of the weekly magazine Country Life This article was first published in the Christmas 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine
The history of Gwrych Castle, home of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here
We caught up with Dr Mark Baker, chairperson of the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust, to find out more about the new UK home of the TV series I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, from royal ties to its haunted past…
Gwrych Castle, a 19th-century country house near Abergele in North Wales, might be about to become one of the most famous historical sites of 2020, thanks to its new role as the home of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. But in the 1990s, the castle was fading fast, stripped of its wealth, crumbling and forgotten. It was in this state that the site first caught the attention of Mark Baker, when he was 11 years old. His curiosity would lead him to establish the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust – a charity dedicated to protecting the castle’s heritage and history – all the more remarkable considering Baker was still just 12 years old. “I used to pass it every day to and from school, and I would look up at the castle from my parents’ car,” explains Baker. “I witnessed it slowly disappearing into the hillside, into a mass of overgrowth. I began to notice there was light coming through parts of the building that hadn’t done so before; the roof had been stolen, windows smashed and anything of value taken away.” When Baker ventured up to the site, he found “a scene of devastation”. The place had been ransacked by asset strippers, who took everything from its artwork to its fireplaces. “I could see remnants of what had been there in terms of its former glory,” Baker says. “There were still vestiges of the past, and it caught my imagination to try and rescue it.” From magnificent ruins to imposing forts: 10 must-visit British castles Undaunted and helped by what Baker calls “the naivete of youth”, he started to research the castle at the libraries at school and in the town of Abergele. “I came across so many discrepancies in the castle’s narrative that no one really knew who owned it, or how old it was.” Curiosity in full gear, Baker wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles about the castle, ultimately meeting them to discuss what actions could be taken. “The Prince of Wales was most supportive and made an off-the-cuff comment that I should write a book about the castle and its history. So that's what I ended up doing, and I set up a charitable trust at the same time. That is how it all started.” Since his work setting up the trust, Baker completed his doctoral thesis on The Development of the Welsh Country House in 2015, and has worked with the National Trust and Welsh government agency Cadw on the preservation of historical sites. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/11/2CBRBJJ-1b8ae77-e1605636457379.jpg" width="1024" height="655" alt="Mark Baker was 12 when he set up the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust – a charity dedicated to protecting the castle’s heritage and history. (Image by Alamy)" title="Mark Baker was 12 when he set up the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust – a charity dedicated to protecting the castle’s heritage and history. (Image by Alamy)" /> The history of Gwrych Castle The 19th-century castle embodies what has happened to many country houses in the 20th and early part of the 21st century, says Baker. “It was a private house that was requisitioned in the Second World War and then sold, as the family could not afford to repair it. Fortunately, the next owner was an entrepreneur who it opened as a tourist attraction. Sadly, like many of these vast properties, maintenance slipped and then it fell into disrepair.” There have been forts on the site since the Iron Age, when the hills around the castle were mined for lead and silver, also used by the Romans. During the 11th and 12th centuries, at a time when Wales was still a collection of different kingdoms, according to legend, Gwrych played its part in the defence against invading Norman and English forces. Owain ap Gruffydd(c1100–70), the king of Gwynedd and the first ruler known to have experimented with the title ‘Prince of Wales’, fortified Gwrych against the forces of King Henry II of England in the mid-12th century. History explorer: The conquest of Wales 8 must-visit castles with Tudor connections Later, during the 14th-century power struggle between ruling monarch Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke (whose father was John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III), the site would play a part in the royal history of the British Isles. Richard had refused to grant Bolingbroke the lands left to him by his father, and when the king returned to England following a campaign in Ireland in 1399, he was captured by Bolingbroke in the area near Gwrych Castle. Richard was forced to abdicate, and Bolingbroke assumed the throne, styling himself Henry IV. The castle itself, completed in the 1820s by Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh, has since been through many iterations. In the 1939, the castle housed 200 Jewish refugees from (then) Czechoslovakia during WW2. “They were on one of the last trains out of Nazi Germany before trains were diverted to go to the concentration camps,” says Baker. “Gwrych really was a lifeline for all of those children. Most of them never saw their families again; you can’t really underestimate how pivotal a role Gwrych Castle played in safeguarding their lives.” Remembering the Kindertransport In the 1970s, the castle became a medieval entertainment centre with attractions including jousting and banquets. “And then,” says Baker, “it became a cause célèbre on how not to look after a historic building, when it became a ruin. It has hit these different points in the national consciousness. It's got an amazing story to tell, and amazing people attached to that story.” One of these figures in Gwrych’s past is the Countess of Dundonald (1859–1924), a key player in a personal dispute that had a significant impact on the castle’s history. Winifred, Countess of Dundonald, inherited Gwrych, the seat of the Bamford-Hesketh family on the death of her father in 1894. “Her family had lived there nearly a thousand years, in the earlier house,” explains Baker. “And then Winifred’s grandfather built the castle as a monument to their ancestors, the Lloyds of Gwrych.” A brief history of Wales: the resilient nation The countess was, says Baker, “very ahead of her time”. She was involved in the suffrage movement and a prominent patron of Welsh art, music and literature during the early 20th century, as well as an owner and manager of her own land at a time when this was rare for women. “Unfortunately, she had quite an unhappy marriage,” says Baker. This became significant when she tried to leave the castle to the nation in her will; when the countess died in 1924, Gwrych was left to King George V and the Prince of Wales. “She was very publicly-minded and thought about what could be done to help the preservation of the castle in the long term. It was a great tragedy that her plans fell apart; her husband came out of the woodwork, not very pleased with how his wife had disinherited him, and he ultimately bought the castle back, which ruined her vision.” Is Gwrych Castle haunted? As the celebrities signed on for this year’s series of I’m A Celebrity might be encouraged to discover, there are plenty of legends connected to the castle. “In Wales, tales of myth and legend go back to the Mabinogion and Iron Age Wales,” Baker explains, referring to the tales of Celtic mythology that were written in the 12th–13th centuries and based on older oral stories. “Gwrych Castle has all of these references in its history, as well as its own storytelling and myths,” says Baker. “It’s set of caves,” he explains, “were often referred to as being ‘the home of the fairy folk’, and a way to access ‘the Celtic other world’.” Ghosts and spirits are said to haunt the forests surrounding Gwrych. One ‘Lady in Red’, seen by champion boxer Randolph Turpin in the early 1950s whilst he was out training in the park, is said to be the ghost of the Countess of Dundonald. “The castle is a palimpsest ­– the ghosts add another layer to its rich history,” says Baker. “There are people who are interested in life after death and whether there is another world beyond ours. This is part of mystique of Gwrych where the past merges with the present.” View oEmbed on the source website I’m A Celebrity, and the future of Gwrych Castle The castle’s new role as the UK home of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity, says Baker, is “the next chapter in the thousand years of the castle’s story. “It is all about engaging people in new and innovative ways with their heritage. The filming demonstrates that historic places do not necessarily need to remain static as the narrative is constantly evolving with time. I really hope that I’m A Celebrity is an enabler for this process, so we can get more people coming to visit, to enjoy the place and also to learn to respect our historic assets. In a world affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, it is a particularly welcome spotlight as many heritage properties in the UK struggle to adjust and survive. “We're in the middle of putting together a phase 1 application to the Heritage Lottery for a £10,000,000,” says Baker, “The plan is that the castle will be reroofed and brought back into use, because what's really important to us as a grass roots charity is to provide opportunities for local people.” The castle has a part to play, says Baker, in stemming the so-called “Brain Drain” from North Wales. “It would be amazing if we can play a role in preventing this. The estate has provided employment and fostered local talent for hundreds of years; we want to continue that trend and take it to the next chapter of history.” Baker is even optimistic that the enhanced publicity and extra income for the site could lead to some of the assets that were stripped in the 1990s being identified and returned. The celebrities will be the first guests in a while to stay in the castle, and Baker is excited to see how they interact with the place (and also whether they get to see ghosts as well, adding that he hopes they will have a “nice time”). When its suggested that ‘nice’ isn’t always what the producers of the show might have in mind, he laughs and says, “Okay, hopefully they will survive, and have fond memories”. Whatever the celebrities make of their stay at Gwrych, the opportunity presented by the show is a huge one. “A casual visit to historic sites such as the castle can often be an opportunity for people to become more engaged by igniting an interest,” says Baker. “To know that’s going to happen, through the prism of I’m A Celebrity, showing that we’ve got such a rich history every night on the TV for two or three weeks in November and December. It’s incredibly exciting.” The new series of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, is airing on ITV from Sunday 15 November 2020 Find out more about the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust
Anne Boleyn, Beefeaters, Guy Fawkes and the princes: a brief history of the Tower of London
One of the most iconic historic sites in the world, the Tower of London was not just the backdrop but the lead actor in some of the most momentous events in British history. Exploring its long and fascinating history reveals a cast of characters from the well-known (such as Anne Boleyn and the princes in the Tower) to the more unexpected (spies, jewel thieves and polar bears). Here, author and historian Tracy Borman investigates
The Tower of London was founded by William the Conqueror after his famous victory at Hastings in 1066. Using part of the huge defensive Roman wall, known as London Wall, William’s men began building a mighty fortress to subdue the inhabitants of London. A wooden castle was erected at first, but in around 1075–79 work began on the gigantic keep, or ‘great tower’ (later called the White Tower), which formed the heart of what from the 12th century became known as the Tower of London. Although it was built as a fortress and royal residence, it wasn’t long before the tower took on a number of other – more surprising – roles. In 1204, for example, King John established a royal menagerie there. Upon losing Normandy that year he had been given the bizarre consolation prize of three crate-loads of wild beasts. Having nowhere else suitable to keep them, he settled for the tower. John’s son, Henry III, embraced this aspect of the tower’s role with enthusiasm, and it was during his reign that the royal menagerie was fully established. Most exotic of all Henry III’s animals was the ‘pale bear’ (probably a polar bear) – a gift from the King of Norway in 1252. Three years later, the bear was joined by a beast so strange that even the renowned chronicler Matthew Paris was at a loss for words. He could only say that it “eats and drinks with a trunk”. England had welcomed the first elephant in England since the invasion of Claudius. It was also during the 13th century that the tower embraced another function that might not be expected of a fortress. Determined to keep the production of coins under closer control, Edward I moved the mint here in 1279. His choice was inspired by the need for security: after all, the mint’s workers literally held the wealth of the kingdom in their hands. So successful was the operation that it would remain at the tower until the late 18th century. At around the same time that the mint was established, the tower also became home to the records of government. For centuries the monarch had kept these documents with them wherever they travelled, but the growing volume forced them to be stored in a permanent – and very secure – space. During Edward I’s reign, the tower became a major repository of these records. Purpose-built storage for the records was never provided there, however, so they competed for space with weapons, gunpowder, prisoners and even royalty. As with the mint, they would remain there for many centuries to come. Rebel invaders It was said that he who held London held the kingdom, and the tower was the key to the capital. It is for that reason that it was always the target for rebels and invaders. One of the most notorious occasions was the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, which was prompted by the introduction of a new ‘poll’ tax by Richard II’s government. Under the leadership of the charismatic Walter (or Wat) Tyler, in June 1381 20,000 rebels marched on the capital and headed straight for the Tower of London. The king agreed to meet them, but as soon as the gates were opened to let him out, 400 rebels rushed in. Ransacking their way to the innermost parts of the fortress, they reached the second floor of the White Tower and burst into St John’s Chapel, where they found the despised Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, leading prayers. Without hesitation they dragged him and his companions to Tower Hill and butchered them. It took eight blows of the amateur executioner’s axe to sever the archbishop’s head, which was then set upon a pole on London Bridge. Meanwhile, inside the tower, the mob had ransacked the king’s bedchamber and molested his mother and her ladies. The contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart described how the rebels “arrogantly lay and sat and joked on the king’s bed, whilst several asked the king’s mother… to kiss them”. Steeled into more decisive action, her son rode out to meet the rebels again and faced down their leader, Wat Tyler, who was slain by the king’s men. Without his charismatic presence, the rebels lost the will to fight on and returned meekly to their homes. The site of a great mystery Despite such dramatic events as this, it is the Tower of London’s history as a prison that has always held the most fascination. Between 1100 and 1952 some 8,000 people were incarcerated within its walls for crimes ranging from treason and conspiracy to murder, debt and sorcery. One of the most notorious episodes involved the ‘Princes in the Tower’. Upon the death of Edward IV in 1483, his son and heir Edward was just 12 years old so he appointed his brother Richard (the future Richard III) as Lord Protector. Richard wasted no time in placing the boy and his younger brother Richard in the tower, ostensibly for their protection. What happened next has been the subject of intense debate ever since. Read more | Did Richard III kill the Princes in the Tower? It is now widely accepted that some time during the autumn of that year the two princes were quietly murdered. At whose hands, it will probably never be known. The prime suspect has long been Richard III, who had invalidated his nephews’ claim to the throne and had himself crowned king in July 1483. But there were others with a vested interest in getting the princes out of the way. The two princes had apparently disappeared without trace, but in 1674 a remarkable discovery was made at the tower. The then king, Charles II, ordered the demolition of what remained of the royal palace to the south of the White Tower, including a turret that had once contained a privy staircase leading into St John’s Chapel. Beneath the foundations of the staircase the workmen were astonished to find a wooden chest containing two skeletons. They were clearly the bones of children and their height coincided with the age of the two princes when they disappeared. Charles II eventually arranged for their reburial in Westminster Abbey. They lie there still, with a brief interruption in 1933 when a re-examination provided compelling evidence that they were the two princes. The controversy surrounding their death was reignited by the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton in Leicester in 2012 and shows no sign of abating. Executions and imprisonment The Tudor period witnessed more victims of royal wrath than any other. This was the era in which a staggering number of high profile statesmen, churchmen and even queens went to the block. The fortress came to epitomise the brutality of the Tudor regime, and of its most famous king, Henry VIII. The most famous of the tower’s prisoners during the Tudor era was Henry VIII’s notorious second queen, Anne Boleyn. High-handed and “unqueenly”, Anne soon made dangerous enemies at court. Among them was the king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, who was almost certainly responsible for her downfall. He drew inspiration from the queen’s flirtatious manner with her coterie of male favourites and convinced the king that she was conducting adulterous affairs with five of them – her own brother included. Read more | The final days of Anne Boleyn: why did she die? Cromwell had them all rounded up and the queen herself was arrested on 2 May 1536. She was taken by barge to the tower, stoutly protesting her innocence all the way, and incarcerated in the same apartments that had been refurbished for her coronation in 1533. Anne watched as her five alleged lovers were led to their deaths on Tower Hill on 17 May. Two days later she was taken from her apartments to the scaffold. After a dignified speech she knelt in the straw and closed her eyes to pray. With a clean strike, the executioner severed her head from her body. The crowd looked on aghast as the fallen queen’s eyes and lips continued to move, as if in silent prayer, when the head was held aloft. Anne’s nemesis, Thomas Cromwell, had been among the onlookers at this macabre spectacle. His triumph would be short-lived. Four years later he was arrested on charges of treason by the captain of the royal guard and conveyed by barge to the tower. He may have been housed in the same lodgings that Anne had been kept in before her execution. The Gunpowder Plot The death of Elizabeth I in 1603 signalled the end of the Tudor dynasty, but the Tower of London retained its reputation as a place of imprisonment and terror. When it became clear that the new king, James I, had no intention of following Elizabeth’s policy of religious toleration, a group of conspirators led by Robert Catesby hatched a plan to blow up the House of Lords during the state opening of parliament on 5 November 1605 (later known as the Gunpowder Plot). It was only thanks to an anonymous letter to the authorities that the king and his Protestant regime were not wiped out. The House of Lords was searched at around midnight on 4 November, just hours before the plot was due to be executed, and Guy Fawkes was discovered with 36 barrels of gunpowder – more than enough to reduce the entire building to rubble. Listen | Hannah Greig and John Cooper explore the story of the 1605 attempt to blow up the king and parliament Fawkes was taken straight to the tower, along with his fellow plotters. They were interrogated in the Queen’s House, close to the execution site. Fawkes eventually confessed, after suffering the agony of the rack – a torture device consisting of a frame suspended above the ground with a roller at both ends. The victim’s ankles and wrists were fastened at either end and when the axles were turned slowly the victim’s joints would be dislocated. The shaky signature on Fawkes’ confession suggests that he was barely able to hold a pen. Fawkes and his fellow conspirators met a grisly traitor’s death at Westminster in January 1606. It is said that the gunpowder with which they had planned to obliterate James’s regime was taken to the tower for safekeeping. Read more | What if the gunpowder plot had succeeded? The Tower of London was again at the centre of the action during the disastrous reign of James’s son, Charles I, when the country descended into civil war. After Charles’s execution, Oliver Cromwell ordered the destruction of the crown jewels – the most potent symbols of royal power – almost all of which were melted down in the Tower Mint. But upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II commissioned a dazzling suite of new jewels that have been used by the royal family ever since. They are now the most popular attraction within the tower. Although the Tower of London subsequently fell out of use as a royal residence, it remained key to the nation’s defence. The Duke of Wellington, who was constable of the tower during the mid-19th century, stripped away many of its non-military functions, notably the menagerie, and built impressive new accommodation for its garrison, which became known as the Waterloo Block. This is now home to the crown jewels. Read more | What happened to the Crown Jewels during WW2? By the dawn of the 20th century it seemed that the Tower of London’s role as a fortress and prison was a thing of the past. But the advent of the two world wars changed all of that. One of the most notorious prisoners was Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man, Rudolf Hess, who was brought to London in May 1941 after landing unexpectedly in Scotland, possibly on a peace mission. He was kept in the Queen’s House at the tower and spent a comfortable four days there before being transferred to a series of safe houses. Was Rudolph Hess the last prisoner kept in the Tower of London? No, explains Justin Pollard… It's often surprising to find out that the Tower of London was still performing its age-old role as late as the Second World War but, contrary to popular belief, the last prisoners incarcerated there arrived under very unusual circumstances – and even later. It was Churchill who ordered Rudolph Hess to be sent to the Tower after the Reichsminister’s rather surprising arrival in Scotland on 10 May 1941, but he only remained a prisoner there until 20 May. It was actually 11 years later that the Tower opened its doors to its final inmates. Those last prisoners were the infamous Kray twins, although notoriety was not the reason for them being put in the Tower. Indeed in 1952 Reggie and Ronnie’s crime spree had barely begun, but they were nevertheless on the run – from being drafted into National Service. Having been called up to serve in the Royal Fusiliers they had frequently deserted their regiment and had recently gone absent without leave. During this most recent jaunt they had been recognised by a policeman who had attempted to arrest them and been beaten up for his trouble. The Krays were, however, finally overpowered and charged with assaulting a police officer before being handed over to their unit. At the time the Tower happened to be home to the barracks of the 1st Battalion Royal Fusiliers (London Regiment), so the Kray brothers were duly carted off to their barracks and imprisoned there, making them the last inmates of that celebrated gaol. Not that they enjoyed the place for long, being quickly shipped off to Shepton Mallet military prison for a month to await court-martial. The Tower of London today The tower remains very much a living fortress, adapting chameleon-like to its changed circumstances while preserving centuries of tradition. It is still home to the world-famous Yeoman Warders, or ‘Beefeaters’, as well as to the ravens – at least half a dozen of which must stay within the bounds of the fortress or, legend has it, the monarchy will fall. In 2014, to mark the centenary of the beginning of the First World War, the tower’s moat was filled with 888,246 ceramic poppies, each one representing a British or colonial military fatality during the conflict. ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ rapidly became one of the most iconic landmarks in London, visited by millions of people from across the globe. Although no longer subject to bombardment from invaders, the tower is nevertheless prey to the steady encroachment of the city’s new high-rise buildings. Yet still it stands, a bastion of the past that is instantly recognisable across the world. This article was first published by HistoryExtra in March 2016
The history of Tintagel Castle and the legend of King Arthur – plus 5 places to explore in Britain
Miles Russell and Spencer Mizen visit Tintagel Castle in Cornwall to explore its links with one of the world's great mythological figures...
King Arthur. Heroic British warlord who led the fight against marauding Anglo-Saxons, or a figment of a writer’s fertile imagination? It’s a question that’s been puzzling poets, chroniclers, historians and film-makers for more than 1,000 years. And nowhere does this question have more resonance than on a small, windswept, rain-battered headland projecting into the sea off north Cornwall: Tintagel. Numerous sites across north-west Europe – from Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset to the Forest of Paimpont in Brittany – have trumpeted their connections to King Arthur. Yet surely none are as intimately linked to the legendary warlord as Tintagel. King Arthur: 6 things you need to know about the warrior king and his legend That this is the case is almost exclusively down to the endeavours of one man: a Welsh cleric going by the name of Geoffrey of Monmouth. In the 1130s, Geoffrey set about writing a history of the kings who had ruled the Britons over the preceding 2,000 years. The resulting Historia Regum Britanniae is among the greatest pieces of medieval history writing – though not an entirely reliable one. It tells us, for example, that Britain was founded by the Trojans, and introduces us to King Lear. Yet, most significant of all, says Miles Russell, senior lecturer in prehistoric and Roman archaeology at Bournemouth University, is what it tells us about Arthur. “In his Historia Regum Britanniae Geoffrey gathered together a series of legends from western Britain to come up with a single narrative of the past,” says Miles. “So, in the case of Arthur, he related a tale that had been passed down by word of mouth through the generations. “In this story, Uther Pendragon is besotted with Igraine, beautiful wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. Uther is determined to have Igraine for himself and so, with the help of the wizard Merlin, assumes the image of Gorlois and tricks his way into Gorlois’ castle at Tintagel. And it is here, Geoffrey tells us, that Arthur is conceived.” The real King Arthur: why are we so obsessed with trying to solve the mystery? 5 British castles with romantic histories It’s not hard to divine why Geoffrey chose Tintagel as the site of a key, dramatic scene in his retelling of a shadowy, mythical past. The modern world can seem a long way away when you venture out onto the island fortress on a dark winter’s day – the wind whipping around you and the sea raging below. Yet there’s more to Tintagel’s links to Dark Age Britain than atmosphere. “Geoffrey’s decision to choose Tintagel as the site of Arthur’s conception would have been informed by history every bit as much as legend,” says Miles. “We know that there was a lot of mining activity – primarily for tin – around here in the Iron Age. And, as Tintagel is such a dominant part of the local landscape, it’s more than possible that there was an Iron Age fort up here – perhaps ruled by an Arthur-like warlord.” Listen | Miles Russell offers a bold view on the historical King Arthur based on his reinterpretation of medieval sources What’s beyond dispute is that, by the sixth century, Tintagel was a bustling port – a key link in a thriving trade network that stretched from southern Britain down the Atlantic seaboard to the Mediterranean coastline. “You would have had ships coming in here from all over southern Europe to buy tin and copper,” says Miles, “and, in return, they brought with them exotic goods such as wine and olive oil.” That this is the case is attested by the hundreds of pieces of fifth to seventh-century pottery that have been discovered all over the island. Faint remains of what is thought to have been the residence of a Dark Age ruler also suggest that Tintagel was a site of some importance. Yet, following its brief heyday, Tintagel slipped back into obscurity – a draughty outpost on the edge of the kingdom. And there it probably would have stayed if it hadn’t been for the arrival on the headland of Earl Richard of Cornwall – brother of King Henry III – in the early 13th century. From magnificent ruins to imposing forts: 10 must-visit British castles The great building project that Richard initiated here in the 1230s still dominates Tintagel today. At its centrepiece is his castle and, though it’s now nothing more than a ruin, much of Richard’s handiwork – including two courtyards, a curtain wall and a gate tower – continue to defy everything that the Cornish weather can throw at them. But the question is, why did Richard choose to build at Tintagel? “Like many Norman aristocrats, Richard was entranced by the romance of the Arthur legend,” says Miles. “So when he decided to set up residence in northern Cornwall, what better way of establishing a bond with a heroic, Dark Age warlord – and, in doing so, effectively controlling the Cornish people – than by choosing the site where Arthur was conceived? For Richard, building a castle at Tintagel was a canny political move.” Richard’s desperation to establish himself as a latter-day Arthur is even reflected in the design of the castle itself. “Its walls are thin, and it’s built out of slate in a mock antiquated style,” says Miles. “This tells us that Richard wasn’t attempting to build a highly defensible stronghold but a romantic building that harks back to Arthur – part of what you could call a medieval theme park.” Geoffrey of Monmouth: the lost voice of ancient Britain If Richard was obsessed with King Arthur, he was far from alone. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae was hugely popular in the Middle Ages – and Arthur was its most feted hero. “The Normans loved Arthur, and that’s partly because he is said to have defeated the Anglo-Saxons, just like they’d done,” says Miles. “By identifying with Arthur, the Normans were saying: ‘We’ve got a kinship with an ancient line of British kings, so don’t dare question our legitimacy.’ You can see this in Henry II’s decision to commission Glastonbury’s monks to excavate the supposed graves of Arthur and Guinevere.” Polite society Yet the real genius of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s text is that it transformed a blood-soaked warlord, battling through the mud of western Britain into a universal hero, celebrated in polite society across Europe. Within decades, Arthur was being championed as a Christian hero during the crusades and celebrated as an icon of knightly chivalry by French writers. And this, says Miles, was a phenomenon with staying power. “More than 300 years after Geoffrey died, Henry VII named his eldest son Arthur to bolster his hold on the English throne. Henry VIII even used the Arthur legend – and its link to a form of British Christianity that predates the papacy – to justify his break with Rome.” But beneath the chivalry, the romance, and the political agendas, there remain questions: Where did the idea of King Arthur come from? Could the legend be based on a historical figure? “The trouble with this is that it takes us back to one of the most shadowy eras in British history – the chaotic, confused period that would have followed the departure of the Romans,” says Miles Russell. “Sure, there could have been a king going by the name of Arthur – this was, after all, a time of warlords, of kingdom fighting kingdom, of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Yet the reality is that, such is the dearth of evidence, we can never know. “There is, for example, no earliest primary source that we can say contains the first secure reference to Arthur. A poem called The Gododdin, possibly from AD 600, compares one of its lead characters to Arthur, which suggests that he may have existed as a model of heroism by the start of the seventh century. “But the fact is, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Arthur is a composite character. He’s created from multiple different heroes. There could be elements of Magnus Maximus – the Roman commander of Britain who led a massive rebellion against the emperor Gratian. Then there’s a British general called Ambrosius Aurelianus. He is a prominent figure in the writings of a sixth-century British monk called Gildas, who described how Aurelianus defeated the English at a great (and seemingly historical) battle at a place called Badon.” King Arthur: five men who made up the legendary Dark Ages king Could this English-slaying freedom fighter have been the primary inspiration for the mythical figure that became King Arthur? Again, we may never know. But the fact that men such as Aurelianus lived in the period following Rome’s fall – an age when Tintagel was a thriving port and probably a power base – only serves to strengthen the site’s association with Arthur. And it is an association that has drawn visitors to Tintagel for centuries. After Earl Richard’s death, the island-fortress went into a long decline and the castle became a romantic ruin. That’s how it stayed until the 18th and 19th centuries when a series of artists such as Alfred Tennyson – fired up by a renaissance in interest in ancient Britain – began championing Tintagel’s connections to the Arthurian legend through paintings and literature. By the end of the 19th century, tourists were flocking here to witness ‘Arthur’s castle’ and ‘Merlin’s cave’. What did the Anglo-Saxons ever do for us? Celebrated creation While most modern historians agree that it is simply impossible to establish a historical link between Tintagel and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s most celebrated creation, those tourists keep coming. Tintagel is now one of English Heritage’s top five attractions, drawing up to 3,000 visitors a day in the peak summer season. With a new outdoor interpretation of Arthur’s legend (featuring interactive exhibits and artworks) set to be unveiled, and plans in place to build a new, 72-metre-long footbridge to link the mainland with the island in 2019, the future is looking bright for this Dark Age site. And that, says Miles Russell, is also the case for Arthur. “He’s moved beyond his status as an obscure British king to one of the world’s great mythological figures, and so there will always be another element of his legend that can be drawn out. I don’t think his story will ever end.” King Arthur: 4 more places to explore in Britain Cadbury Castle (Somerset) Where an ancient fort was upgraded This Iron Age fortress was first linked with Arthur in 1542, when the antiquary John Leland claimed that Cadbury had been ‘Camelot’. Excavations here in the late 1960s demonstrated that there was indeed significant remodification of the prehistoric fort in the post Roman period, but whether this was the headquarters of a monarch who inspired the myth of Arthur is unknown. Glastonbury Abbey (Somerset) Where ‘Arthur’ was reburied Glastonbury today has strong popular associations with King Arthur. This is in part due to the romantic setting of both the ruined abbey and the Tor, but also because it was here, in 1191, that monks disturbed two graves, supposedly those of Arthur and Guinevere, establishing Glastonbury as ‘Avalon’. The bones were reburied by the high altar, providing a lucrative pilgrimage attraction. The Great Hall (Winchester) Where a round table hangs On the wall of the Great Hall of Winchester hangs a large round table. (The round table was added to Arthur’s story in the 12th century, and has become a potent aspect of the myth.) Dendrochronology suggests that it dates from the late 13th century and it may have been commissioned by Edward I, who was a great Arthur enthusiast. Birdoswald (Cumbria) Where it’s claimed Arthur was slain Birdoswald was the Roman fort of Banna, an outpost at the western end of Hadrian’s Wall. Some have suggested that the fort provided the basis for the battle of Camlann, where Arthur fell in battle fighting the treacherous Mordred but, as with all things Arthurian, this is much disputed. Dr Miles Russell is senior lecturer in prehistoric and Roman archaeology at Bournemouth University. Words by Spencer Mizen This article was first published in the February 2016 issue of BBC History Magazine
The 1618 Defenestration of Prague explained
The Defenestration of Prague in 1618 saw three Catholic officials thrown from a top-floor window of Prague (Hradčany) Castle by an angry mob of Bohemian Protestant activists. The imperial emissaries escaped uninjured, but the events of 23 May 1618 proved to be the catalyst for the bloodiest war in European history, the Thirty Years' War. Author Derek Wilson investigates...
Prague Castle (Hradčany in the national language) is massive – reputedly the largest castle complex in the world. It is impressive particularly when lit up at night and viewed from the Old Town on the other side of the Vltava. It must have been even more dominating four centuries ago, when there were fewer buildings between it and the river. What happened there on that fateful spring day – 23 May 1618 – had a long back story and appalling, long-term results. It would herald the beginning of a Bohemian revolt against the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II, which in turn helped spark the Thirty Years' War. The background At the root of the trouble lay the powerful forces of religion and nationalism. The Holy Roman Empire was in the early 17th century a conglomeration of principalities, dukedoms and city states under the authority of an emperor. Though the imperial title was conferred by a body of electors, representing the major constituents of the empire, it had, in fact, been held by the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynasty since the 15th century and was widely regarded as hereditary [Rudolf IV of Habsburg was elected German king as Rudolf I in 1273 and Frederick V was the first Habsburg crowned Holy Roman emperor – as Frederick III – in 1452]. But that did not mean that the emperors were dictators: important policies were decided by members of the imperial parliament, or “diet”, and individual states jealously guarded their semi-independence. One thing that bound them all together was their allegiance to the Roman Catholic church – until the Reformation, that is. The Reformation – a breakaway from Catholic Christendom – was begun in Bohemia by the theologian, martyr and national hero Jan Hus, in the 15th century. A hundred years later Martin Luther, in Saxony, started a much more wide-ranging religious movement. Other teachers throughout Europe followed with their own versions of Protestantism and, by 1618, the Empire had become not only a political patchwork, but also a religious miscellany of states following the doctrines of Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and various, even more radical, Anabaptist leaders [Anabaptists were a fringe movement of the Reformation who were opposed to infant baptism and believed in the separation of church and state. They considered adult baptism to be the only proper baptism]. Nowhere was the mélange of religious opinion more marked than in Bohemia. As well as Utraquists [a branch of the Hussites who believed that ordinary people, like the clergy, should receive the Eucharist – aka the Holy Communion], the population consisted of Lutheran, Calvinists and Catholics. Peaceful rule there was only possible with a measure of toleration and, in 1609, the Emperor Rudolph II granted freedom of worship to the major religious groups in an edict known as the Letter of Majesty. King of Bohemia All was well until Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, was elected king of Bohemia in 1617 (he later became Emperor Ferdinand II in 1619). He believed passionately – some would say fanatically – that dynastic, territorial and religious unity were inseparable. He never deviated from his conviction that he had a divine calling to restore the glory days of the Catholic empire. As far as Bohemia was concerned, Ferdinand had a more material interest. With its flourishing agricultural, mercantile and industrial activities – not to mention its gold and silver mining – Bohemia was the wealthiest province and a vital contributor to the imperial coffers. All this was known to the national leaders in Prague, who viewed the new regime with apprehension. The question in the forefront of their minds was whether Ferdinand would honour the Letter of Majesty. The new king gave formal assurances that he would do so, but in fact this was a lie intended to put the nationalists off their guard and to buy time until he was ready to strike. For a few months Ferdinand’s tactics were successful. Protestant Bohemians watched the king and his Catholic supporters warily. It was a tense situation that needed only a tiny spark to set ablaze tinder-dry mutual hostilities. That spark, it transpired, was church building. The Lutherans [Protestant Christians who identified with the teachings of Martin Luther] wanted to erect two new places of worship – a freedom which was covered by the Letter of Majesty. But the king sequestered the land they planned to build on and instead granted it to the Catholic church. When the local people staged a protest, the Catholic deputy-governors arrested them. Were the Protestants pushing to see how far they could go, or was the king being deliberately obstructive in order to provoke a crisis? It matters not who started the fight; the important fact is that various interested parties came together to accuse the king of infringing their rights to own property and to enjoy freedom of worship. The Protestant leaders demanded the release of the prisoners. When this was refused, they campaigned throughout the land for their supporters to converge on Prague for a mass demonstration. The date was set for 23 May 1618. Listen | Professor Lyndal Roper explores the life of the father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, and considers his impact on Protestant history What happened on the day? By dawn a large crowd had gathered outside the castle under the leadership of the veteran soldier Count Jindřich Thurn [who had served in the imperial army against the Ottoman empire]. When the Protestant deputies arrived for a showdown with their Catholic counterparts they were followed into the building by their angry supporters. Arrived in the small room where four Catholic deputies sat, the Protestant leaders demanded to know whether Ferdinand had ordered his Bohemian subjects to bow to his will on pain of death and whether the Catholic deputies had encouraged him to adopt this intransigent stance. Two of the deputies satisfied their accusers of their innocence and were allowed to leave the church. That left behind Count Villem Slavata and Count Jaroslav Martinitz quaking before the impassioned mob that stood between them and the door. Thurn turned to his followers and urged them to show no mercy to the men who had urged the king to wage religious war on his Protestant subjects. They must not, he insisted, be allowed to escape with their lives. At that the mob surged forward, pinning the deputies (who were screaming to the Virgin for protection) against the tall windows. Someone unfastened the casement and flung Martinitz out. Slavata put up more of a fight and clung desperately to the window frame. One of the assassins struck him a blow on the head and he fell senseless into the abyss. For good measure the attackers threw the deputies’ gibbering secretary, Philip Fabricius, out after them. The three victims fell 21 metres to certain death on the flagstones below. Only, they didn’t. Thurn and his men, crowding round the open window, were astonished to see Martinitz and the secretary get up and scurry away, while some of Slavata’s servants carried their unconscious master to safety. How did the men survive? This was the Defenestration of Prague, and it left several questions for historians to address. The obvious one was, “How could three men have escaped with their lives from such a fall?” By a stretch of the imagination we might persuade ourselves that one or two of the men had avoided not only death but incapacitating injury. But all three? The secretary could, feasibly, have survived by landing on top of his superiors. But, even if the men had escaped unscathed, why did the revenge-crazed mob not rush down to the courtyard to finish the job they had begun? Legends claiming to provide answers were quick to emerge. The Catholic explanation was simple: the frantic prayers of the doomed men had been heard in heaven and angels had been sent to lower the deputies gently to the ground. This, the Catholics were convinced, provided dramatic proof of whose side God was on. The Protestant response was, more literally, ‘down to earth’: the victims had landed in a dung heap, they said. Does that story stack up? In the centuries before efficient sewage disposal such middens did exist and were periodically cleared by carters employed for the unsavoury task. In a large castle complex such as Hradčany, which was occupied by hundreds of officials, courtiers and servants, human waste must have accumulated quite quickly. So the Protestant version of events is perhaps feasible, though it does sound like a tardy counterblast to the ‘divine miracle’ theory. Any attempt at an alternative analysis of the events of 23 May 1618 leads us into the thickets of speculation. Might Thurn’s mob have been aiming at humiliation, rather than assassination? Could the three royal representatives have been thrown from a lower window as a demonstration of contempt? Well, an earlier event in Prague’s history – and one that must have been familiar to the perpetrators – suggests they knew exactly what they were doing, or trying to do. Almost 200 years earlier (30 July 1419) a Hussite protest had turned nasty. The demonstrators had entered the town hall and defenestrated [threw out of the window] the mayor and several other municipal officials, all of whom were killed. Other not dissimilar events had occurred in Bohemian history, so while it would be an exaggeration to describe the 1618 defenestration as a “traditional” event, it was certainly not without precedent. To Bohemians it was an appropriate way of dealing with those who trampled on the freedom of the people. What were the consequences? We may today be no further forward in solving the mystery of the escaping deputies, but about the effects of their treatment there is no doubt whatsoever. The Defenestration of Prague was the catalyst that activated the worst war in European history, the Thirty Years’ War. The rebels deposed Ferdinand II, set up a provisional assembly and raised an army of 16,000 troops for the nation’s defence. The crown of Bohemia was offered to Frederick V, the Elector Palatine, whose wife was the daughter of James I of England. Europe’s apocalypse: the Thirty Years' War Going Dutch: the Glorious Revolution of 1688 The Bohemian problem was like a lit match thrown into a box of fireworks. The politico-religious instability that was Europe exploded in a series of conflicts over the next 30 years. As well as the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs and the states of the Empire, France; the Dutch Republic; Denmark and Sweden put armies in the field. From nations not involved per se, idealists and soldiers of fortune arrived to sell their services as mercenaries. Central Europe was shattered, burned, broken, raped and trampled into oblivion. It is no exaggeration to call the Thirty Years’ War the worst war in European history. The combatant nations lost between 25 and 40 per cent of their populations to military action, famine and disease. Cities became empty, smouldering shells. Farmland took a generation to recover. The Swedish army alone destroyed in Germany 1,500 towns; 18,000 villages and 2,000 castles. The great 20th-century historian Dame Veronica Wedgwood described it with searing succinctness: “Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its results, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.” Derek Wilson is the author of Superstition and Science – Mystics, sceptics, truth-seekers and charlatans (Robinson, 2017)​ and ​The Queen and the Heretic – How two women changed the religion of England (Lion Books, 2018). To find out more, visit www.derekwilson.com
Mary, Queen of Scots: what happened to her ladies-in-waiting?
They witnessed first-hand the most eventful periods in Mary Stuart's life, accompanying her everywhere and enjoying the lavish court entertainments so important to 16th-century monarchy. But what happened to the four girls appointed to be companions and, later, ladies-in-waiting, to the Queen of Scots?
Melita Thomas, editor of Tudor Times, investigates the fate of Mary's ladies... “Yest're'en the Queen had fower Marys The nicht she'll hae but three There was Mary Seton and Mary Beaton, And Mary Carmichael and me” So runs the old ballad, remembering the four friends and companions of a fifth Mary – Mary Stuart, the romantic and ill-fated Queen of Scots. The queen’s fate is well known – she was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587 for her complicity in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I. But who were her four Marys, and what became of them? Mary Stuart was Mary, Queen of Scots in her cradle. Her early years were spent in an atmosphere of unease as her mother, Marie de Guise, sought to protect her from the predatory Scottish nobles who fought for the regency and for control of the little queen. The nobility was divided between those who supported the traditional French and Catholic alliance that Marie represented, and those who looked to a newly Protestant England to support the burgeoning Scottish Reformation. Who betrayed Mary, Queen Of Scots? Despite this tension, Marie de Guise sought to give her daughter a happy childhood, and appointed four girls to be her companions and, later, ladies-in-waiting. What all the girls had in common, as well as their Christian name, was noble birth and similarity in age to the queen. There was also – whether deliberately or not – a pun in the choice of girls called Mary, as ‘marie’ was the Scots word for a maid, derived from the Icelandic ‘maer’. The ballad above is slightly wrong on the names – they were Seton, Beaton, Fleming and Livingston. Fleming’s mother, Janet, Lady Fleming was the illegitimate half-sister of Mary’s father, James V, and Livingston was the daughter of the queen’s guardian, Alexander, 5th Lord Livingston of Callendar. Beaton’s grandfather was first cousin to Cardinal David Beaton, one of the men vying for the role of regent, while Seton was the daughter of George, 4th Lord Seton, and she and Beaton were also daughters of two of Marie de Guise’s ladies-in-waiting. An ultimate guide to the Tudors The four Marys in France The location Marie de Guise chose as most likely to keep the queen safe during these troubled times was the almost impregnable fortress of Stirling Castle. However, it soon became apparent that this was not a long-term solution. The English government, first under Henry VIII, Mary’s great-uncle, and then the lord protector and council of Edward VI, were determined that she should marry Edward VI – a view supported by some of the Scots nobles. Did Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots really meet? Marie de Guise, and the pro-French faction among the nobles, were determined to prevent this, favouring the ‘Auld Alliance’ with France – especially when it came well lubricated with French pensions – and intended her to marry the French heir, Dauphin Francois [son of King Henri II]. In preparation for an escape to France, the queen was sent first to Inchmahome Priory, and then to Dumbarton on the coast. It was at Inchmahome that the four Marys joined her household. In 1548, they set sail for France. The girls endured a rough crossing – all except the queen were afflicted by seasickness. Livingston and Fleming at least had the consolation of travelling with their families, since Lord Livingston and Lady Fleming as guardian and governess accompanied the queen. On arrival, Mary was immediately taken into the household of King Henri’s children, while her four friends were sent away. Henri II’s motive for separating Mary from her companions was two-fold: first, he wanted her to speak French, rather than Scots, and second, he wanted her closest friends to be his daughters, the Princesses Elisabeth and Claude. Not that Henri was averse to a Scots tete-a-tete – Lady Fleming was sent home in disgrace after bearing him a son. Listen | Historian, author and broadcaster Kate Williams tells the dramatic story of Mary, Queen of Scots and reflects on her doomed relationship with Elizabeth I of England The four Marys were dispatched to the Dominican Royal Priory of Saint Louis at Poissy. Far from being a backwater, Poissy was at the forefront of Renaissance learning, with close ties to the court. There, the Marys would have received a thorough Humanist education, as well as learning all the skills necessary to be wives of noblemen, and attendants on a queen. Seton seems to have been trained in hairdressing, too. Her skill in dressing her mistress’s head – first when Mary’s lustrous auburn hair was the toast of European courts, then afterward, when it thinned and greyed and was augmented by wigs – was remarked on. Later, the Marys returned to the queen’s household, where they enjoyed such domestic pleasures as making marmalade and crystallised fruit. At the centre of the Scottish court, 1561–68 Mary married Francois in 1558. Following her brief period as queen of France, the widowed Mary [Francois died in December 1560] returned to Scotland in 1561, aged 18, and ready to take up the burden of personal sovereignty. Her Marys returned with her as ladies-in-waiting. The first years in Scotland were taken up with Mary’s determination to control the complex political situation with which she was faced. A group of nobles, led by James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray (Mary’s half-brother), and calling themselves the Lords of the Congregation, had converted (some with rather more sincerity than others) to Protestantism, and changed the official religion of Scotland. This led them to look for support from Protestant England, rather than Catholic France. When was the last battle between England and Scotland? Mary – no religious fanatic – tried to steer a course between the different factions that sought to dominate her. When not engaged in state business, the queen recreated some of the splendour of the court of France, and in this she was ably assisted by her Marys. The four Marys went everywhere with the queen, even accompanying her to parliament in 1563. They had stools in her chamber, when to sit in the presence of the monarch was an extraordinary honour; they waited on her at table; and they took leading roles in the lavish court entertainments so important to 16th-century monarchy. They danced at masques, played music for visiting ambassadors, rode, hunted and hawked with the queen and her nobles. More informally, they joined Mary in dressing up as burgesses’ wives to walk around Edinburgh and St Andrew’s, shopping in the market and cooking, in a faint foreshadowing of another doomed queen, Marie Antoinette. They even donned male costume – on one occasion at a banquet for the French ambassador, as well as for practical reasons when hunting – outraging the sensibilities of the increasingly dominant religious radicals. The downfall of Mary, Queen of Scots Mary was unfortunate in that her greatest enemy at home was John Knox. Knox, a militant Calvinist, was even more misogynistic than most men of the age, and spent a good deal of time inveighing against female rule in such delightful tomes as “The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women”, and haranguing Mary in both public and private. Knox made the most of every innocent pastime derived from youth and high spirits at the queen’s court to insinuate that the queen and her entourage, including the Marys, lived immoral lives. Pressure mounted for the queen to remarry – there were many at home and abroad who had their eyes on the crown – and even Mary’s person. In a frightening incident a foolish young poet, Chastelard, was found hiding under the royal bed. Mary, too nervous to sleep alone thereafter, took Fleming as her ‘bedfellow’. The queen’s affection for her Marys was one argument used to persuade her to take a husband, as they had all vowed to remain single while she did. Mary did remarry in July 1565, but life for all of the Marys would probably have been better had she stayed a widow – the marriage to Lord Darnley [who she wed in 1565] proved disastrous. The Marys in love Whatever the Marys’ earlier matrimonial intentions, the first of them, Livingston, was married in March 1565 to John Sempill, son of Robert, Lord Sempill. Knox, who had referred to Livingston as “lusty”, suggested the match was rushed – Livingston and Sempill, who was a noted dancer, had been tripping the light fantastic with gusto and from this, Knox inferred that she was pregnant. It seems unlikely, as the betrothal took place a year before the wedding and the first of their several children was not born until a year after it. The queen attended the elaborate ceremony, and gave them a gift of a bed hung with scarlet and black velvet, with embroidered taffeta curtains and silk fringes, as well as land, drawing Knox’s fire again for granting lands to courtiers. Livingston remained at court as keeper of the queen’s jewels. When Mary made a will in 1566, Livingston drew up a minute inventory of her jewels – specimens of which were bequeathed to the Marys, should the queen die in childbed. Beaton, considered the best looking of the four Marys, caught the eye of Thomas Randolph, the English ambassador. Around twice her age, perhaps he hoped that his position would attract her. The queen’s biographer, John Guy, refers to them as lovers, but it seems unlikely that one of the queen's closest friends would expose Mary to the risks of confidential information leaking out – unless Beaton were acting in concert with Mary, extracting information from Randolph. Beaton must have had the reputation of being politically influential with the queen, as she received letters and gifts from the wife of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, one of the other English ambassadors. Beaton was courted by Randolph for some time, but in 1566 married Alexander Ogilvy, by whom she had at least one son. Beaton died in around 1598, and her widower promptly married Lady Jean Gordon, the wife whom James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, had thrown off to marry Queen Mary. Livingston was full of spirits and Beaton was the prettiest, but Fleming apparently carried the palm for overall attractiveness. As ‘Queen of the Bean’ at the Twelfth Night ceremonies in 1564, she was dressed in cloth of silver and jewels, and this “flower of the flock’s” dazzling looks attracted poetry and prose panegyrics. Fleming was courted in 1564 by William Maitland of Lethington. Maitland had a chequered history in Mary’s service: one of the few nobles who was Protestant by conviction, he had joined the Lords of the Congregation and was a friend of Sir William Cecil, the English secretary of state, whose whole life was dedicated to eliminating Mary. Maitland failed to warn Mary of the plot to murder her secretary, David Rizzio, and it is likely, too, that he knew of the plot against Darnley. [Darnley and a group of Protestant nobles stabbed to death Rizzio on 9 March 1566, after they convinced him Rizzio was Mary's lover. Mary could never forgive Darnley, who was himself murdered on 9 February 1567.] Fleming, of course, probably had no idea of the extent of Maitland’s duplicity. Maitland seems to have fallen headlong in love with her, and his passion was the subject of some mockery at court –nearly 20 years older than she was, he was described by one courtier as being as “suitable for her as I am to be pope”. Maitland has been identified as a prime suspect for the forger of the casket letters, which triggered accusations that Mary was complicit in Darnley’s murder. [The letters contain eight missives and a series of sonnets said to have been written by Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Earl of Bothwell, between January and April 1567. They were produced as evidence against Queen Mary by the Scottish lords who opposed her rule]. Whatever his machinations, Maitland later became an adherent of what was known as the Queen's Party that wished to restore her, if not to full monarchy, at least to regency for her son, James. The Queen’s Party, which included Fleming and Maitland, held Edinburgh Castle in 1573, but when it was captured by the English they were handed over to the Regent, Morton. Fleming was freed, struggling to retain her diamond and ruby chain that had been Queen Mary’s, while Maitland, carried out of the castle on a litter, died before he could be brought to trial. Suicide was rumoured. The King's Party planned to hang, draw and quarter his dead body, but Fleming wrote to Cecil, asking him to intervene. He passed the plea to Elizabeth, who requested the Scottish lords to spare the body. Fleming waited until 1583 for Maitland’s lands to be restored. She and Maitland had two children – a son, James, converted to the old faith and fled to France, while their daughter, Margaret, became Countess of Roxburghe. The fourth Mary, Seton, never married, but stayed with her mistress for many years. After the surrender at Carberry Hill [Mary surrendered and later went to exile in England following the battle of Carberry Hill, 15 June 1567, which took place near Edinburgh after a number of Scottish lords objected Mary’s rule following her marriage to the Earl of Bothwell, who was widely believed to have murdered her previous husband Lord Darnley], she joined Mary in captivity at Lochleven Castle. By standing at a window, dressed in the queen's clothes, she gave Mary time to slip out of the castle, and escape across the loch in a rowing boat. Later, when Mary fled to even more onerous imprisonment in England, Seton was permitted to join her, and spent 15 years incarcerated in the gloomy series of castles where Mary wore her life away. In 1570 Seton's mother wrote to her, and was apprehended by the King's Party, who sought to banish her from Scotland for communicating with Mary's household. Elizabeth intervened, requesting forbearance “if the cause be no greater” than writing to her daughter. By 1583, even Seton's devotion and health were tried by the long imprisonment, and she was given leave to retire to a French convent at Rheims. Seton lived on to see her mistress's son inherit the crown of England, before dying in 1615. She was buried in the convent she had dwelt in for more than 30 years. Were her last thoughts of the charismatic queen she had served so faithfully, or did it all seem a distant dream? “But why should I fear a nameless grave When I've hopes for eternity…. There was Mary Seton and Mary Beaton, And Mary [Fleming] and me”. Melita Thomas is the editor of Tudor Times, a website about daily life in the period. Visit www.tudortimes.co.uk to find out more. This article was first published by HistoryExtra in April 2015.