A hundred years of war and peace by Mary Hoffman

The 14th Century ends quite neatly with the usurpation of the English throne by Henry Bolingbroke, after forcing his cousin, Richard ll to abdicate. It begins quite raggedly, with Edward l hammering the Scots and his son Edward ll inheriting the crown. In between came some of the most noteworthy events and personalities of the Middle Ages.

Tackling this huge sweep of history is Helen Carr’s new book Sceptred Isle. Her first – The Red Prince: John of Gaunt – was an instant bestseller. He was one of those larger-than-life characters, the richest person after the king, the hated trigger for the people’s revolt, the effortlessly fertile magnate who married his mistress and legitimated their four children, from whom many kings of England are descended. 

 

But Gaunt belongs to the second half of the century. The first part is still dominated by the conflict with the Scots. That ongoing war and the relations with the other enemy, France, have to play a part in any book about the fourteenth century, but this is essentially a history of a hundred years in England.

This is the century of The Wife of Bath and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Black Death and the Great Famine; The Fair Maid of Kent and the Black Prince; the Order of the Garter and the People’s Revolt; the creation of dukes; the Wilton Diptych and the first Speaker of the House of Commons; two minority monarchs, two depositions; tournaments and single combat duels; magnates and favourites; retinues and livery - not to mention two rival Popes! Helen Carr had her work cut out. 

Edward l

 

Edward I was born in the middle of the previous century and became king in 1272 in his prime. Nicknamed “Longshanks” for his unusual height (6’ 2” was way above average for a medieval man), he conquered Wales, got to work building defensive castles on the Welsh/English border and aspired to quell the Scots.

In this he was less successful, when finally he came up against Robert Bruce and his own mortality. Carr characterises the transition to his son’s rule: “When Edward l cast himself in the image of the legendary King Arthur, who united the Britons, Edward ll was destined to do the opposite.”

The stage is set for a complete change of culture. The first Edward wanted his son to continue warring with Scotland but the new king was more interested in making friends with male contemporaries, prime among them Piers Gaveston, the son of a Gascon knight. The young handsome king had no full brothers, only two much younger half-brothers by his father’s second marriage, no close cousins and a need for men to play sports with. He wasn’t fussy about their social class.

Gaveston, also young and handsome, was clearly a bit of a lout, inventing insulting nicknames for the nobles at court and given free rein by the indulgent king. He was exiled three times, first by Edward I, who disapproved of his influence over his son and again in 1308 and 1311 at the wish of the nobles he had insulted. But Edward ii had him recalled and the relationship resumed.

Helen Carr discusses this relationship in some depth, concluding, in disagreement with most modern historians (apart from Pierre Chaplais whose book on Gaveston, is not acknowledged), it might not have been homosexual but a “ritual brotherhood.” King Edward was married and sired children within and outside of marriage but that is neither here nor there where same-sex relations are concerned. (Gaveston had a wife and daughter too). 

Edward ll

 

This “friendship” certainly enraged the nobles, as much because of Gaveston’s rebarbative nature as his sexual preferences. Edward revoked all of his favourite’s banishments and had previously made him Earl of Cornwall, an equal to the nobles who accused him of treason. The Earls drew up a list of grievances, saying that the king listened to “evil counsel” and did as he liked, which was not in accordance with Magna Carta. (Helen Carr reminds us that it had been re-issued in 1300).

The end was inevitable. Gaveston was captured by the earls and was first in the custody of the Earl of Pembroke. But Pembroke returned home that night to his wife and the much harsher Earl of Warwick took the prisoner over. He was marched to Blacklow Hill and run through and beheaded.

The devastated king regarded this as murder and vowed vengeance on the earls. It was some consolation to him that Queen Isabella presented him with a son and heir – the future Edward lll. This is such a fascinating part of the 14th century that Helen Carr might have written a whole book about it and perhaps will. But, to jump to the catastrophic end of Edward’s reign, she writes about the continued enmity with the Scots, the Battle of Bannockburn, the new “favourite,” High Despenser the younger, the estrangement of the royal couple in spite of three more children and Isabella’s affair with Roger Mortimer.

Edward felt threatened not just by the adultery but by the political implications of their liaison. Isabella and Mortimer had been in France for over a year, with young Edward, when they raised an army to invade England and get rid of Hugh Despenser. They landed in September 1326 and, so hated was Despenser and so popular the queen, that London was soon in the hands of the invaders.

It didn’t take them long to track down the king and his favourite. The latter was given a full traitor’s horrible death and the king was kept a prisoner in Berkeley Castle. But, as Carr puts it, “The former king, though incarcerated, cast an uncomfortable shadow over Westminster and it was whispered that something had to be done to be rid of it.”

Within weeks the fourteen-year-old Prince of Wales was crowned king in his father’s place, with Isabella effectively his Regent. Carr makes it clear that death of Edward ll by means of a red hot poker thrust into his bowels is a myth. It was likely that he was suffocated, thus having no mark of injury on his body as it was widely displayed after his death. For die he did, a year after his estranged wife’s invasion.

Mortimer, who took the title Earl of March, was now free to rule with Isabella as mistress and consort, even though he had no claim to the throne. But it was soon clear that the young king was a mere puppet and England had left the frying-pan only to fall into the fire. 

Edward lll

 

But young Edward lll was a stronger character than his father and soon found his mother’s hold over him irksome. By 1330 he had secretly written to the pope to support his freeing himself from Isabella and Mortimer’s coercion. Edward and a group of his young knights staged a coup while Mortimer and Isabella were together in Nottingham Castle together. The king let the armed conspirators in and Mortimer was taken. He was hanged naked like a common thief. Queen Isabella was held under house arrest, in very comfortable conditions for the rest of her life.

But we have reached only 116 pages of the main text’s 278 and there are seventy eventful years of the century left!

Edward lll ruled for forty years, he married Philippa of Hainault and they had twelve children, with five males living to adulthood, including the Black Prince and John of Gaunt. He was one of England’s most successful monarchs, in spite of the shaky beginning of his reign.

This review is in danger of being as long as Helen Carr’s comprehensive book, so I’ll just concentrate on the events that led to the second deposition of the fourteenth century. Edward lll’s older son is referred to throughout the book as the Black Prince, though this usage isn’t attested till over a hundred years later. He was first Edward of Woodstock, then Prince of Wales and was fully expected to be King Edward lV. And he had two sons, Edward and Richard. 

Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent

 

But things started to unravel when the Prince of Wales sickened with dysentery in Aquitaine. Then his older son died and he was left with the “spare.” He returned to England with his wife Joan (the Fair Maid of Kent) and his younger son but his health never recovered. He died before his father, the old king, leaving Richard of Bordeaux as the nine-year-old heir to the throne.

Edward lll, widowed and miserably treated by his mistress Alice Perrers, was a broken man and outlived his son by less than a year. So began the second minority rule of the century, with ten-year-old Richard ll on the throne. Like his grandfather, who had been a few years older, Richard had no official Regent, but John of Gaunt was his senior uncle and expected to advise him. It was the best Gaunt could hope for, as he was hated by the populace for his great wealth and the unwarranted belief that he wanted the throne for himself.

As Helen Carr says, “Richard was a child on his succession, and his boyish appearance, lack of an heir and impulsive behaviour kept him locked in a state of eternal youth.” This did not apply to his first cousin, John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. Born within months of each other and married only a few years apart, the two men couldn’t have been more different.

Henry was a champion jouster and soldier, Richard an effete lover of luxury; Henry sired four sons in as many years, Richard had no children. Henry had every quality to make a good king, except for one: he was not the heir. Richard had virtually none of such qualities – but he was the legitimate heir. As they grew older the two men kept out of each other’s way. But they had one tragic thing in common: they lost their wives in the same year, 1394.

Mary de Bohun had borne Henry two daughters after their four sons, dying in her last childbed. A week or so later Queen Anne died of the plague, having never even been pregnant. Both widowers were distraught. Though Henry’s loss is not mentioned in Helen Carr’s book; Mary doesn’t even get an entry in the index. Richard had the palace of Sheen, where his wife died, pulled down and Henry became even more restless than before; with the loss of his wife he had no permanent home. 

Henry Bolingbroke, lter Henry lV

 
The reign of Richard ll lasted twenty-two years but is hastily covered by Helen Carr, in comparison with her treatment of his greatgrandfather, Edward ll. It is difficult for the modern reader not to see these kings’ reigns and depositions through the prism of two great plays by Elizabethan playwrights, Marlowe and Shakespeare. Indeed, the book’s title is taken from the speech Shakespeare gives John of Gaunt in The Tragedy of Richard the Second.

Helen Carr suggests that Richard might have been suffering from “borderline personality disorder”: “the last Plantagenet king [sic] was a despot; when he could not command respect, he ruled with fear.”

There are a few strange statements in this ambitious book. For example, the author says that John of Gaunt was so distraught at the duel his son was to fight with Thomas Mowbray at Coventry in 1398, that he “stayed away.” She gives no source for this and Anthony Goodman, Gaunt’s biographer, states that he was in attendance. Helen Castor, thanked by Carr in the acknowledgements for her input, says he was seated next to the king; Carr herself in her earlier book writes “John of Gaunt was also present.”

Of course the new version may be correct but if you are going to contradict earlier accounts, including your own, you should surely cite some evidence?

The book is handsomely produced, with some elegant endpapers and comes with an index, which was lacking in the Gaunt biography. There is also an extensive bibliography, which readers will want to consult, to balance out some of Carr’s assertions.

The Red Prince by Mary Hoffman

Helen Carr's  The Red Prince: The Life of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster reviewed by Mary Hoffman

If you are a student of Medieval history, the Wars of the Roses or the Plantagenets, you will be familiar with John of Gaunt. If not, you might rely on memories of the king's dying uncle in Shakespeare's Richard ll, who is given the patriotic lyric speech about "This sceptr'd Isle."

What no-one quite appreciates is that English and British Monarchs from Henry lV up to George l - with a brief interlude from Yorkists Edward lV to Richard lll - have been descended from this extraordinary lord, at one time the richest and most hated man in England, against whom the people rose up in what used to be known as "the Peasants' Revolt."

The people feared that his immense power made him a second king behind the throne of his weak nephew, Richard ll, and he certainly tried hard to become King of Castile, through his second wife, but had to remain content with his dukedom and his riches. What would he have thought of three hundred years of British monarchs and descendants on the Portuguese and Spanish thrones too?

There hasn't been a full-length biography of Gaunt since Anthony Goodman's in 1992 so Helen Carr's is most welcome. (It's a shorter gap than the last one since Sydney Armitage-Smith's was in 1904!) It's not so much that Carr's book provides any new information but it is compulsively readable and turns the image of this fascinating man a few degrees to shine light on different facets of his complex life.

For example, I didn't know that from the age of ten John went to live with his ten years older brother the Black Prince (as he was not known in his lifetime) and modelled himself on him. That makes sense of his strict adherence to the promise his made his dying older brother that he would protect and support the young Richard when he came to the throne.

John of Gaunt was named, like his many siblings, for the place he was born: Ghent. His immediately older brother was Lionel of Antwerp and his younger brothers Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock. These names stuck, even when they later became dukes (of Clarence, York and Gloucester respectively). John was the third surviving son of Edward lll and Philippa of Hainault, who had at least fourteen children.

He became Duke of Lancaster through his first marriage, to Blanche of Lancaster, inheriting the title when his father-in-law died. When Blanche's sister also died, the vast wealth of the first Duke of Lancaster, Henry Grosmont, came to his son-in-law along with the title. Among the many properties included in that inheritance was the Savoy Palace, which became the most luxurious home in private hands in the land. It was on the Strand, facing the river Thames and today's Savoy Hotel stands on the same site.

This luxurious residence became the focus of the rage felt by the common people when the Crown declared itself broke in 1380 and a Poll Tax of three groats was to be levied on each male over fifteen years of age. They believed this idea to be the fault of John of Gaunt, living in his fancy palace, and by the spring of 1381, the people were in full revolt.

The uprising began in Kent and Essex and the rebels' main target was the Savoy Palace. John of Gaunt was not home and they entered easily, destroying "cloth, coverlets, books, beds, a valuable headboard ... napery and jewels." They threw silverware into the river and ripped up the gorgeous clothes they found in chests. Although Carr doesn't mention this we know from Juliet Barker's England, Arise! that they also destroyed all paper records and killed the clerks so that John of Gaunt's administrative and financial affairs, for which the Savoy was the hub, were still in disarray at least seven years later. He never again had a permanent base in London.

The owner was away in Scotland but had he been at home he would have been in danger of his life. As it was, the looters (although they were not allowed to keep anything for themselves) made a bonfire of his belongings and inadvertently rolled a couple of barrels of gunpowder into it. The resulting explosion and fire killed many rebels, including some who were sampling Gaunt's fine wines in his cellars, and the palace was burned to the ground.

It makes Trafalgar Square in 1990 look rather tame.

The story is vividly re-told by Helen Carr. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Treasurer and John of Gaunt's physician were all brutally killed by the mob. The future Henry lV, Gaunt's only legitimate son, survived only by hiding in a cupboard in the Tower of London.  But we are halfway through the book before we reach this pivotal clash between the great lord and the populace.

Before that we have heard of his military prowess alongside his oldest brother, the Black Prince, and his abortive attempts to become the King of Castile and Leon. Much of the resentment against him came because of the taxation to support this vanity project.

John's beloved first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, had died in 1368, either from the plague or complications of childbirth. Chaucer's Book of the Duchess commemorated this lady and if not commissioned by Gaunt was certainly written while Chaucer was in his service. There seems no doubt that the two were a loving couple and John was buried next to Blanche following the terms of his will. But it was important for him to re-marry and his second wife was Constance of Castile.

That was a dynastic choice and by the time of his second marriage, Gaunt was in a relationship with Kathryn Swynford, the long term mistress who bore him four children, later legitimated by his third marriage, after Constance's death. The personal and the political are both given weight in this well-balanced biography.

What we don't often hear is that John of Gaunt was fearful of returning to London after the uprising, in case the young king decided to scapegoat him  for the people's dissatisfaction with the nobility and possibly send him into exile. After several weeks, word came from Richard that his uncle was needed and Lancaster could breathe again. In less than a year he was walking at the side of Richard's young queen, Anne, the premier lord in the land, saving only the crown.

Temporarily, he separated from his mistress and appeared to devote himself to Constance. But his relations with the king were never so cordial as they had been during Richard's minority. Gaunt did not approve of Richard's close relationship with his favourite, Robert de Vere, the Earl of Oxford; he considered that de Vere and other favourites gave the king poor counsel and turned him against his wiser and more experienced uncle.

From now until his death, John of Gaunt maintained an uneasy relationship with Richard and there was also an hostility between the king and Gaunt's son Henry, Richard's cousin and ultimately his usurper. But Gaunt did better than some of Richard's uncles: the Duke of Gloucester, his youngest brother was killed by order of the king. 

John of Gaunt died in 1399, anticipating that his son would be robbed of his inheritance by the "volatile" king, who indeed expressed joy at his uncle's demise and did exactly that. Henry Bolingbroke was not prepared to put up with that and it began the chain of events that we know as the Wars of the Roses. Usurpation, even if understood, is not likely to be forgiven.

Helen Carr has given us a fine, fully-rounded portrait of a remarkable man, who was a soldier and a politician as well as a loyal son and brother, a lover and a patron of the arts. It's a "warts and all" depiction, not playing down his ruthlessness and ambition as well as his more chivalrous qualities.

All images from Wikimedia Commons

Remembering The Battle of Bosworth by Catherine Hokin

The first of these Welsh kings was Henry who defeated all the other kings at the Battle of Boswell and took away all their roses. After the battle the crown was found hanging up in a hawthorn tree at the top of the hill. This is memorable as being the only occasion on which the crown has been found after a battle hanging up in a hawthorn tree at the top of the hill.

With thanks to 1066 and All That by Sellar and Yeatman



As Sellar and Yeatman put it in 1066 and All That - probably still my favourite historical book of all time which may explain a lot - History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. One of the things many people are pretty certain they can remember is the Wars of the Roses, which ended (or didn't but we'll get to that) 533 years ago today on the 22nd August 1485 with the Battle of Bosworth. History buffs or not, ask a sample of your friends about this time period and I guarantee they'll all have some sense of it. Whether it's the lost princes in the Tower, the ill-fittingly romantic name, Richard and his hunch-back, or his car-park discovery, the Wars of the Roses and its characters still resonate. They also inspire great passion. My father was a member of the Ricardian Society and a war-gamer whose sand-table battles (ask your parents) re-enacted every twist of that August day. As I said many times when my novel about Margaret of Anjou came out, he was so obsessed with the conflict that, as a child, I was fairly certain that it was still going on. And who can forget the Channel 4 documentary after the discovery of Richard III's body and Philippa Langley's face when she looked at that re-created head.

 Bosworth Memorial

Perhaps one of the reasons the Battle of Bosworth still attracts such attention (apart from the fact that a king died) is that it still courts controversy. We have no eye-witness accounts - all our knowledge of the day's events is derived from documents written after the fact and under a regime with a need to remember history in its own particular way if it was going to have any kind of a future. Some sources in fact come even later - for example there was no real attempt to analyse the use, type and position of troops  for nearly another 200 years. The site itself has long been a matter of dispute - the stone marking the spot of Richard's death is at Ambion Hill, near Sutton Cheney in Leicestershire. In 2010, after a major archaeological project, the actual site of the battle was announced as being 3km away from the memorial. Part of the evidence which relocated the battle site were 22 pieces of lead shot, ranging from gunshot to grapefruit-sized canonballs. Not only did this discovery change the location, it also dispelled a myth that the armies fought each other with bows and arrows rather than firepower.

 Stanley Coat of Arms

Controversies over the site are one thing but the issue of treachery - and that of Lord Stanley in particular - is quite another blood-boiler. Listen to my father and William Stanley made Attila the Hun sound like Winnie the Pooh. The version he subscribes to has the hitherto loyal Stanley turning his coat at the last minute, swooping his troops down the hill behind Richard in a shock move that ensured the king was butchered. That Stanley declared for Henry at the last minute is as certain as anything in this battle can be but the idea of the attack having no deeper roots than a self-serving decision on the day as been re-examined by historians such as David Hipshon. He cites Stanley's failure to support Richard not as a sudden change in loyalty but as coming out of a 20 year power-struggle in Lancashire; a personal score being settled in a bigger political arena. And I can already hear the cry - "tomaytoes/tomatoes: it's still treachery!"

Reconstructed head of Richard III

The site, the type of weapons used, who turned coat and who didn't: it all disappears into the mist when we get to what happened to Richard himself. Oh the ire it used to raise. The stories of his removal from the battlefield are told in a number of the chronicles which later reported the battle. According to Vergil, the body was ‘nakyd of all clothing, and layd uppon an horse bake with the armes and legges hanginge downe on both sides’, a scene the Crowland Chronicle described as a ‘miserable spectacle in good sooth’. His body was then taken back to Leicester, his head supposedly hitting the stones of Bow Bridge as it was carried across. Most accounts agree that the body was put on public display for two days at Greyfriars church. Some then have the corpse interred in a plain unmarked tomb inside the church, others talk about an alabaster tomb, with an effigy of Richard on top, being erected at a later date on the orders of Henry VII. If that ever existed it was lost, as was the King with the most commonly believed story having him tipped unceremoniously into the River Soar.

 Leicester Council Sign

Except, of course, he wasn't. In 2012, an archaeological excavation discovered a battle-damaged skeleton in a Leicester City Council car park, believed to be the site once occupied by Greyfriars Priory Church. The body showed that the skeleton had 10 wounds, eight of them to the head, inflicted in battle and suggesting the soldier had lost his helmet. A blade had hacked away part of the rear of the skull. In 2013 DNA testing identified ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ the remains as those of Richard. The University of Leicester identified the skeleton as a result of radiocarbon dating, comparison with contemporary reports of his appearance, and comparison of his mitochondrial DNA with that of two matrilineal descendants of Richard’s eldest sister, Anne of York. So we had Richard but we didn't have an end to the arguing with both York and Leicester campaigning to host his remains - a battle Leicester's tourism department won.

Was 1485 the end of the Wars of the Roses? Not for Henry VII who lived under the shadow of pretenders and resurrected dead princes throughout his reign and probably never sat that comfortably on his throne. And, beyond a categorisation date of the here ends/here starts type, not for historians who still have so much of the battle left to pick over. And don't forget there's another controversy to come: the lost princes, one of history's ultimate cold cases. There's bones, they've never been tested and Philippa Langley is on the case...

You couldn't make it up: Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty by Mary Hoffman

Did you see the first episode of Dan Jones's Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty on Channel Five last Thursday? Even if you didn't I expect you can guess who they were (though strictly speaking "England's Bloodiest Dynasty," which doesn't have the same alliterative ring).

Yes, it's our old friends the Plantagenets and Dan Jones knows more about them than most. His book of that title, first published by Harper Press in 2012, is now available as a chunky (600+ pages) paperback. Very accessible narrative of the Kings from Henry the Second to Henry the Fourth and all for just under a tenner.

With the discovery of Richard the Third's bones, apparently it's official that the Plantagenets have knocked the Tudors off the top spot in popular history. This is according to Chris Skidmore, MP, who told the Henley Literary Festival that he could get a book contract in 2009 for his latest book, on the battle of Bosworth Field only by adding a subtitle of "the Birth of the Tudors." The wars of the Roses were not a "sexy topic" then. But that's all changed.

As Dan Jones says, they were the family who "turned England from a war zone into a European superpower.

He has followed up his first volume with a second, The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors, oddly published by Faber rather than any imprint of Collins, which begins with another Henry, the fifth of that name and finishes with the notorious eighth.

But with the new Channel Five series, Jones is back with his first Henry, Henry the Second, the one we know about from the murder of his Archbishop and one time friend, Thomas Becket.

 "Betrayal," the first episode, starts well with young Henry (aged only 20) fighting with his barons for dominance. The historical re-enactments are well done and show the king, eventually father to four sons and two daughters, crowning his eldest son (if you leave out William, who didn't make three years) as the next king before his own death.

Henry, the "Young King" was resentful that his father didn't give him more lands and power and did in fact predecease his father. But before that three of the four sons (though Geoffrey is not mentioned) had fallen out with their father, encouraged by their formidable mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The Young King had even thrown in his lot with Louis the Seventh of France, Henry's old rival and Eleanor's former husband.

The quarrels with his wife and sons led to the long imprisonment of Eleanor until her favourite son, the next Plantagenet king, Richard l, released her. I would have liked more about Eleanor but this is a show about blood and battles, treason and murder, and we did have Helen Castor's She-Wolves not so long ago.

Dan Jones made the point that although Henry ll did some good things, including inventing the Civil Service, what he is remembered for is the murder of Thomas Becket, at which the outrage in Europe "went viral."

In 1174, Henry went on a barefoot pilgrimage in Canterbury in an attempt to wipe this crime from people's memories. He was scourged by a hundred monks but in modern terms that would have warranted a small paragraph on the inside pages, compared with a screamer front page headline.

And in 1189, Henry was again at war with his son Richard and rode out to meet him but died two days later.

Asked how he had chose the subjects for the four episodes of Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty, Dan Jones replied that he had chosen "the formative stories, the human stories."

The remaining episodes feature Henry the Third and Simon de Montfort; Edward the Second (yes, even that infamous red hot poker) and Richard the Second. Throughout the members of the English Court speak french, with subtitles. It is only when Henry Bolingbroke claims the throne that it is done in English.

Dan Jones is a personable presenter and with his look and vocabulary is clearly intended to introduce a younger audience to these fascinating characters and stories. Much has been made of the series being on Channel Five rather than, say, BBC4.

I wonder if the series would have been made or at least made in this way - "big, bloody and thrilling" - if it hadn't been for the success of the TV adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (now known by the title of the first book in the sequence, 'A Game of Thrones.') Martin is known to have based his epic power struggle on the Plantagenets, a case of life being stranger than fiction.

Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty is produced by David Wilson, Executive Producer Dan Gold, directors James Tovell and Oliver Twinch.

Dan Jones is our December guest on the History Girls (29th), when he will be talking about his new book on Magna Carta.

Climbing the Family Tree by Mary Hoffman

This one's a beaut, isn't it? It shows the ancestors of Sigmund Christoph, Graf von Zeil und Trauchburg.  I've been thinking a lot about family trees since an email conversation with our November guest Sarah Gristwood. I had mildly criticised the one in her excellent book, Blood Sisters,  for the Houses of York and Lancaster. Sarah was in complete agreement, having been compelled to make simplifications by the book's designer.

The scales fell from my eyes at that point. Ever since seeing the RSC's magnificent Histories Cycle - twice - a few years ago, I have been fascinated by Plantagenet history and no book I have read on the subject since has had an adequate family tree. I have been compiling my own composite genealogical chart on a large roll of paper and I can see why designers might ask for simplification!

Miniature, Jacques de Besançon, Paris, c.1485. Showing 43 generations.

Family trees have been popular ever since this representation of the Jesse Tree, representing the descent of Christ. That's a pretty ambitious project; not even my Plantagenet one aims at 43 generations!

But if you think about it, no family tree can include everything, or it would end up containing everyone in the world. So where do you stop? Confucius's genealogy, initially represented as a fan, was said to have two million people on it. The update has 1.2 million living descendants! Not even the longest roll of lining-paper would cope with that.

Genealogy is a fast-growing hobby in the UK for people who want to research their family history; in our family, it's my older sister who has the bug. She sends me bulletins from the genealogical research front, with titbits about obscure relatives from generations back, complicated by the fact that in our parents' families there was a marked tendency to call people by names other than their given ones.

The resources for such seekers after  facts - the chroniclers and archivists to be found in many families - are so much easier to gain access to in the Internet age. My sister uses the UK censuses up to 1911 and they have yielded much information. There are many books published to help and the success of UK television shows such as Who do you Think you are? has swelled the numbers of people joined Societies which share resources. There is even genealogy software to help generate family trees. And websites like Family Search and the BBC's Family History

When our youngest daughter brought home the man who was to become her life partner, she lent us the DVD of a TV show that used him as a subject to discover links to distinguished ancestors, such as the Duke of Wellington, the man who helped win the Battle of Bosworth field for Henry Tudor and - the clincher - King Arthur!So that's a new use of family trees - a sort of Debrett's to impress potential in-laws.

When I write my own novels, I always make family trees. Sometimes they end up published in the final books, as in the di Chimici genealogy above, for the Stravaganza sequence.  This one takes you up only to 1578 though the most recent book, City of Swords (2012) has added - and subtracted - some names. That's what writers of fiction do after all: bring people into existence and sometimes kill them.

But even when they aren't published, I need my family trees. How can you write about any characters without knowing how they fit in that web of relationships? How can you get the ages right? And how can you climb about confidently in the branches of your story without a strong tree to support you?