The Armada at Anstruther by V.E.H. Masters

Early one morning in November of 1588 the villagers of Anstruther on the East coast of Scotland awoke to find a ship in their harbour with over 250 starving Spanish Armada sailors and soldiers on board. We know this because the local minister of the time, James Melville, wrote about it in the extensive diaries he kept. 

I discovered Melville's diaries as I came to the end of writing my first book in series, The Castilians, about the 1546 siege of St Andrews Castle, sixteen miles away. Fascinated by the story of the Armada that came to the East Neuk I determined to write about it next – until fellow author Margaret Skea pointed out the length of time which separated the two events. 'A lot can happen to your characters in forty years,' she said.

And so I wrote, The Seton Chronicles, a five book series which spans the remarkable changes as the reformation took hold in Europe and has my characters fleeing for their lives through Geneva, Antwerp, Venice, Frankfurt and Constantinople. But now, in the final book in series, The Pittenweemers, I finally returned to Scotland, delving into James Melville diaries once more to explore the remarkable story of the Armada in Anstruther.

James VI of Scotland was a ten month old baby when he last saw his mother Mary Queen of Scots, who had been held prisoner by the queen of England for nineteen years. Nevertheless he corresponds regularly with Elizabeth and pleads with her to spare Mary, even suggesting that someone whose father had executed his own bedfellow should not follow suit. 

Queen Elizabeth I - Armada portrait

His pleas were disregarded and Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded by her cousin Elizabeth of England in 1587. That a queen appointed by God should behead another queen, also appointed by God, sent shock waves around Europe. Philip of Spain, already made furious by Sir Francis Drake's piracy on Spanish ships and attack on Cadiz began to gather the largest fleet ever seen, often by 'acquiring' merchant ships within his domain. His purpose was nothing less than to conquer England.

The Pittenweemers

Scotland had been Protestant for 28 years and tales of the coming of the Spanish Armada along with rising fears about the year 1588, which had long been prophesied as catastrophic had people fearful – actually terrified would be more accurate. Here's my character Will, minister of Pittenweem, thoughts on the matter … 

It was an unusually stormy summer with a resulting poor harvest and an inevitable rise in food prices, and that, combined with the increasing rumours of various sightings of the Spanish Armada off Scotland, caused grave anxiety amid Will’s flock. Given the disquietude, Will considered it most unfortunate that there continued to be an outpouring of predictions about the significance of the year. Sitting at a board strewn with papers one morning in early August, he leaved through a discourse written by an Englishman. 

This Richard Harvey was claiming they should all expect either a dissolution or a wonderfull horrible alteration of the worlde in this year of our Lord fifteen hundred and eighty-eight. Harvey wrote in tortured tones, Will could almost hear his voice and a certain relish in his doomsaying, that the disorder would swell until it culminated in a thunderous crescendo, after which irrevocable changes would be embedded – or ‘poof’, Will flicked his fingers – the world would be consumed by a fiery cataclysm. But then, judging by what the astrologers were discovering, that was not so improbable. Comets did shoot across the sky, and what was to prevent those blazing implements of Satan from crashing into the world? And the movement of stars could and did cause an imbalance in the body’s humours – and all this was yet another way in which God punished sinners.

Will sat staring at his desk unseeing for a long time. Eventually he stood up, went out into the rain-soaked garden and gazed up at the ominous dark clouds forming and reforming above. These astronomers and astrologers were like a den of dragons blasting out burning air imputing all failings of nature, accidents of misfortune, oversights and errors to the skies and revelling in their prophecies of perdition. 

Nevertheless, his heart did quail when he thought on the most recent prophecy, which claimed that it was in this year the impact of the perilous conjunction of the planets five years ago was to be realised. Yet if the world was to be blessed by the second coming of Christ, as some prophesied, then that could only be a matter of joy – after the cataclysm. 

And James Melville writes of attending the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh and  how terrible was the fear, piercing was the preaching, earnest and fervent the prayers amid the abounding sighs and sobs, for if Philip took England he would likely then take Protestant Scotland.

August of 1588 and the 130 odd ships that make up the Armada are defeated by the smaller and more manoeuvrable ships under the direction of Sir Francis Drake – and the terrible storms. Around sixty ships are blown up the East coast of Scotland many foundering off Orkney, Shetland, Fair Isle, Ireland and one on Norway. Every attempt to return to Spain was thwarted and the sailors, soldiers, priests and interpreters of the Armada not unnaturally assumed that God had turned against them.

El Gran Grifón ran aground off Fair Isle with over 300 hundred men on board. The captain, Gómez de Medina (not to be confused with the overall Armada commander, the Duke de Medina Sidonia) had rescued men from other ships which sunk, in direct contravention of King Philip's orders. The few households on Fair Isle were unable to provide food for starving men and fifty died. It is of note that there's no reports of them taking from the islanders by force and the captain, known to his men as El Buen – The Good – lived up to his epithet.

                  Armada Chest, complete with complex locking system, at Traquair House

The Spanish may not have had any provisions left but they had gold. Gómez de Medina found his way to Orkney, rescued his men and acquired a ship. It was November by now and the storms had not much abated. Their ship foundered off Anstruther and Medina came ashore to seek help. Here's the scene again from the perspective of  my character Will …

Medina continued as though the interpreter hadn’t spoken. ‘His glorious grace King Philip brought together a mighty fleet and army to avenge the intolerable wrongs and grievous injustices inflicted upon the peoples of the Spanish Empire by the treacherous nation of England. But for our sins, God has turned against us, driving us past the coast of England and subjecting us to storms sent by divine providence over the past several months. Many of our ships have sunk in merciless seas or been dashed against inhospitable shores. Those few of us whom God has chosen to survive have endured bitter cold and suffered great hunger. We come here to kiss the hand of the king of the Scots ...’ Medina paused here and bowed low once more ‘... and beg of you to render us assistance.’

Will watched James Melville and sent up a prayer that he would show a true spirit of kindness, as Jesus Christ would have done.

Melville began to speak. ‘Our friendship cannot be great, seeing your king and you are friends to the greatest enemy of Christ – the Pope of Rome. Our king and we defy that son of Satan and his cause against our neighbours and special friends of England.’ Melville paused to let the translator catch up. ‘And yet we, as Christians of a better religion, are moved by compassion. A compassion that is not manifest to our merchants residing among you with peaceable intent pursuing their lawful affairs who have been violently taken and cast in prison, their goods and gear confiscated and their bodies committed to the cruel flaming fire in the cause of religion. But among us you will find nothing but Christian pity and mercy, leaving God to work in your hearts concerning religion as it so pleases Him – for we will give you assistance.’ 

And so Melville permitted two hundred and fifty men to come ashore. The people of the village were so horrified at the sight of these starving mostly young and beardless men that they ran into their houses and brought them food.

Rumour has it that James Melville was rewarded for his largesse with some of the Spanish gold – and he did build a rather large manse soon after.

Those who came ashore in Scotland and Ireland – many of whom were slaughtered as they staggered up the beaches for their clothes and 'gold' – made their way to Edinburgh, perhaps expecting a sympathetic welcome since James VI was the son of the poor beheaded Mary, even if he was a Protestant.  The Catholic leaning nobles wined and dined the captains however the men, somewhere in the region of a thousand of them including priests, were starving vagrants on the streets. Eventually ships were sent and they were re-patriated to Spain.

The Seton Chronicles

Gómez de Medina's ancestors were Jews and his grandfather was burned at the stake – a point of significance within my overall story of The Setons, since some of my characters are Conversos (Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism). King Philip had demanded that all his captains be 'pure' but those tasked with checking this ran out of time to inquire of the Inquisitor of Seville about Medina's family background.  

Truth is so often much stranger than fiction – and this is what I love about writing historical fiction! 

V.E.H. Masters is the award winning author of the best selling series The Seton Chronicles. Her first novel The Castilians is set in her home town and tells the story of the siege of St Andrews Castle. You can find out more at https://vehmasters.com/ where three free short stories telling more of The Setons are available to download. 


References:

Armada by Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker

The Diaries of James Melville – National Library of Scotland

Ambroise Paré: The Gentle Surgeon - by Ann Swinfen

It’s astonishing what you discover when you are doing the research for a novel. In my first 17^th century Fenland novel, Flood, Tom Bennington, brother of the narrator, Mercy Bennington, is injured twice in the same leg, develops gangrene and suffers an amputation. In the second novel, Betrayal, I alternate between the two as first-person narrators. Tom goes to London to resume his legal studies at Gray’s Inn, while searching for the missing royal charter which granted possession of the common lands to the fenlanders. While in London, Tom also hopes to have a wooden “peg leg” fitted, to improve his balance and mobility.

What did I know about artificial legs in the mid-seventeenth century?

Precisely nothing – which led me to Ambroise Paré.

Nowadays we are all familiar with the amazingly sophisticated artificial limbs which provide the chance of a near normal life to accident victims and soldiers, but people have lost limbs through accidents and war injuries from earliest times. They were not left helpless. Greeks, Romans and Egyptians all made attempts to provide replacements for such tragic losses, but inevitably these were very simple and crude. Things did not improve much over the centuries. Remember those illustrations of Long John Silver and his wooden leg? Such basic legs were still common for much of the twentieth century, as attested by photographs.

Yet back in the sixteenth century – yes, that’s not a mistake, the sixteenth century – there was a new approach to this painful problem. Enter Ambroise Paré.

Ambroise Paré

Ambroise Paré was born in Bourg-Hersent, near Laval, France, in 1510 and followed in the footsteps of his elder brother, who was a barber-surgeon. This was a catch-all profession, covering everything from cutting hair and pulling teeth to stitching up wounds and carrying out amputations. His basic professional training took place at the most prestigious hospital in Paris, the Hôtel-Dieu, where he was taught the standard practices of sixteenth-century surgery. These included some which seem horrific to us now – wounds would be treated with boiling oil, and after an amputation the severed limb was cauterised with a red hot iron.

Francis I King of France

Paré was both a compassionate man and brilliant innovator. Like most surgeons, his first major experience as a young man was on the battlefield, in the Piedmont campaign of Francis I in 1537-8. Two episodes during these battlefield experiences had a profound effect on him. On one occasion he was horrified when he saw severely wounded men put out of their misery by having their throats cut by their comrades – it determined him to devote himself to improving the care of those with gunshot and sword wounds and never to abandon his attempts to save life.

On another occasion, there were so many men with wounds that he ran out of supplies of the hot oil used to scald them. Having read of a method used by the Romans, he mixed up a salve of oil of roses, egg white and turpentine. He dreaded that the men whose wounds were only salved would die. Instead, the following morning those treated with hot oil were in severe pain, their wounds inflamed, and some had died, while those treated with the makeshift salve were making a good recovery. Subsequently, Paré used the same treatment for amputations and never cauterised again, finding that those treated by the old and violent method frequently died of shock or infection, while his new method spared his patients a great deal of unnecessary pain and resulted in a far better rate of recovery.

A further problem with amputations was the risk of the patient haemorrhaging to death, if cauterisation failed to seal the arteries. Paré introduced ligature of the arteries to prevent this happening. It seems extraordinary that his life-saving techniques did not at once become widespread, for he did not keep his methods secret, as some surgeons at the time were apt to do (for example in the case of obstetrics). Instead Paré published extensively, explaining his methods in detail; his first work, based on his treatment of war wounds was The method of curing wounds caused by arquebus and firearms (1545). His use of ligature was discussed in his Ten Books on Surgery (1564).

What was to become of these young soldiers who lost an arm or a leg in battle? Cast out of the army, crippled for life, they faced a bleak future. Some resorted to suicide. Paré believed that it should be possible to make life more bearable for them. Curious and inventive as ever, he developed the art of prosthetics beyond anything before envisaged. He designed artificial legs with jointed knees and ankles, arms with jointed elbows and wrists, hands with complex fingers.

Paré prosthetic arm

It was around this time that elaborate automata had become popular as toys for the wealthy, and the mechanisms of clocks also grew more complex. Many of the same principles were applied by Paré to his artificial limbs.

Paré prosthetic leg - interior & exterior

Instead of simple wooden props, his metal legs were intended to reproduce as nearly as possible the movement of the human leg, but they were very heavy. Some of his experimental limbs were made in collaboration with a lockmaker he refers to as “Le Petit Lorrain”. Was he a short man called Lorrain? A man from Lorrain? Such a man would have similar skills to a clockmaker, for this was also a time of complex locks. Lorrain designed a type of artificial leg using leather to reduce the weight. The extraordinary breakthrough in prosthetics pioneered by Paré was recorded in detail in his book Ten Books on Surgery (1564), which was lavishly illustrated.

Paré prosthetic hand

As well as providing limbs for amputees, Paré also developed false eyes for those who had suffered eye injuries, another common battlefield wound from flying fragments of shrapnel, in this new age of hand-held firearms.

Paré’s work was not only concerned with war wounds and their aftermath. He also served as surgeon to four successive kings of France: Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Indeed, he was so valued by Charles IX that the king saved his life during the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572); as a Huguenot Paré was in considerable danger. He continued as the royal surgeon until his death in Paris in 1590.

In peacetime medicine, one of his principal interests was obstetrics. At a time when most babies were delivered by midwives, surgeons would normally only become involved when something was seriously wrong, endangering mother or baby or both. At the time there were usually only two options: a Caesarean, which generally killed the mother, or the dismemberment of the unborn baby, killing the child. Paré believed that such deaths were often unnecessary, like the deaths of his soldier patients. He developed methods of manipulating the baby in utero in order to achieve a safe delivery. He wrote a treatise on midwifery and trained other surgeons in his methods, which must have saved hundreds of lives.

Title page of Paré's Oeuvres

As an expert anatomist, he also had an interest in forensic medicine and the presentation of legal evidence. Another of his books was Reports in Court covering the subject of what we would now call expert medical witness evidence.

Above all, Paré was activated by two principles: he devoted his life to developing surgical, medical and mechanical techniques for saving and improving lives, and he believed above all in sparing his patients unnecessary pain. It earned him the title of “the gentle surgeon”.

So why is he virtually unknown today? And why – going back to my initial discovery of his mechanical legs – did it take so long for his ideas to become commonplace? In the matter of cauterising wounds, it seems to have been a sheer pig-headed refusal to abandon long-established practices. As for the prosthetic limbs, perhaps they were just too complicated and expensive to come into general use.

Whatever the reasons, I feel Ambroise Paré should be celebrated as the man who first saw that surgery need not be a form of unavoidable but agonising butchery; instead his gentle practices could save and transform lives, although, as a devout man, he always attributed his successes not to himself, but to God. He laid the foundations of modern surgery, something we should all be grateful for.

“There are five duties of surgery: to remove what is superfluous, to restore what has been dislocated, to separate what has grown together, to reunite what has been divided, and to redress the defects of nature.” – Ambroise Paré

So, in Betrayal, when my protagonist Tom Bennington arrives in London, he seeks the help of a barber surgeon who is an admirer of Ambroise Paré, determined to carry on with his work.

Ann Swinfen

http://www.annswinfen.com

Bridewell, Bedlam and Bluecoats - by Ann Swinfen

If you were a pauper in Tudor England, how could you survive? Or would you survive at all?

Throughout the Middle Ages, there had been two principal supports for the poor – the church and the rich citizen. Almsgiving was part of general church policy, but the mainstay for the poor consisted of the monastic institutions, which provided medical care for the sick, temporary lodgings for wandering labourers and craftsmen seeking work, and more permanent housing for the aged and infirm. The more generous-hearted of the aristocracy and gentry handed out leftover food and sometimes discarded clothing and small coins to the poor of their neighbourhoods.

This system of aid was in contrast to a series of laws which regarded the poor as a blight on society, needing to be dealt with severely. These laws had developed during the period of social disruption following the Black Death, and were to be extended during the Tudor period. There was some compassion for those who were genuinely disabled or infirm, who might be given a licence to beg at certain locations within their own parishes, though this was hardly a generous provision for the poor, depending as it did upon voluntary gifts by other parishioners.

The paupers who did not fall into the category of the ‘deserving poor’ were labelled ‘sturdy beggars’, no distinction being made between those who were lawless vagrants through circumstance or choice, and those who were merely unemployed and seeking work. The harsh solution to dealing with such people was a period in the stocks or a public whipping (or both). The victim would then be forcibly returned to his parish, which was hardly a solution for those who had left home in order to seek work. Repeated offences could result in more severe penalties, such as the loss of an ear or branding.

Parishes were so reluctant to take on the responsibility for the poor that cruel practices were not unknown. There are documented cases of unmarried or vagrant pregnant women being hastily dragged off by the constables to a neighbouring parish before giving birth, so that the baby would become the responsibility of the latter.

With the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the system of welfare which they had provided collapsed completely. What had been a minor problem throughout the country escalated in a few years to disastrous proportions. It was further aggravated by the early period of enclosures, when large landowners – and sometimes wealthy townsmen with an eye to a profitable venture – began to fence in and seize control of the ‘commons’, the pastures and village fields which were held in common by the peasant community of a village. Deprived of their only means of a livelihood, these unexpectedly impoverished peasants flocked to the towns, and especially to London, in the hope of finding employment.

Suddenly there was a huge proportion of the population which was dispossessed and poverty-stricken. Something needed to be done.

Unfortunately, the old perceptions remained. The poor were still classified as either sturdy beggars or the deserving poor, the latter being those who were old, frail, or disabled. Provision was therefore made with this distinction in mind.

Medical Care

Various issues had to be addressed. Medical care was needed for those who could not afford the services of a private physician. Given the terrible epidemics which swept through the country, particularly London, it was quickly recognised that this had a high priority. The monasteries had established two hospitals in London, providing medical care for the sick and hospices for the permanently infirm: St Bartholomew’s north of the river, just outside the western City wall, and St Thomas’s south of the river, in Southwark. The city authorities persuaded Henry VIII to allow them to take over St Bartholomew’s and reopen it under the governance of London in 1547. It took a little longer to re-establish St Thomas’s, which reopened in the reign of Henry’s son, Edward VI, in 1551. Both hospitals play a part in my Christoval Alvarez series.

These two hospitals cared both for the destitute and for the working poor from Tudor times onward, and both are still major hospitals to this day, although they no longer retain their additional function as almshouses. Both were originally founded in the twelfth century, and St Bartholomew’s is the oldest hospital in Europe, possibly in the world.

St Bartholomew the Great gatehouse

 Further care for the deserving poor came in the form of the many individual almshouses for the old and infirm established during this period. A few were built by towns or guilds, but more were the gift of charitable individuals. Many are still in existence.

Children

A particular group of the helpless poor were the children, especially orphans and foundlings, although it was recognised that there were also children whose parents simply could not support them. The frequent epidemics of killer diseases led to a large number of orphans living as street children. Unwanted babies were abandoned on doorsteps and in public privies. Children were exploited by beggars who used them to illicit sympathy. In times of hardship and starvation, such as the famine years of the 1590s, poor families could not feed their children. What was to be done about this growing problem of destitute babies and children? Those who managed to survive swarmed in the streets as beggars and potential criminals. It was an acute crisis.

King Edward VI wrote to the Lord Mayor of London, asking him:

to take out of the streets all the fatherless children, and other poor men’s children that were not able to keep them, and bring them to the late dissolved house of the Greyfriars…where they should have meat, drink and clothes, lodging and officers to attend upon them…the sucking children and such as for want of years were not able to learn should be kept in the country…

Remarkably, Greyfriars, located in Newgate, across the street from Newgate Prison, had not been torn down, though it was in a derelict state. The Lord Mayor assembled a committee of thirty solid and benevolent citizens who immediately set to work to raise funds, repair the buildings and appoint a large staff. The first children were admitted in November 1552, before winter set in. They were issued with the famous ‘bluecoat’ uniform of blue tunics and yellow stockings, still worn by the pupils of Christ’s Hospital school today. 

The site, which can be seen on the Agas map of London, was huge, incorporating a church, dormitories, quadrangles (like an Oxford or Cambridge college), and numerous outbuildings, which provided everything necessary for this model orphanage: bakery, brewery, laundry, and so on. Moreover, there were to be two schools, a petty school for the small children and a grammar school for the older ones. These children were not to join the unskilled and indigent paupers of London when they left Christ’s. They were trained in basic clerical skills, some were later apprenticed to craftsmen, some very clever boys would even go on to university and rise to high positions in the church.

The numbers were initially to be limited to 250, then 300, but they frequently rose to as many as 700. From the outset it seems to have been a kindly and humane home, for cases are recorded where children apprenticed to cruel masters ran away and came home to Christ’s Hospital. At a time when life could be unbelievably brutal, Christ’s was an extraordinary exception. The orphanage plays a major part in the fifth Christoval Alvarez novel. 

Children could be given a home, cared for, educated, but what was to be done about the adult sturdy beggars, the authorities’ nightmare, the nursery of crime?

Sturdy Beggars

Bridewell Palace, located near the confluence of the Fleet River with the Thames, was one of Henry VIII’s palaces during the early years of his reign. Later it was used for a time as the French ambassador’s residence and it was during this period that it formed the setting for Holbein’s famous trick painting of the two ambassadors (1533).

However, during the 1550s, when many of these social problems were being tackled in London, Edward VI gave Bridewell Palace to the City of London Corporation (1553), to serve a double purpose as a place of correction for ‘disorderly women’ and an orphanage. By 1556 it was functioning fully as Bridewell Prison, where the sturdy but troublesome vagrants and beggars – both men and women – were confined and spent their time employed in useful labour. 

The Prospect of Bridewell John Strype (1720)

Its secondary function as an ‘orphanage’ served to supplement the much more extensive Christ’s Hospital, mainly providing training and apprenticeships for older boys, apprenticeships which came to be well regarded. The combined institution was run by a Court of Governors.

Madmen

There remained one further group of troublesome citizens – those who were insane, or were believed to be insane. After the disruption of Henry VIII’s break with Rome, many of the ecclesiastical institutions in London (like the two hospitals) were destroyed or converted to secular use. Just outside the northern part of the City wall at Bishopsgate, in the parish of St Botolph, stood the Bethlehem Hospital, which had served a variety of purposes since its foundation in 1247. From the late Middle Ages it was certainly housing some mentally ill inmates, but – as with St Bartholomew’s and St Thomas’s – the ending of ecclesiastical care had led to the collapse of the institution, which was sorely needed.

 In 1546, the Lord Mayor, Sir John Gresham, petitioned the king to grant Bethlehem Hospital to the City. Henry VIII was reluctant, and insisted on retaining possession of the building, although he granted the City Council ‘the custody, order and governance’ of Bethlehem Hospital and of its ‘occupants and revenues’ in a charter which came into effect in 1547, the year of Henry’s death.

 The mention of revenues is significant, because Bedlam, as it was popularly known, did not provide a free service. Those who could afford it paid for their insane relatives to be housed in Bedlam. Poorer patients might be confined there if the courts judged it appropriate and agreed to pay the fees or imposed the fees on the inmate’s parish. The position of Master was regarded as a sinecure, which yielded a comfortable income, and little seems to have been done to treat the inmates, apart from keeping them out of trouble. Contemporary thinking advised confining them in darkened rooms away from any disturbing stimuli and shaving their heads once a month to cool the brain. (Compare the confinement in the dark of Malvolio in Twelfth Night.) Documents of the period refer to them as ‘the poor’ or ‘the prisoners’, not as patients.

 

A later image of shackled inmate of Bedlam

In 1557, the Court of Governors of Bridewell took over the management of Bedlam as well, and if inmates of Bridewell were transferred to Bedlam, the Bedlam fees were paid from Bridewell Hospital funds. In 1598 the Court of Governors made a long overdue inspection of Bedlam, finding it neglected and in a disgusting state: ‘it is so loathsomely and filthy kept not fit for any man to come into the said house’. This in the one fee-paying hospital in London.

Poor Laws

All through the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign, and the reigns of Edward VI and Mary, various acts were passed to try to cope with the growing numbers of the poor. The introduction of a parish-based Poor Rate in 1547 went some way to provide for the impotent poor through compulsory contributions from those parishioners who could pay, the relief being in the form of money, food or clothes. More destitute paupers might be accommodated in almshouses. However, the treatment of sturdy beggars grew ever more severe as their numbers increased. Where in the early part of the period the punishment might be three days in the stocks, it increased to greater and greater physical punishment, including burning through the ear or – for a second offence – hanging.

In this contemporary illustration a beggar is being whipped in the foreground. In the background, another is being hanged.

 Elizabeth’s government finally tackled the problem as a whole, requiring, in the Poor Act of 1575, that all parishes have institutions similar to Bridewell, where sturdy beggars could be put to productive work, instead of simply suffering physical punishment. These institutions were required to keep a supply of ‘wool, hemp, flax, iron and other stuff’, to provide useful employment. The inmates did wire-drawing, knitted woollen caps, carded, spun and wove various fibres, and stuffed mattresses.

 The Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1597 further developed earlier provisions and established the position of Overseer of the Poor, responsible for the distribution of poor relief. There were to be two in each parish, appointed for a year. In addition to distributing poor relief, they were required to estimate the number of poor in the parish, use this as a basis for setting the poor rate, and then collect it from the parishioners. (Not a popular job!) This was followed by the Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1601, which further codified the duties of each parish. With a few modifications, it remained in force until the shift from a rural to an industrial society demanded a major overhaul. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was passed after the report by a commission set up in 1832. Interestingly, the whole act was not repealed until 1967!

 Today our attitudes toward the less fortunate members of society have changed radically. Some of the treatments meted out in Tudor times seem extraordinarily harsh, yet life in general was much harsher then. Faced with the collapse of the social welfare provided by the monasteries, officials and private individuals struggled to cope with what must have seemed at the time like a serious threat to peace, safety and health. They did their best. The provision of orphanages and poor relief by city authorities and Parliament, and the establishment by individuals of almshouses for the destitute and free grammar schools to educate poor boys, demonstrate how well they succeeded. The fact that the Elizabethan Poor Laws survived in part down to our own times speaks volumes for their achievements.

Ann Swinfen

www.annswinfen.com

Commedia dell'Arte - by Ann Swinfen

Even today, many novels and plays use certain recognisable archetypal characters, although they may be heavily disguised – the young couple thwarted by an intransigent parent, the clever and lovable rogue, the swaggering and boastful alpha male (who may be a coward at heart), the fraudulent professional or swindler, the rich and miserly businessman. Such characters may take many forms in the hands of a skilled writer, but their roots lie deep in remote literary history. 

These archetypes were employed repeatedly by the Roman comic playwrights Plautus and Terence, though some had been used even earlier by Greek comedians like Aristophanes. However, it was the Roman writers who refined the types and certain stock situations which their large audiences greeted with glee. As in all theatrical performances of classical times, the actors wore masks, particularly exaggerated masks in the case of comedy, which crudely emphasised the essential characteristics of each type. Since all the parts were played by men, the female characters wore female masks and wigs to denote their sex. 

With the collapse of the Roman empire came the collapse of professional theatre, but it seems unlikely that all forms of play-acting could have disappeared altogether. During the somewhat mis-named ‘Dark Ages’ and early Mediaeval centuries, there were certainly jongleurs and bands of travelling entertainers who may have carried forward fragments of the old traditions. Traces can be seen in the mummers’ plays and the early morality plays, with their stock characters and use of masks and symbolic costumes. 

Peeter van Bredael - Commedia dell'Arte

The true commedia dell’arte appeared in Italy in the sixteenth century, and it must be significant that it emerged in the country which had produced the Roman comedies, even though no direct line of descent can be traced. Commedia dell’arte used stock characters, stock situations, stock costumes, stock props, and symbolic masks, like its Roman predecessors. Unlike the Roman plays, however, the commedia was not performed in permanent theatres, but by itinerant companies, like those of the Middle Ages. Also like them, and like the actors in morality plays, the performers appeared in the open air, on temporary platforms or movable stages. And unlike other forms of theatre developing at the time, the commedia companies included women. Ben Jonson referred to one such as a ‘tumbling whore’. 

Four Commedia Figures - Claude Gillot c.1715

The commedia quickly perfected its standard cast of characters: the braggart soldier Il Capitano; the rich but miserly merchant Pantalone; the bogus scholar Il Dottore; the old woman La Ruffiana, intent on thwarting the young lovers; the ugly hunchback with his large nose, Pulchinella, lusting after pretty girls; witty and mischievous Arlecchino, who dressed like a jester and was a skilled acrobat; Brighella, the vicious and mercenary villain; the melancholy dreamer Pedrolino; Scaramucchia, with his black clothes and sword, a kind of roguish hero. Set against this cast of mostly unpleasant characters who satirised contemporary social types were the charming young lovers who sought escape from their elders and a future together, cheered on by a sympathetic audience. 

Karel Dujardin - Commedia dell'Arte Performance

Staging was minimal. These travelling players could not transport elaborate scenery, so the most they might have would be a painted backcloth depicting a street or country scene. Props, however, were important: plenty of exaggerated wooden swords, food to be thrown about, watering pots to sprinkle the unwary, huge stuffed paunches worn by Pulchinella and Pantalone. The most distinctive were the pair of flat sticks tied together and carried by Arlecchino, which he slapped together to make a loud noise – hence our term ‘slapstick’. 

All of the satirical characters wore leather masks, generally the type of half-mask which covers the upper face and nose, forerunner of the masks worn at the Venetian carnevale to this day. Some were very specific – for example, Arlecchino wore a cat mask and Pedrolino’s mask was white (ancestor of the white-faced clown). The ‘straight’ characters like the young lovers Inamorato and Inamorata did not wear masks. 

Commedia Masks - photo by Hugh Dismuke

Costumes were elaborate and sometimes very fine, the best the company could afford. For the companies themselves varied greatly. There were the famous companies such as I Gelosi, I Fedeli, I Accessi, and I Confidenti, who had noble patrons and performed at ducal courts as well as to the public, but there were also small itinerant bands which might last for a few years only. As well as the patronage enjoyed by the more established companies, finance was obtained by passing round a hat at public performances.
 

These performances were vivid and exciting affairs, structured around standard episodes, but also full of extemporised incident and horseplay, music, song and dance, juggling, acrobatics. The players all had to be multi-talented. Local and contemporary affairs were often the targets of the satire. Excitement must have run high in a village or small town when the commedia players arrived, for nothing else so entertaining would have come their way. Although the commedia began in Italy it very quickly spread throughout Europe as the companies travelled abroad, during the sixteenth, seventeenth and even eighteenth centuries. Some forms of the commedia became merged into various carnivals, not only in Venice but in Twelfth Night and Mardi Gras celebrations elsewhere. 

Pulcinella

Although the true commedia dell’arte eventually fell out of favour, its themes and influence have survived to this day - in specific characters like Mr Punch, descended from Pulcinella, and the sad, white-faced clown from Pedrolino. Less obvious, but just as persistent, are the types and the situations found in the commedia. Even at the time when the commedia was going strong, Shakespeare used many of its stock characters and situations in his comedies, as did Ben Jonson. They may have derived them directly from the Roman comedies (some of the plots are borrowed unashamedly), but they may also have drawn on this new theatrical form which was spreading across Europe. Moliêre certainly borrowed from the commedia, in plays like Le Misanthrope. Elements of the commedia can even be traced in some of Shakespeare’s plays which are not comedies (Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Tempest). 

Watteau - Pierrot c.1718-9

By the time the comedies of the Restoration period came to be written, the similarities to elements of the commedia dell’arte are unmistakable. In the eighteenth century, pantomime developed as a kind of side-shoot from the commedia, but the original satirical form could still be seen as politically dangerous. Napoleon outlawed it, even in Italy itself. 

The traditional stock characters may take on many forms – sometimes as satirical as the originals, sometimes more mellow – but they crop up even today in such popular dramatic forms as television situation comedy. The form is flexible. It can be used as readily for political satire as for gentle family comedy. It is a great legacy in our theatrical tradition, surely because it deals with many fundamental truths about human behaviour. 

In the fourth novel of my sixteenth-century Christoval Alvarez series, Bartholomew Fair, I have a troupe of Italian puppeteers who perform at the Fair. Their marionettes act out a commedia dell’arte, but the puppets depict major figures in Elizabethan society and the satire is a vicious attack, intended to be subversive. Italy was, of course, the home of the Pope, who had granted a pardon to any assassin taking the life of Queen Elizabeth, declared a bastard heretic by the papacy. My puppeteers are part of a wider conspiracy to bring terror to the streets of London. It seemed to me fitting that the commedia, a public display of satire, might be used as an instrument of something altogether more sinister.