Hometown castle and church.

The Biographical notes on my novels say that I live in Nottingham. Actually I live near Nottingham, but I do have another town on my doorstep and it's the one I visit most often because I do my grocery shop there. It's Newark On Trent, and it's still a fairly unspoiled, bustling market town with much of its history intact. In the Medieval period, it's famous as being the place where King John died. I'm always saying to my husband that I'll bring my camera on our next outing, and finally I remembered it! I'm not the world's best photographer, but I'm enclosing a few shots of the castle and the magnificent church of Saint Mary Magdalene.
Newark Castle stands on the banks of the River Trent. The first building there was a Saxon palace dating to the reign of Edward the Elder 870 -924. In 1073, Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln built a timber motte and bailey castle on the site. Fifty years later, bishop Alexander began work on a substantial stone fortress and this was again enhanced in the reign of Henry III.
In the 15th and 16th centuries the castle became more of a palace, but during the English Civil War in the 17thC, once more returned to military status. Following Oliver Cromwell's triumph, the castle was slighted i.e. reduced to a state where it could neve be a defensive fortress again. Today all that remains is the gatehouse, curtain wall and North West tower. There is a very pleasant riverside walk and a small attractive park attached to the castle. Whenever we drive into Newark intent on replenishing the store cupboards, I always take a glance at the castle as we drive past and wonder if one of those window remaining was once part of the chambere where King John died. He had arrived in Newark in a state of great physical distress. Earlier he had been borne on a litter because he was no longer able to ride a horse. The litter itself was made from willows cut from the side of the road by the swords of his knights, and with a horse cloth thrown over. For the entry into Newark, he forced himself back onto a horse, an 'ambling nag' (Kate Norgate, John Lackland) Here, at the castle, he lingered, dying, for three days, attended by the abbot of Croxton, who, despite his medical skills was unable to do anything. As John died at midnight on October 18th, apparently a whirlwind swept through the town with such violence that peope feared for their houses, and with the storm departed the soul of King John.
On the first picture, the two small arches in the middle of the wall at the base are latrine chutes. At one time the river would have come right up to the base of the castle wall.





A romanesque window from the time of King John

















Taz investigates a mysterious dark hole in case there are rabbits!

The Church of St Mary Magdalene stands almost on the town square and is the third on the site. A previous Saxon church would have seen Leofric of Mercia and his famous wife Lady Godiva (presumably with clothes on!) amid the congregation. There was a late 12th century church, but very little of this remains. The existing church dates from the 1230's onwards. In 1227, Henry III gave permission for six oaks from Sherwood Forest to be felled for repairs to the church.
In 1310, another building programme was embarked upon and was to last 200 years.
Although not a cathedral, it is the size of one. The spire rises 236 feet and was built in several stages, beginning in the thirteenth century and continuing into the fourteenth. The trade guilds in the town each had a chapel dedicated in the church and at one point there were sixteen altars in additon to the High Altar. Each chapel would have been highly decorated and adorned with riches.
One of the remaining treasures of the church is an early sixteenth century pair of painted panels depicting the Dance of Death. One panel shows a young man in the prime of life, the other a skeleton holding out a carnation to him, the message being 'As I am, so shall you be.'














































I will need to revisit for a more thorough look. My time was limited as I had to get my frozen stuff home and I had other appointments, but I'll be back. There's a medieval chest I didn't get a chance to look at, and I didn't have time for the misericords either (bum supports during long services, often with ornate carving beneath them). I also want a closer look at the chancel floor tiles.


















Two ceilings in the church of St. Mary Magdalene Newark.

Newark is a great place to spend a few hours - historic, but modern enough so that you can buy most things. The history is right there with you every step of the way and there are plenty of good eateries and refreshment places too.

I apologise for the formatting. Blogger is having an idiosyncratic moment and the layout I see when editing is not the same as what appears on the finished blog!

Roll out the barrel - random research

One of the ways I do my research is by selecting books at random from my reference library and dibbing into them as the mood strikes.
I had one of these moments yesterday when my husband returned from the allotment and remarked upon a tool someone was using to clear the cround. A long shaft with a blade on the end basically. We had no idea what it was called, but I thought I knew where to find out, went hunting in my library and came across the beastie in one of my reference books - The Forgotten Arts by John Seymour: A practical guide to traditional crafts. It's used in hedging and it's called a long handled slasher - I guess it does what it says on the tin!
Anyway, now I had the book off the shelf, I began to re-acquaint myself with its pages and found myself reading all about the art of coopering while I was eating my lunch. The author John Seymour seems to think that coopering is allied to boat building. If you can craft something to keep water out, then you can equally craft an item to keep liquids contained - seems logical to me.
When we think of coopering today, the main container word that has survived is 'barrel' and it has come to mean the shape rather than being a statement of quantity. We have a biscuit barrel on the sideboard for example, as well as a beer barrel - same shape different size. But once upon a time, each container had its own capacity name. A pin held four and half gallons. A firkin held nine gallons. A kilderkin 18 gallons, a barrel 36 gallons, a hogshead 54 gallons, a puncheon 72 gallons and a butt 108 gallons. One advantage the barrel has in its shape is that it can be easily handled, even if it contains a great weight. You might not be able to carry one, but you can roll it or trundle it i.e. tilt it on one of its rims and spin it along.






Barrels are apparently mentioned in the old testament and are also supposed to have been used in Classical Greece - although surely amphorae were the more usual type of container. The Romans had them and so did the Medievals. They're famously depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry when William the Conqueror is preparing to invade from Normandy.

In England, oak staves for making barrels were imported by the Hanseatic league from Russia and Eastern Europe because oak from those countries apparently has less knots than English oak and therefore made a better product.
I've also seen references to silver pennies being transported in barrels, and sheaves of arrows - although whether they were called barrels is another matter as I haven't seen the original text to see what they were called in Latin and Old French.
The cooper's art also incorporated such domestic items as buckets, butter churns and bath tubs and was once a vitally important part of medieval life - now replaced by mass produced metal containers. When John Seymour published The Forgotten arts in 1984, there wasn't a single apprentice cooper to be had in all of Britain - which is sad, but a sign of progress.

It would take the length of a novel to write about how a barrel is produced and since I'm still on library tour this week, I'm keeping it short, but I can highly recommend The Forgotten Arts by John Seymour for anyone wanting to take a look at skills we have lost or are in danger of losing, or are now hobby crafts, but which go far back in time. Subjects covered in good detail include ladder making, charcoal burning, wood turning, basket making, dry stone walling, wheel-wrighting, boat-building, saddle making, pottery, soap making (author reminisces about making soap from lion fat when living in Africa!) spinning, weaving and dyeing.
It's about ready to go back on my bookshelf. Next random read to catch my eye just now is a history of Lambeth palace (I'm going to dip into the Medieval bits this evening) by Tim Tatton Brown.

New Short Story

I'm still on library tour for the next fortnight - Kensington Library on Wednesday with Katie Hickman, Wimbledon Library on Thursday 16th and then Knowle Library Solihull on Friday 17th. I'll be back to meatier blogging after that.
But dropping in to say that a while ago I was asked to write a short story for an anthology being produced to mark the Romantic Novelists' Association 50th anniversary. I was specifically asked for a historical short story and I obliged with one about a washerwoman - I'd been researching medieval laundry practices around the time the request came in. It's titled 'A Clean Start' and readers who are as fond as I am of John Marshal might enjoy a certain cameo appearance!
The book features stories from a range of authors who are all members of the RNA. Katie Fforde, Jill Mansell, Joanna Trollope etc. Also my friend Jan Jones who writes smashing Regency novels, although she tells me her story for this anthology is a contemporary.

url here to the full list.

http://www.rna-uk.org/index.php?page=article&id=158
Mine will be the only story played out in the 12th century, but there really is something for everyone!

This and that

I am in the middle of a fairly intensive library tour at the moment with at least one day a week away from home. I'm really enjoying being out on the road meeting readers, and it is great to see such a broad demographic, but it does mean that my writing time is being slightly squashed. I am preparing a couple of longer blog posts but in the meantime this is to explain why I'm not around so much - tour finishes at the end of April - and to add a few snippets of general information.

The picture at the beginning of the blog. Yikes - another headless woman (although she has her head to hand - see the stool!). No, it's not the next book cover, but part of a display put on by Leominster Library to mark their celebration of historical fiction. What a great idea! There would have been more photos but my husband went out to the car to check on the dog, who's part of the tour team, and forgot about his duties as cameraman.

Talking of covers. I am told that my work in progress about Mahelt Marshal and Hugh Bigod is going to have a new look cover. My publishers are considering their options at the moment. While the existing ones have sold very well and created a brand image, it is perhaps time to move on. The Time of Singing Paperback will have the same cover style, as will the re-issue of The Running Vixen, but then who knows? I await with excitement, interest, and trepidation.

And talking of The Running Vixen: I am just working on the first batch of edits of the rewrite.
It has been very interesting revisiting something that I last worked on around 1990 and as with The Wild Hunt, I've found that my verbosity has somewhat diminished since the early days. Part of the Running Vixen involves The Empress Matilda and I am finding that in this early novel of mine, she is slightly different to the woman I am going to be portraying once I begin writing the Empress's story. Perhaps The Running Vixen brings out her harder traits, although she is only a minor character.

I am currently building up a picture of the Empress Matilda in the Akashic Records and it's proving to be magnificent material - spot on with the history, but showing the Empress and her relationships in wonderful depth. I'll post a couple of examples in a future blog. It really is terrific material.

Meanwhile with the work in progress, I am nearing the end of draft 2. With a bit of luck, I might have it ready for the hard copy edit by the end of April or early May. It's not due in until September, but since the hard copy edit is only another layer in a long process, I'm still going to need the time.

More anon when I have a moment! In the meantime back to the edits!

Return of Castles in the Ether

Some months ago I posted an article concerning the possible whereabouts of Newbury Castle.
http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/2008/10/castles-in-ether-finding-newbury-castle.html
Akashic research, including some imperative and forthright input by its builder, John Marshal, had strongly suggested that the site was at Speen just outside Newbury.
I've been doing some digging around to see if the Marshals had any connections with Speen beyond the mention of the market William Marshal granted himself there in 1218 and I have come up with some very interesting data about the Marshals and Speen.

It turns out (to my great excitement) that Speen was indeed a Marshal property prior to 1218, but the quandary now is - when did it become theirs? That's my current jigsaw puzzle.

There is an interesting reference to Speen and the Marshals dated to 1270. (See Round, King's Serjeants, page 90) It says that Hamstead (Now Hampstead Marshall) and the grange at Speen were held by the Marshals by right of the service of the Marshal's rod. A grange was an agricultural outpost - 'a farmhouse with its stables and other buildings.' This gives me a frisson because in a session, John had described the castle site as having an old farmhouse, stable and buildings as well as the defensive fortress.
Service of the Marshal's rod means that the lands went with the job of being a Marshal. Now, while the dateline of the comment is 1270, the Marshal's hereditory lands had been fixed long before this time and it's highly possible that Hamstead and the grange at Speen had been held by the Marshal family for several generations. We know that Gilbert Marshal passed the rod on to his son John, 'my' John, builder of the lost castle at 'Newbury'. We know that John's son, John inherited the rod and in his turn passed it on t0 his brother, the great William Marshal. From there it went one after another to all the Marshal sons until the last one died, then to the eldest daughter, Matilda, and from her to her son Roger Earl of Norfolk. As a sideline, it's interesting to note that the job of Marshal was much coveted and John and his father had to fight a contest for the Marshalsea from Henry de Venoix and William de Hastings. An extant charter of King John relates to this incident. I can find nothing to say that Venoix or Hastings had any connection with Speen or Hamstead Marshal though. Click on the picture to enlarge the text.
But that's not the only connection to Speen and the Marshals. Here follows a story and a puzzle. When William Marshal gave shelter to the outlawed William de Braose in Ireland in 1208, King John was angry with him for sheltering an enemy, but William replied that 'Ge vos di ge n'ai caienz nul traitor, mes j-ai herbergie mon seignor, si comme faire le deveie.' 'I tell you that I keep no traitor here. What I have done is to give lodging to my lord, as was my duty.' Historians have long puzzled over why William should say this of de Braose. What was de Braose his lord for? The answer may be Speen. Speen itself was once owned by Bernard de Neufmarche, who was William de Braose's grandsire. We know in 1166-67, William de Braose rendered one mark in payment at the exchequer for lands at Speen. His daughter Sybilla, married a baron called Adam de Port, and their daughter then married John Marshal's eldest son, also called John. There is a suggestion that Speen came into the Marshal fold at this time as a dower portion. So already there's a tangle of conflicting evidence. It certainly gives credence to the Marshal/Braose connection. Speen seems to have consisted of several manors, including Woodspeen and Speenhamland, so perhaps the Marshals were consolidating the area. When all of William Marshal's sons had died without issue, the lands were divided among the daughters and Matilda, the eldest daughter, inherited the main manor at Speen while her sisters received other portions.
It is interesting too that early in the 13th Century, William Marshal Junior, enfeoffed one Thomas Basset with £10.00 worth of land in his manor of Speen. The Basset's were Marshal kin by marriage, John Marshal (my John) having once been married to Aline, whose offspring from her second marriage, went on to marry into the Basset line.
The church for Speen is that of St Mary The Virgin. On its own website http://www.achurchnearyou.com/speen-st-mary-the-virgin/ it says:
'It is a medieval church built on Saxon Foundations, and was the mother church of Newbury. In 1086 it was recorded in the Domesday Book. The church stands about 200 yards from where I purport the castle site to be and I found it interesting that the church is claimed to be the 'mother church' of Newbury. Built before the others were built. The Marshals have a connection with this church. There are several charters listed in the cartulary of Sandford Priory.
For example from 1206:
Uniuersis etc Willelmus Marescallus comes Penbr[] salutem Nouerit uniuersitas uestra me concessisse etc deo et beate Marie et fratribus militie Templi Salomonis intuitu caritatis et pro salute anime mee et Isabelle uxoris mee et puerorum meorum et antecessorum omnium et successorum meorum in liberam et puram et perpetuam elemosinam ecclesiam de Spenes cum omnibus ad eam pertinentibus et omnibus libertatibus suis habend et tenend et in usus proprios perpetuo possidendam Et ut etc Hiis testibus Edwardo abbate de Nottel
My Latin is pretty terrible, but basically it's a salutation from William Marshal giving the proceeds of the church at Speen to the Templars for his soul, for the soul of his wife, Isabelle and for the souls of their ancestors and their heirs.
Recent trawling has turned up a mention in the Pipe roll of 1199 referencing William Marshal and Speen. 'Et in perdonis Willelmo Marescallo dim.m. de wasto qod exigebatur ex eo in terra sua de Spienes per breve R. I'm still working on the translation of this one, having only just found it, but I'll get there.

None of this proves that there was a castle at Speen, but it does add to the circumstantial evidence. The Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal tells us that John Marshal built a castle at Newbury. But no one knows where it is. Speen, on the outskirts, with its commanding views over the landscape and strategic roads would have been an ideal place. The church, within short walking distance has been there since Saxon times. The Marshal presence at Speen from the late 12th century is confirmed by pipe roll evidence and then charters - evidence I didn't know about until now. It's a slow, laborious process, but nothing turned up so far detracts from the idea that Newbury Castle was at Speen, and indeed, in a peripheral manner, supports the argument.
If I dig up any more details, I'll post them.






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Books and bits

As you'll see from my Events and Titles blog, http://elizabethchadwickevents.blogspot.com/ I am going to be fairly busy over the next couple of months visiting various libraries up and down the country. I hope this won't put too much of a downer on my Living The History posts, but bear with me if I post less frequently for a few weeks.
However - good news! My very good author friend Sharon Kay Penman has agreed to be interviewed on my blog in the soonish future. As soon as we've organised a Q and A session, I'll be posting our talk.
Next time round I'm going to post about some interesting details I've been able to dig up that add more circumstantial evidence to the lost Newbury Castle being sited at Speen. Some interesting peripheral jigsaw pieces have come to light.

For now, I've just taken a delivery of a few more research books, so I thought I'd post this latest haul.




I was after this one all the time I was writing A Place Beyond Courage. I'll read anything Professor David Crouch writes. It has now been re-issued in paperback and it's going to come in big time when I write my Empress Matilda novel. Did I mention that the Empress was on the cards? It's down to them being shuffled around slightly and the Empress has come to the top of the pack.
I've started Akashic work on her already and some very interesting and useful details have been emerging.












A general overview of cosmetics down the ages, but written by someone who knows their stuff. I particularly like the Old Irish 'nail varnish' and the minty Medieval mouthwash (authentic!)



















This one, like another on the list, was reccommended to me by my good friend, author Sharon Kay Penman. It tells us how the Medievals saw their world in terms of Geography - the names they gave to places etc. I had to obtain this one from Abe Books.
















Robert Bartlett is another of my favourite authors along with Professor Crouch. The first of 2 book on my list by him and intended for general reading and hopefully an increased understanding of the medieval European stage as a whole.














2nd book by Bartlett and I hope it'll help give me more understanding of mindsets - so important to the historical novelist who wants to get it right.
















Fiction reading here. A book highly recommended to me by Sharon Kay Penman who thought it was terrific and that it got above mentioned mindset right. Apparently it's a film too!
http://www.arnmovie.com/

HORSES FOR COURSES

Readers of my novels will know that I like my characters to have nice horses, so I thought I'd look today at the various types of Medieval horse. There weren't any named breeds as such back in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as we know them, although some were famed by region and what were required re type of horse was definitely known. Horses from Lombardy were prized as destriers. Spanish horses ditto. Norman baron Robert de Belleme was known to run Spanish grey horses on his Welsh Marcher lands in the late eleventh century.
Horses were known and named by their their function, their colour, their owners, their place of origin. We know William Marshal had a horse called Blancart, suggesting it was white. Richard Coeur de Lion had one called Fauvel, which meant it was a golden colour - perhaps a dun. A horse called Morel was a shiny black. We still have this with morello cherries. A Sorel horse was a chestnut or sorrel, a Bayclere was a bright bay, a Grisel was a grey.
William FitzStephen, talking of horses at the Smithfield Market in the later twelfth century speaks of the horse fair at Smithfield in London which is held on the 6th day of the week, barring feast days. Earls, barons, knights and all the citizens of London come out to look at the horses. 'It is a joy to see the ambling palfreys, their skin full of juice, their coats a-glisten as they pace softly in alternation raising and putting down the feet on one side together; next to see the horses that best befit esquires, moving roughly yet nimbly, as they raise and set down the opposite feet, fore and hind.... then the younger colts of high breeding, unbroken and high stepping with elastic tread, and after them the costly destriers of graceful form and goodly stature with quivering ears, high necks and plump buttocks. As these show their paces, the buyers watch first their gentler gait, then that swifter motion wherein their forefeet are thrown out and back together and the hind feet also. When a race between such trampling steeds is to begin, or perchance between others which are likewise, after their kind, strong carry, swift to run, a shout is raised, and horses of the baser sort are bidden to turn aside. Three boys riding these fleet-footed steeds, or at times two as may be agreed, prepare themselves for the contest. Skilled to command their horses, they curb their untamed mouths with jagged bits and their chief anxiety is that their rival shall not gain the lead.' As well as all the above high status horses, plough beasts and cart pullers are for sale too.

I've written up a few definitions, thoughts, and leading points below.

Destrier. A warhorse and valuable. It was ridden into battle and at tourneys but was not used for general riding purposes. Its name is supposed to come from the idea that either it led from the right hoof when galloping down a tiltyard run and turning, or that it was led from the right. There has been debate. Generally a destrier was a stallion, although I don't doubt that there some geldings and mares among the mix. The size of a destrier in the period I write about (late 11th to 13th centuries) was around fifteen hands high. This is according to equine historian Ann Hyland. It would look something like a modern Welsh Cob or quarter horse, or Frisian, or the Villanos type of Spanish Andalusian. The idea was to have a strong, stocky animal that was lively in movement, could live on poor rations if it had to, and that was capable of short, sharp bursts of speed - the shock charge i.e. it had to have the same straits as a good steer roping horse today and be strong enough to bear the weight of a mounted, mail-clad knight without sagging in the middle. Historian Matthew Bennet has also compared the destrier of this period with the stronger types of Morgan Horse. Cart horses they certainly weren't, as Medieval illustrations prove. You quite often come across destriers as gifts in the pipe rolls of the period, where they are referred to by the macho sounding Latin title of Equo or Equus. In 1208 Henry de Fontibus gave King John a Lombard destrier as a gift in order that he might take the daughter of Henry FitzHervey to wife. (The great roll of the Pipe for the tenth year of King John. Yorkshire. Nova Oblata)


Palfrey: A knight's or ladies riding horse. Highly bred and of good quality. A knight would ride his palfrey to the tournament or over longer distances and spare his destrier. These too are often found in the pipe rolls, as 'gifts' to appeast the king. Palfries could be divided up further into the ordinary and the Ambler As mentioned in FitzStephen, these horses walked first with their left side then their right rather than moving alternate hooves front and rear. This made for a much smoother pace. Tim Severin, when he followed the crusader's route to Jerusalem, took up with an ambling horse along his journey and it's interesting to read his descriptions of how smooth the ride actually is. These horses were sometimes also known by the old French Haquenai from which our word 'hack' or 'hackney' comes. Such horses are referred to from the thirteenth century. Since Henry II once had a mistress called 'Hikenai' I wonder if she was a good ride. (cough!). Seriously, I wonder if that's where the word came from.

Courser Comes from Chazurius - a chaser, the name used from the end of the 12th century. A horse for hunting and coursing as the name suggests. A fast hunter. The sort that was mentioned in FitzStephen's description of London in connection with 'boy racers'. The courser was the ancestor of the modern racehorse - in type if not in direct blood breeding.

Rouncy. This beast was for general all purpose riding by soldiers of lesser degree. It was a solid, all round beast that would serve you well but wouldn't draw the crowds and win friends and influence people. When the great William Marshal was down on his luck as a young man, he had to sell his cloak in order to buy a horse and all he could afford was 'un rocin' worth twenty two Angevin shillings. (I dramatised this scene briefly in The Greatest Knight). Unfortunately he needed a pack horse too, which he didn't have, so his Rouncy had to double up.

Sumpter This was what should have carried William's arms and supplies. A sumpter horse. These were really bog standard. Any lower and you'd be loading a donkey. There aren't that many illustrations of sumpters about, but in England there are plenty of native ponies that have been used extensively for haulage and on the pack routes down the centuries, so very likely the Yorkshire Fell and Dales ponies are descendants of the type, as is the ancient Cleveland Bay breed too. The latter were known as 'chapman horses' because it was the chapmen who brought the goods throughout England with their pony pack trains. These days the Cleveland has been bred up in size and mixed with thoroughbred, so is a large creature than the sumpters of yore.
Dales Pony: http://www.kellas-stud.co.uk/dales.htm
There's a description of a knackered old packhorse in the Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal.
One of William's rivals tries to fob him off with the beast, pretending it's a destrier William won earlier (some chance!). 'Whereupon Peter brought forward a pack horse of his, with the same colour coat, grey, but it had got to such an age that it was thin and worn-out, broken-backed and covered in scars. I think it was not all in one piece, indeed a lot of its hide was missing. It was tired out and weary.' I suppose that life of an itinerant knight's pack horse was not an easy one!

The Hobby Horse comes in from the end of the thirteenth century and was a small horse or middle sized pony imported from Ireland.

The Stott was a cheap workhorse or ploughhorse.  Here's one from the Luttrell Psalter.