IF IT'S CHRISTMAS IT'S CHINON: The festive itinerary of Henry II.

I post over at THE HISTORY GIRLS  blog on the 24th of every month.  I thought I'd give you all a link to a blog post I wrote for them last Christmas eve about King Henry II and his whereabouts on every Christmas of his reign. IF IT'S CHRISTMAS IT MUST BE CHINON

Hamelin de Warenne : "Par lege Per Lege"

Hamelin FitzCount, Earl of Surrey and Warenne

Circa 1130 - 1202

"Par Lege Per Lege"

Geoffrey le Bel, Hamelin's father
Plaque on his tomb effigy 1

Hamelin FitzCount is one of those supporting role players in English history who is vaguely known to people well versed in the life of the Angevin kings, but otherwise off most people’s radar. However, he has a big part to play in my Eleanor of Aquitaine trilogy, especially in books 2 and 3, and so does his wife Isabel, Countess of Surrey and Warenne, from whom he took his title.   So who was he?  Let’s take a look at what we do and don’t know about him.

The first is a don’t know – his birth date isn’t recorded.  His father was Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, husband of the Empress Matilda who was heiress to the Duchy of Normandy and the English crown. (although that right was stolen from her by her cousin Stephen). The marriage took place when Geoffrey was not quite 15 and his bride 26.  The union produced 3 sons in the fullness of time but from circumstantial evidence including a separation, does not appear to have been one made in heaven.  Geoffrey was known as ‘le Bel’ in his lifetime, meaning ‘The beautiful’ and descriptions say that he was tall, graceful, and long-limbed with red hair and piercing crystal-grey eyes.  As well as his legitimate heirs, Geoffrey had an illegitimate son and two daughters by a mistress or possibly mistresses unknown. Some genealogies list the lady as one Adelaide of Angers.  There is the very, very scant possibility that she may have been called Matilda the same as her husband’s wife.

2

   Whatever the circumstances, Geoffrey provided for Hamelin, Emma and Mary and took them under his ducal wing.  Emma was later to become one of the ladies of Alienor of Aquitaine’s chamber and to marry Welsh prince Dafydd ab Owain Gwynedd in the summer of 1174.  Mary, became Abbess of Shaftesbury. 

Not a great deal is heard about Hamelin before his marriage in 1164.  That he was a longterm part of his half-brother Henry II’s general entourage seems likely.  We know he supported Henry at the gathering at Northampton when Archbishop Thomas Becket was summoned to account for his behaviour concerning the matter of land disputes between church and crown (among numerous other things). The proceedings of that council escalated into a slanging match between the Archbishop and the barons. Hamelin got involved, defending Henry’s dignity by shouting at Becket that he was a traitor. Becket’s response to Hamelin was ‘Were I knight instead of a priest, my fist would prove you a liar!’  Later in life, however, after Becket’s death, Hamelin embraced the cult of the murdered Archbishop and claimed to have been cured of blindness in one eye by the cloth covering Becket’s tomb.

Younger sons, minor branches on the family tree and bastards are always dependent on their greater kin for handouts.  There is evidence that Henry gave Hamelin lands in Touraine before his marriage, and that he was styled the ‘Vicomte de Touraine’.  He later gave his lands at Ballan, Colombiers and Chambray-les-Tours to his nephew King Richard in 1190/91 in exchange for Thetford.  The 3 estates were situated on the Southern fringe of Tours and were in strategic positions on the road to Chinon.  This suggests that they were hereditory possessions of the counts of Anjou.  The lands were given to Hamelin either by Henry II, or by their father to provide for his bastard son.
Hamelin’s greater days, however, came partly as a result of the Becket dispute.  Henry’s youngest brother William had been in line to wed the widowed heiress Isabel de Warenne.  She had been married to King Stephen’s son William of Boulogne who died in 1159 in Poitou while on battle campaign with Henry II. They had no issue.   Becket, being awkward, declared the proposed match between Isabel and Henry II’s brother consanguineous and refused to permit a dispensation for the couple. William FitzEmpress is supposed to have pined to death on receiving this news. I doubt that very much, but for whatever reason, he died in Rouen a few months after the refusal.  Henry was not about to let the rich de Warenne lands escape the family clutches, and promptly arranged for Hamelin to marry the widow instead.  There was no consanguinity here, and Hamelin was Henry’s sole remaining brother, the other one Geoffrey having shuffled off the mortal coil a few years earlier.

3

Isabel de Warenne was an heiress worth having.  She owned substantial lands in Norfolk, Yorkshire, the south of England and Normandy. At Domesday book, her family’s lands had been valued at £1,140, which put them among the five wealthiest secular holdings in the country after the King. By the second half of the 12^th century, the honour of Warenne held over 140 knights fees in England. Isabel’s ancestral holdings included castles at Lewes, Reigate, Sandal and Castle Acre, and would later include the magnificent keep at Conisbrough, inspiration for Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.  Norman prestige lay in the castles of Mortemer and Bellencombre, which were strategic fortresses in upper Normandy and were held in the family by her uncle Reginald de Warenne.   

The family were also patrons of Lewes Priory, a Cluniac foundation dedicated to St. Pancras, and Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk.  Isabel’s family connections spread far and wide among the Anglo Norman aristocracy.  As a note for my personal interest, Isabel’s mother became William Marshal’s aunt by marriage when she wed Patrick Earl of Salisbury as her second husband. Isabel’s great uncle Raoul de Vermandois had been married to Alienor of Aquitaine’s sister. Isabel’s father had died on the 2^nd crusade, one of the victims of the massacre while crossing Mount Cadmos.  Several birth dates are given for Isabel, but circa 1130 onwards seems the most likely; thus she and Hamelin were of a similar age.

Hamelin and Isabel married in April 1164.  In March of that year, a record appears on the Pipe Roll for money for clothes for Isabel – amounting to £4 10s 8d - presumably for her trousseau.

Hamelin took the de Warenne name for his own, adopting his wife’s patrimony and the distinctive chequered de Warenne blazon.  Two years after their marriage, he reported to the enquiry of 1166 that he held sixty knight’s fees in Sussex. This was by no means all and it seems that Hamelin was one of an elite handful of Anglo Norman courtiers who were not obliged to report fully on how many knights they could field in battle and to serve the Crown. The de Warenne contribution is missing from the knight’s fee survey documents of Henry II’s time, the Cartae baronum and the Infeudationes militum. However, other sources suggest that the de Warenne estates were in the top 10 of England’s wealthiest and most important honours.   

4 The motte of Sandal Castle

Isabel and Hamelin had four children – a boy and three girls. The boy, William, would go on late in life to marry Mahelt Marshal, eldest daughter of William Marshal as her second husband. The girls all made marriages among the run of the mill aristocracy, but one of their daughters (some sources say Isabel, some Adela) became pregnant by her cousin John Count of Mortain, later King John.  They had a son, Richard, who went on to have an effective military career, playing an important role in the Battle of Sandwich in 1217.  How much of a scandal this cousinly pregnancy caused at the time, is open to conjecture.  It does, however, show a continuing close social link between the families for the opportunity to have presented itself!

5

The centres of power in England for Hamelin and Isabel were in Norfolk at Castle Rising, in Lewes at Lewes Castle, and in Yorkshire, at Sandal, and Conisbrough where Hamelin built the magnificent hexagonal keep.  It’s thought to be an improved version of the castle built on the de Warenne Norman lands at Mortemer.  Perhaps he began building at Conisbrough in earnest following the rebellion of King Henry’s sons and the civil war of 1173.  Hamelin sided with his half brother Henry in this dispute, rather than with his impetuous nephews. His loyalty to the crown was always staunch. While his neighbour in Norfolk, Hugh Bigod, took the path to perdition by supporting Henry’s eldest son, Hamelin held firm at Castle Acre - and in all his other territories and ultimately triumphed.

Hamelin doesn’t appear as a signatory to that many charters involved with Henry II, but he was there when it mattered and always quietly efficient in service to his brother.  He was present at Fontevraud in 1173 when Henry met with Raymond de St Gilles, count of Toulouse to settle their differences – and thus was also a witness to the start of the Young King’s rebellion against his father.  Hamelin attested these charters as ‘Vicomte of the Touraine.’   The Touraine was a politically sensitive area and demonstrates Henry’s trust in Hamelin’s abilities.

Part of the Young King’s rebellion was caused by the fact that his father was negotiating a marriage for John to the daughter of the count of Maurienne.  This would have involved John being given the castles of Chinon and Loudon in the Touraine as a marriage portion, castles which the Young king saw firmly as his own.   Had the deal gone through, Hamelin would have had custody of those castles until the marriage took place.  As it was, it all fell through and turned to rebellion.  Hamelin firmly backed his brother Henry II during this time at a point when Henry’s supporters were in short supply.

6

Hamelin’s next moment in the limelight comes in 1176 when he is found escorting Henry and Eleanor’s youngest daughter to her marriage to King William of Sicily – so a task of status and diplomacy.

During the 1180’s Hamelin retired to his own business, much of it concerned with his Yorkshire estates, and he seems to have put his energies into building his wonderful keep at Conisbrough. Historian Thomas.K. Keefe says of him that he  “undoubtedly spent more time in Yorkshire than any of the other Warenne earls…” and that  “Years of experience at the Angevin court, coupled with private success in the management of the diverse Warenne properties, earned Hamelin a respect that would serve him well in the troubled years following Henry II’s death in 1189.”

7 The great keep at Conisborough Castle

In the period leading up to Henry's death at Chinon, Henry is found at Hamelin's home manors in Touraine, suggesting that he could rely on Hamelin's support and loyalty.
Following Henry's death, Hamelin was present at the coronation of his nephew Richard the Lionheart on the the 3^rd of September 1189 and was certainly very busy about the business of the court before Richard departed on crusade. There are  13 charters attested by him  before July 1190.
As aforementioned, Hamelin exchanged his lands in Touraine for Thetford in Norfolk.  This was valued at £35 a year and was an important addition to the de Warenne power base in Norfolk. If  the estate made a profit, the moneys had to be handed over to the exchequer, but if it made less than £35, the Crown had to stump up the difference. 

 While Richard was absent on crusade, Hamelin supported the chancellor William Longchamp against the intrigues of Richard’s younger brother John and also the Bishop of Durham Hugh le Puiset.  Perhaps John was persona non grata to him at this time because of the scandal of the illegitimate child he had begotten on Hamelin’s daughter. (my conjecture, no proof).  Also Hamelin, rather like William Marshal was a stickler for his word being his bond.  Once sworn he was committed.  The legend on his seal reads “pro lege, per lege” which translates (roughly) to ‘For the law, by means of the law.’  Since the bishop of Ely, William Longchamp was the law at that point, Hamelin supported him until Longchamp was forced into exile.

 In 1193 Hamelin was appointed along with William D’Albini earl of Arundel as one of the treasurers entrusted with collecting Richard’s ransom after the king was taken prisoner on his way home from the Holy Land.  On Richard’s return in 1194, Hamelin was granted the privilege of bearing one of the three swords of state at the second coronation, the other two bearers being William King of Scots and Ranulf Earl of Chester.  When Richard held a council at Nottingham later that year to deal with the insurgents who had supported John, Hamelin was present at Richard’s side to sit in judgement.

Hamelin was present at John’s coronation on 27^th May 1199, and occasionally still attended court duties, witnessing an oath taken by William King of Scots in November 1200. In 1200 too, Hamelin was granted a weekly market at Conisbrough.  King John visited Hamelin and Isabel at Conisbrough on the 5^th March 1201. In the ensuing years, fences had clearly been mended, and John was not only Hamelin's king, but his nephew, and father of his grandson!

 8 Castle Acre Priory

Hamelin and Isabel were generous patrons to the church. They gave gifts to Lewes Priory, the Hospitallers, St Mary’s York (gifts of fish – bream) , Nostell Priory, the chapel of St. Philip and St. James in the castle of Conisbrough, the priory of St Katherine, Lincoln, (the right of free entry along a causeway belonging to Hamelin for 40 cattle to graze on his moorland) Southwark priory and the abbey of St. Victor-en-Caux.  With Isabel and their son William, he was a benefactor of the Abbey of West Dereham and he issued 2 charters to the priory of the Holy Sepulchre Thetford, and several to Castle Acre Priory.  In Normandy he was a benefactor of the abbey of Foucarmont.  Not that Hamelin was always in full amity with the church.  He quarrelled with the Abbot of Cluny over the appointment of the prior of Lewes in 1181, and the dispute continued to rumble on after his death and was pursued by his son. 

Notwithstanding, when Hamelin died in May 1202, he was buried at Lewes Priory.  Isabel did not long outlive him, dying the following July, and she was buried at his side in the priory choir.  I’m pleased about that. So many couples, including William Marshal and Isabelle de Clare were buried far apart in death, but Hamelin and Isabel got to rest together.

Studying Hamelin’s charters, I was fascinated to come across the detail that he had had one of them witnessed by a man called Haregrim, who was his goatherd!  Now, usually charters are witnessed by men of status and standing in a lord’s life, and they will be listed at the end of charters in order of importance, usually starting with the Church.   The charter in question is a gift to Lewes Priory by one Robert Brito.  At the end of the charter, the witness list begins with Richard the chaplain of Conisbrough, then several knights, including Hamelin’s chief steward, William Livet. There are clerks in minor orders, Paul and John, then another 4 men of unspecified rank, followed by ‘Haregrimo caperario comitis’  which translates  to ‘Haregrim, the earl’s goatherd.’ I like that.  It brings the quirky and the idiosyncratic into the story and fuels this writer’s imagination!

From what I have been able to garner from the scraps available, Hamelin de Warenne illegitimate half-brother of Henry II, was a man of loyalty, steadfastness and integrity. His daily and family life seems to have been a place of measured order, steady growth and contentment – a seaworthy boat from which to weather the violent political storms churned up by his close and royal Angevin relatives whom he served with faith and honour throughout a long and quietly distinguished career.

My thanks to Rosemary Watson for photos 6 and 7
Wikipedia 1, and4.
Picture 3 is from Istock
Author's own photos 2, 5 and 8.

Select Bibliography: 
Early Yorkshire Charters vol 8 The Honour of Warenne Edited by William Farrer and Charles Travis Clay/Cambridge University Press
Dictionary of National Biography - entry by Thomas K. Keefe
England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings vol 1 and 2 by Kate Norgate

English Heritage links.
Conisbrough Castle
Castle Acre Priory

MEDIEVAL MONDAY: The poisoned pen of Gerald of Wales

Today's excerpt is from the preface to Gerald of Wales' The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales, another work from which I will often be quoting because it is so fascinating.
Gerald was born at Manorbier in Wales and was of Normo/Welsh extraction. There's an excellent page on Wikipedia about his background http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_of_Wales
From what I have observed of Gerald, he was a tad self-important and nurtured grudges that he tended to pay back in pen and ink, thus fixing his opinions of certain people for future generations to read. After he was passed over for the bishopric of Saint David's, his ire turned upon the royal House of Anjou where he had served as a court chaplain and diplomat for many years.

'Since, among so many different sorts and conditions of men, my own particular choice is the pursuit of letters, by which I hope to please generations yet unborn. Life here below lasts a brief moment and is always in a state of flux. It is then, a pleasant thought that one's name will live for ever and that, having won the right to eternal fame, one will always be praised and honoured. It is a sure indication of an elevated mind to strive to achieve something which, even if it produces only hostility in this life, will ensure one's lasting glory after death.... I completely wasted my time when I wrote my Topography of Ireland for Henry II, King of the English, and the companion volume, my Vaticinal History, for Richard of Poitou, his son, and successor in vice, although I would prefer not to have to say it. But these princes had little or no interest in literature, and both were preoccupied with other matters.'

I was always under the impression that Henry II, at least, was a devotee of the written word, and I detect a decidedly miffed tone here! Gerald I suspect, was suffering from rejection letter syndrome. Henry II might have enjoyed reading, but Gerald of Wales wasn't one of their favourite authors!

Before next Medieval Monday, I hope to have a blog post up showing off my latest research work buys!

INTERVIEW WITH SHARON KAY PENMAN

I have something rather special for everyone this time around - an interview with my good friend and fellow author Sharon Kay Penman. She has been very generous and taken time out of her busy writing schedule to answer a few questions.
I have loved all of Sharon's books since first becoming hooked on her first novel The Sunne in Splendour - my edition is Macmillan 1983 - see foot of this post. At the time I was just an avid reader, not an author myself and I was blown away by this fabulous historical novel about Richard III, his family, life and times. Sharon has continued to hit it out of the park with every novel she writes, whether they be mysteries or or her richly detailed historical novels set in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, particularly featuring the 'Devil's Brood' of Angevin royalty. There's no one better.
So here, without further ado, Sharon Kay Penman welcome.

Q. I really enjoyed Devil’s Brood. I am always amazed at how you managed to keep so many threads spinning at once and I think you have a particular skill for explaining the politics of the period in a thoroughly readable manner. Do you keep spreadsheets or charts of who was related to who and what political game plans were, or is it all stored in your head?

A. I keep it all stored in my head; is that weird or what? I make extensive notes on various topics like medieval sexuality or ships or Cyprus—all subjects of heavy-duty research now for Lionheart. But I seem to have no trouble remembering the shifting political alliances or the behind-the scenes double-dealing. Maybe I was a Borgia in a past life?

Q. There are some spine tingling scenes in Devil’s Brood. The one in Canterbury Cathedral with Henry doing penance for Becket’s death will stay with me for a long, long time. Do you know that you’ve written a particularly memorable scene at the time or does it take a while/other opinions before it sinks in?

A. Usually I know if a scene is going to work. When Henry did penance at Becket’s tomb, I just sensed that it was going the way that I’d hoped. I was surprised, though, that it came so easily; I’d expected to have to suffer more! Another dramatic scene that I was satisfied with was Simon de Montfort’s death scene in Falls the Shadow. But sometimes a scene will resonate with my readers in ways I didn’t expect. The Here Be Dragons scene that readers mention most is the one in which Joanna burned Llewelyn’s bed, and I didn’t see that one coming.

Q Henry II’s son Geoffrey seems to have been a real hit with the readers in Devil’s Brood. I get the feeling you enjoyed writing about him and his relationship with Constance. There doesn’t seem to be a lot known about Geoffrey – or am I wrong? How did you find out about him, and did you have more leeway in creating his character and scenes than you did with Henry and Eleanor?

A. Your writer’s instinct is right on target here. I have always found Geoffrey to be the most intriguing of the brothers. But he has been overshadowed by his more celebrated brothers, Richard and John, and historians rarely bothered to consider his motivations. Fortunately for me, a Breton historian named Judith Everard finally made up for those years of neglect. I don’t think I could have written Devil’s Brood had she not written Brittany and the Angevins first. I certainly would not have been able to flesh out Geoffrey’s portrayal without her input, and he would have remained an enigma. She was able to reveal the reasons behind Geoffrey’s actions, and this enabled me to create a plausible, three-dimensional character, not the one described by a biographer of Richard as motivated by “mindless malice.”

Q. A member of a Penman fan e-list where I participate asked the following question when she heard I was going to be interviewing you: How could such a smart, charismatic leader have been so utterly clueless in interpersonal relationships? Did he have the kind of ego that prevented him from recognizing that anyone could have a viewpoint different from his?

A. I think Henry was the ultimate control freak, unable to delegate any real authority to his sons or to Eleanor. And he paid a high price for that sort of pride. I also think he was deeply wounded by the rebellion of 1173, and those wounds never fully healed. He forgave his sons, but he no longer trusted them, and that set him on a road which led to his terrible, tragic death at Chinon.

Q. Your next project is Richard The Lionheart, and then the story of Balien of Ibelin – the true story, not the Kingdom of Heaven version. I’m really looking forward to both. Are you finding it any different working to a tighter deadline than with some of your earlier books?

A. Oh, yes! I have always had three years to do one of my historical novels, but I only have two years for Lionheart, so I am having to fight off periodic panic attacks.

Q. Is Richard proving to be surprising in any way, or is he as you imagined so far?

A. A total surprise in many ways. When I wrote Here Be Dragons more than twenty years ago, I did not have a particularly high opinion of Richard, accepting the then popular view of him as a brilliant but bloodthirsty soldier, an ungrateful son, and a careless king. Since he was only a minor character in Dragons, I did not do extensive research about him. It was not until I was writing Time and Chance and then Devil’s Brood that my research revealed a different man. He was indeed a brilliant battle commander, but I was fascinated to discover that, while he was utterly reckless when it came to his own safety, he was very conservative when it came to the lives of his men. Henry will always be one of my favorite historical figures, but I came to see that his sons had some legitimate grievances, particularly Geoffrey and Richard. So scratch the ungrateful son charge. And research in the past twenty years has given us a more nuanced and favorable view of Richard the king. He was a good judge of other men, had a real flair for multi-tasking and strategic thinking, and his father’s sardonic sense of humor. Twenty years ago, I saw him as arrogant and ruthless, and I was right—he was. But he was a much more complicated man than I’d originally thought. I think it is only fair to judge historical figures by the standards of their time, and to medieval eyes, Richard was what they most admired, a “man of prowess.”

Q. If you were going to attend a great banquet set in the time of Henry II, but Henry and Eleanor weren’t there, who would you choose to be sat either side of you?

A. Geoffrey, most definitely. And Richard, to see if my portrayal of him in Lionheart is on-target. I wouldn’t mind getting to meet his queen, Berengaria, either. And John, of course, and…well, we’d soon have a full house.

Q. Did you ever do any fiction writing before you wrote Sunne in Splendor? When was the first time you actually wrote anything down?

A. Sunne was my first novel. I’d written stories as a child, and I’d written a “novel” in my teens about young love that mercifully later disappeared.

Q. I know you’ve said you craft each chapter and polish it before you move on. Do you ever have to go back and rewrite once you have finished the book, either because by the time you’ve got the whole in your hand a certain early piece doesn’t feel quite right, or because research you’ve done along the way necessitates a change?

A. I’ve gone back to do some minor tinkering, but I’ve never done a major rewrite. It would be wonderful, though, to be able to go back in time and correct mistakes that subsequently came to light—like my little time-traveling grey squirrel in Sunne. (I know what you mean! I have a few errors of dateline or detail that I would love to be able to correct in my earlier work!)

QWhat is a typical working day? Suppose I became a fly on your wall on a typical weekday when you got up and buzzed off when you put the light out. How would I see your day panning out?

A. I don’t keep set hours as some writers do. So if I’m working on a chapter and it is going well, I am likely to spend hours at my computer, coming up for air occasionally and to feed or walk the dogs. And since I’m an owl, not a lark, I’m likely to be writing well into the night.

Q. Do you take a day off in the week.

A. No. Spoken like a true workaholic, I know. But not a day passes when I’m not either writing or researching or thinking about plot developments.

Q. Is there anything that inspires your muse? I ask this because I listen to music away from my PC, and it resonates in my subconscious for when I’m ready to write at the PC. I wondered if there’s anything that stirs your creative juices.

A. I have a number of wonderful photographs of North Wales, taken by a brilliant Welsh photographer friend, Dave O’Shea, and I think they help to stir the “creative juices.”

Q. From talking to you by e-mail, you seem to have an excellent library of research books. Do you know how many you have? Where do you get them from? (I know we both know about Oxbow and Abe etc but not sure if readers do).

A. Yes, I have an extensive library by now, several thousand or more. I used to make day-long trips to the University of Pennsylvania about fifty miles away, for they have a wonderful medieval library. But I’ve not had to do that for years. In the old pre-internet days, I would buy my books from second-hand bookshops in the U.K. I would arrive with a wish list, and snatch up anything that might be remotely useful to me in the distant future. Then I’d have the fun of packing them up and lugging them to the Royal Post Office. But the internet has changed all that, of course. I find many of my books on ABE, both the English and French websites. The Medieval Bookshop is one of my favorites. Amazon’s mother ship and its sites for England and France are also great sources. Life is so much easier for writers now, isn’t it? I wanted to find a collection of miracles supposedly performed at Becket’s tomb, written by one of the monks at Christchurch priory. I knew it had been translated in the 19^th century, so I set out to find it. And eventually I did—in Japan. So an American author bought a book from a Tokyo book-seller that was a translation by a Victorian historian of a medieval monk’s work! And the result was the scene in Devil’s Brood where Henry is doing penance at Becket’s tomb while being kept company by a garrulous monk who just won’t shut up and who happens to be the author of that collection of miracles.

Q. You have mentioned favourite research books before that readers might like, such as Robert Bartlett’s England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings and David Crouch’s History of William Marshal. Do you have any quirky favourites? I confess that my own quirky favourite is Malcolm Jones’ The secret Middle Ages with all its strange folk art objects (such as the erotic biscuit moulds!) Can you give one that you’ve found fun that’s a bit left field?

A. I don’t know if it is quirky or not, but I really like Daily Life in the Twelfth Century (That's one of my favourites too!)

Q A question from medieval historian Gillian Polack who's a member of the Penmanreview forum: I’m really curious to know if Sharon finds it easier/harder/different to talk about the Middle Ages with Medievalists (the ones who don’t write fiction) now than it was when her first book came out?

A. An interesting question. I’ve lurked on Mediev-l for years, but I don’t travel in academic circles. I know I am always very flattered when professors write and tell me they enjoy my books, trust my research, or recommend my novels to their students.

Q From Tamara Mazzei(owner of Penmanreview and publisher of Brian Wainwright)If I were to ask Sharon a question, I think it would be whether she felt constrained by the known history of Eleanor, Henry and Thomas Becket. IMO, I think that's one thing that makes it hard to write about those particular characters -- because so much has already been written about them, in their own times and later --and in fiction and nonfiction. That's a lot of expections to have to plow through, even if one is able to ignore most of them.Looking back over all the different books she's written, HBD is still myfavorite, and I suspect at least part of the reason for that is because,with the exception of some of the political events and the parts concerningJohn, she had fewer constraints because there was less documented historysurrounding Johanna and her everyday life with Llewelyn -- and it gave hermore latitude to create a self-contained story. Perhaps I am wrong on that,but I would be curious to know Sharon's take on it.

A.I think I might feel that way about the Tudors, Tamara. So much has been written about Elizabeth Tudor, etc, that I think it would be challenging to find ground that hadn’t already been thoroughly ploughed. We don’t know as much about Eleanor as we do about Henry or their sons, lacking the personal anecdotes about her that the chroniclers passed on about her husband and sons. Women, even women like Eleanor, too often slipped through history’s cracks.

I think one reason Here Be Dragons is such a favorite with my readers is because it was unknown territory. Most readers—even in Wales—were not familiar with Llewelyn’s history, and so I was able to surprise them. It probably helped, too, that Dragons has such a compelling and true love story. And like Devil’s Brood, Dragons is the story of family entanglements and the pain we bring upon ourselves—Joanna and her father, Llewelyn and his estranged son Gruffydd. I think we can all identify with family vicissitudes and conflict, even if ours are not played out on such a grand stage.

It doesn’t seem right to be discussing the MA without mentioning a writer you publish, Tamara—Brian Wainwright. He has written an excellent historical novel about Constance of York, called Within the Fetterlock, and a hysterical spoof set in the time of the Yorkists called The Adventures of Alianore Audley.

Lastly, I’d like to thank you, Elizabeth, for inviting me to visit with you and to give me a forum to to speak to your readers about the Middle Ages, a subject dear to both our hearts.

You're very welcome Sharon. I have so enjoyed reading your answers and I'm sure visitors to the blog will too! Apologies for some slightly strange formatting. Blogger does not always take kindly to cut and paste!

My first ever venture into reading one of Sharon's novels!