Trading Standards 16th century style by Margaret Skea

 Trading Standards 16th century style.

Or… what’s in this meat pie? 

For those of us in Britain the cost of food has noticeably increased over the 18 months or so and has become a hot topic of conversation both privately and in the media. One of the largest price increases relates to beef. Shepherd’s Pie made with beef mince used to be considered an economical standby. Technically, of course, ‘Shepherd’s Pie’ should be made from lamb mince – the hint is in the name – but as beef was cheaper than lamb, most folk, in Scotland at least, weren’t bothered about the technicalities. 

However, beef, in any form, is fast becoming the most expensive meat, and it requires careful reading (often with a magnifying glass) to work out the (often small) beef content of many ready-meals. Some years ago there was a Europe-wide crisis when horse-meat DNA was found in many supposedly beef ready-meals, burgers etc; with Food Standards inspectors testing everything in sight in an attempt to discover the scale of the fraud. Perhaps unsurprisingly it spawned a host of jokes, including, given the coincidence in timing of Phillipa Langley’s discovery of the body of Richard III, my favourite. It was suitably historic: ‘After finding Richard III under a Leicester Car Park, scientists have found his horse in a Tesco burger.’

But is the mis-labelling and / or adulteration of food a new problem? 

Definitely not. The first records in Scotland of national standards for food date back to the reign of David I - 1124 - 1153. There were clearly problems then, as now. However, my interest in food regulations relates specifically to the 15th and 16th centuries, and how they impact on the characters in my Scottish trilogy. 

   

                                                                      David I of Scotland 

Nowadays we think the aim of food standards is purely to protect consumers. In the 16th century it was a little different. Consumers, yes, but also the interests of sellers and to prevent disorder. There were strict market regulations governing what could be sold, where and in what form. Some regulations came from the burghs themselves, others by statute - with correspondingly harsh penalties for breaching them.

                                       

Take bread, for example. Scotland, in common with most of Europe suffered from ‘bread riots’, with one significant difference – the rioters in Scotland were not the poor, desperate for reasonably priced food, but the bakers or ‘baxters’ themselves. They were protesting about price restrictions imposed by the burgh authorities, in response to regular Acts of Parliament. 

Most bread was made from wheat, though the poorest households probably made their own flat and fairly indigestible barley bannocks. The price and weight of bread was set, but fluctuated according to the price of wheat. Burgh records describe Bailies (those contracted to ensure compliance with regulations) taking flour ground from a firlot – roughly equivalent to an imperial bushel – to a baker and watching as the bread was baked. The resulting loaf was the standard against which all other loaves were measured. Any baker selling underweight bread risked, at best, a fine and confiscation of his stock, or at worst, his oven being broken and forfeiture of freeman status.

Freeman status was important, as often the sale of bread, and other regulated foodstuffs was restricted to those with burgess status.

‘Outlanders’ coming in from outside were sometimes given permission to trade, but only if they paid the burgh for the privilege. One unusual regulation was the '8 day rule' of 1526 - local residents without freeman status were only allowed to buy enough food for 8 days - to avoid them setting themselves up as small retailers.

Quality was also controlled – different grades of bread being classified as ‘white’ or ‘gray’ – not the most appealing of labels, but all was to be ‘good’ and ‘dry’, which probably meant well-fired and risen – nothing worse than a ‘soggy bottom’ as Prue Leith would say! 

While it is hard to imagine parliament today legislating for the size and price for a loaf;  the price of alcohol is the subject of current regulation. The same was true in the 16th century, with the price of malt and the quality of the ale determining the price. Tasters or ‘conners’ were appointed by the burghs on annual contracts, and having graded a brewer's ales, chalked set prices on the shutters or doors of his premises, so that they could be clearly seen. Anyone found to be over-charging could have the bottom knocked out of his brewing vessels. There is one significant difference between then and now - the modern debate relates to minimum pricing, the 16th century burgh authorities were concerned with imposing a maximum price.

Photo by Fabian Burghart on Unsplash

As now, horse was not a normal part of the 16th century Scottish diet – they were much too valuable to eat. There is however plenty of evidence of the consumption of beef, mutton, pork and goat in the burghs,

and of animals being over-wintered to maturity.  This was supplemented in coastal areas with salmon, herring and seawater fish. The main thrust of meat regulation was quality – for example the sale of meat from ‘longsought’ (lung-diseased) animals was banned - as was the sale of damaged, or badly butchered meat. 

Interestingly, there was no regulation of cheeses, butter, oatmeal or salt. 

There has been much recent discussion on the length of our food 'chain', with meat being shipped from all round the world before landing on a British table. Back then the food chain was, by regulation, extremely short – animals were to be slaughtered outside, in public view and most importantly, at the point of sale. One way of ensuring the customer knows what they are about to buy. 

This particular regulation helped in the prevention of dishonest practices designed to improve the appearance of meat - for example, blowing air into an entire carcass - which plumped it up.  The modern equivalent is likely the addition of water. Bleeding of animals immediately before slaughter was also prohibited, as it masked last minute feeding.

Not everyone was so well-protected. A rather shocking regulation stated that putrid pork or fish must be removed from sale, but not thrown out or destroyed. Instead it was given to lepers. 

But to come back to the meat pie in the sub-title. 

One of the most interesting restrictions on the activities of butchers, or ‘fleshers’ as they were known, is found in the Ancient Laws and Customs of the Burghs of Scotland – prohibiting them from trading as pastry cooks. Was it an attempt to stop them from disguising poor-quality meat by putting it into pies? Perhaps. Which triggers the sobering thought – four hundred years on, little seems to have changed…

There are many sources available for further information; however, here is one article, for starters, for anyone who might be interested: 

March M S (1914) ‘The trade regulations of Edinburgh during the 15th and 16th centuries.’ Scot Geog Mag 30 (1914) pages 483-488

Margaret Skea is the award-winning author of short stories, a biography, and five historical novels, including the 'Munro' trilogy set in the context of the 15th and 16th century clan feud called the Ayrshire Vendetta.  

NORWICH STORIES by Penny Dolan

As I walked round Norwich, three stories were in my head, all met through historical fiction, and all involving what was once seen as the second city of England.

Norwich stands a safe distance inland, on the banks of the Wensum with Yarmouth offering travel to London and across to the coast and estuaries of Northern Europe and beyond. Norfolk, when travel by land was hard and dangerous, had access to trade and markets, to exports and imports. The city was open, for better or otherwise, to wider cultural influences, knowledge and forces, and the prosperity eventually brought by the monastic wool trade.

Two structures dominate the city. One is religious: the mighty Norwich cathedral, with its tall, peregrine-housing spire and beautiful cathedral close. The other is the keep of Norwich Castle, high on the mound raised when the Conqueror took over the city, a symbol of might and right.

Ah, that cathedral, with its wide close and peaceful grounds!

However, my first historical character, although her story is ‘spiritual’, does not seem part of that great cathedral, though she would have heard its bell and those of Norwich’s many other churches.

Julian of Norwich was a 14th century anchorite, and the author of the first book written in English by a woman. After living through years of plague, bereavement and unrest, Dame Julian chose to be ‘entombed’ within a single sealed room, to live her life as if she was symbolically dead to the world, spending her time in prayers and devotion to Christ’s Passion. 

However, her solitude was not constant: people would seek out the small window to her cell, asking for advice, comfort and her prayers. ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ are Julian’s collected thoughts and meditations on the sixteen intense religious visions or ‘Shewings’ she had experienced earlier in her life. 

At that time, the act of writing, whether as a woman or in English rather than Latin, could have led to her persecution and death. Fortunately, her words were valued and preserved on scraps and smuggled fragments, and gathered together into a single volume later. For twenty three years, she lived alone in her cell with the help of a servant and, traditionally, a cat. Maybe the most loved of her sayings, and most used as a mantra, are these: 

‘All shall be well, and all shall be well 

and all manner of thing shall be well.’

Two recent novels, both quite original in style, relate to Julian’s life.

The first, ‘I Julian: The Fictional Biography of Julian of Norwich’ is by Claire Gilbert, Director of Westminster Abbey Institute.

This novel reads as a passionate reimagining of the life of the anchoress, written at a time when Claire Gilbert was suffering with cancer herself. Julian, on these pages, tries to find freedom in her chosen life, bricked up behind a wall, with only a squint to follow the mass in one direction and a a small window for her maid in the other. All the way through, the reader is reminded of the physical difficulties of that life and of the vulnerability that comes from being fixed in one spot.

At one point, her kindly, familiar priest dies quietly while resting during mass and is buried the next day. Immediately, when Julian is still in shock, ‘Robert Grylle becomes priest and stays for a long time and he could not be more different. Precise, vigilant, correct, cold and later dangerous.’ Later in the novel, an understanding confessor is suddenly replaced by a callow misogynistic youth, full of his own power as a cleric and keen to cause her pain.

This Julian needs the support of others, found in her relationship with the Abbess, of her maid Alice, of other women, by God (of course) and another too:
‘Sarah brings me Gyb, A sturdy black and white stray cat that has been pawing at my door for a week, she says. I concede he can stay for it is suggested in the Guide for Anchoresses, and we may have mice.’

Only later in the pages, after confessing to her ‘Shewings’, does Julian find release and freedom and that is through the very act of writing and remembering her Visions. Gilbert’s ‘I Julian’ reads like a thoughtful journey written from the heart.

In ‘Of The Great Pains, Have Mercy on my Little Pain’ by Victoria Mackenzie, the character of Dame Julian is seen through another’s eyes and intentions. This is a very different voice, unusually and not always comfortably told, which all adds - dare I say - to almost the fun within this account of a larger than life character. How would I behave if I met this woman? I wondered.

 

The main character in this short novel is that of Marjorie Kemp, a restless, garrulous woman from the nearby port of Kings Lynn. Burning with religious zeal, Marjorie feels continually driven to speak of her visions, at home, with neighbours and in the public street, to her family’s shame and annoyance, as well as the concern of the local clergy. 

Devoted to God, she expresses her faith by wearing a hair shirt, avoiding sex with her husband, and by suffering the mocking and ill treatment of neighbours. Now, perhaps, Marjorie would be given medication to calm and quieten her down. Eventually, in 1433, after years of seeking answers and of pilgrimages to Walsingham, Rome and the Holy Land, boisterous Marjorie sets off one last journey: to the nearby city of Norwich.

Desperate for help, she visits Dame Julian in her cell and finds a sense of kinship, understanding and an acceptance of her visions. and the freedom in using her voice and composing the first English autobiography written by a woman.

As an aside, and maybe a long shot, if any copies of this anthology are still obtainable. I must also suggest ‘All Shall Be Well’ a short story about Julian of Norwich written by Katherine Langrish, appeared in Daughters of Time, an anthology from The History Girls, collected by Mary Hoffman, and published in 2014.

And now for Norwich Castle and worldly power.

The City is dominated by the castle mound and keep. Begun in 1067 as a fortification, completed as a royal palace in 1121, used for administration and as a prison, the castle keep gradually fell into ruins. In the eighteenth century, new prison cells were constructed within the ruined walls. Then even the prison moved out of the city and a Museum and Art Gallery built alongside the keep.

However, this very year, the long-promised Castle Keep renovation was completed. Steel structures, walkways, lights and glass panels indicate lost parts of the building and the ‘new’ hall is decorated as experts say it would have been: painted with brightly colours and dressed with carved, gilded furniture and hangings. An authentic, if unexpected, experience of a twelfth century royal palace.

The streets of the old town twist and turn away from the castle, and there are many oddly named ways and ginnels. One strange name – Tombland – refers to the empty area of cobbled market in the centre of the city, and gives its name to my third choice of book, the last of the series of Shardlake novels. This huge novel is an adventure on an epic scale and where the keep and the prisons cells are very much in use.

Tombland by C. J. Sansom takes place in 1549: a very uncertain time. The old Tudor king, Henry VIII is dead. Edward VI, his eleven-year-old son, is on the throne; Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, has assumed the role of Protector and is waging war on Scotland, and radical preachers are stirring up the population.

The lawyer Matthew Shardlake, now out of favour in the court, is summoned secretly by Princess Elizabeth. She wants him to look into the accusation that her uncle, John Boleyn, now in Norwich prison, murdered his wife Edith. As the Summer Assizes will soon start, Boleyn and other prisoners will soon be executed. Elizabeth wants Shardlake to petition, secretly for a pardon, but when he visits the cells, the man seems curiously unwilling to help himself - and the princess does not want her name attached to any of this.

As Shardlake’s investigations lead him to Boleyn’s appallingly violent sons, to secretive merchants and trades-people, to a small religious sect, and with more murders, the mystery of the aunt’s death deepens.

However, there is a stronger and more significant thread in this novel. In their search for evidence and testimony, Shardlake, his assistant Nicholas and his friend Jack Barak are led into the path of the 1549 Peasants Rebellion, led by the charismatic Robert Kett.

During Henry’s reign, the old monastic estates had been bought up by rich gentry and merchants and enclosed for pasture land. These new sheep enclosures drove tenants from their traditional holdings, leaving families without plots or crops. Many hope that the young king will be merciful to the sufferings of his people.

Led by Robert Kett, his followers gather in growing numbers on Mouseland outside the city walls, soon causing skirmishes with local citizens. Shardlake and his men are questioned in the camp and, as the novel progresses, different sympathies emerge between the three. Kett, meanwhile, asks the literate Shardlake, still prisoner, to help by keeping a record of the property and weapons taken from any captured gentry so that none can say their possessions were stolen.

Although the twists of the plot weave between Norwich and Kett’s camp in the Tombland novel, the sense of the ill-fated rebellion is what sits most powerfully in the readers mind. At first, the 'rebels' are camping in the sunshine under Mouseland’s leafy trees but, as branch after branch is cut down for fuel or shelter, it is clear that more wood will be needed. Despite Ketts' careful and fair-minded administration, things go wrong, supplies start to run out and the people of Norwich have nothing more to give or sell to the rebels, and there are cold months ahead.

Seymour, the Protector, had grandly issued proclamations promising justice, but faith in the Protector and the young king starts fading fast and reports of mercenaries returning from the Scottish wars add to the turmoil and terror. What chance does Matthew Shardlake have of solving the mystery of the murder of Edith Boleyn and staying in Elizabeth’s favour? Or even escaping himself?

I have to say that Tombland is the kind of historic novel one can live in, and be thankful for your escape at the end. 

In addition, I was also thankful that C. J. Sansom had included so much information and notes on his research notes at the back of the book. Tudor fiction is so often entranced by the drama and glamour of the court and the adventures of famous gentry. I started to feel that Sansom wanted his readers to see life beyond the castle and palace walls, and make them think about the ordinary people.

Especially, in Tombland, those waiting and hoping for justice outside the city of Norwich.

Penny Dolan

Rambling through the past - is it a different place? - Sue Purkiss

 Ever since my first historical fiction book, Warrior King, which was about Alfred the Great, I've tussled with the question as to whether people in the past were basically pretty much the same as people in the present - apart, obviously, from not having smartphones. I think, when I was writing that - actually, come to think of it, people in the present didn't have smartphones then either - I felt that they probably were. So my Alfred was thoughtful and sensitive as well as being clever and brave; Cerys - my lovely silver-eyed Celt - was a freedom fighter as well as a semi-magical creature; Fleda (Alfred's daughter Aethelflaed, later to become the Lady of the Mercians and pretty much the definition of a warrior queen) was a determined, courageous, affectionate child. They were a nice lot, really. People you'd like to spend time with.

Some time after that, I considered writing a book about the young William the Conqueror. But the more I read, the more I decided that here was a very unpleasant character indeed. And his wife wasn't much better: her father didn't approve of William's suit, thinking that, being a bastard, he wasn't good enough. So William rode up to meet her as she was coming out of church and dragged her off her horse by her plaits. Apparently she thought this was great - what a guy! - and henceforth would have no other. As well as this, he was brutal in his treatment of the inhabitants of castles he besieged and captured - I don't remember the details, but they definitely involved cutting bits off people.

So I decided I really didn't want to spend any more time with him.

How nice it was, I thought, that things have progressed since then, and we don't behave like that any more. Hm...

The chained books

In the last couple of years, I've taken to volunteering at Wells Cathedral, mostly in the library, which was founded in 1424. It's a beautiful space, built above one side of the cloister. The arched wooden roof, the windows, and the carved heads which are portraits of contemporaries of the masons - all these are original, so almost six hundred years old. The books, some of which are chained (cf the library in the Unseen University of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books!), are mostly not as old as that: they've endured turbulent times, notably Henry VIII's Reformation, and the Civil War and its aftermath, and many were lost. But there are still some wonderful survivors:  notably an extraordinary polyglot bible (ie one written in five languages), an exquisitely illustrated Benedictine Rule, and a first edition of John Donne.

He looks a bit self-conscious, doesn't he? And look at his lovely big ears!

The annotation in red is in Archbishop Cranmer's own hand.

The original windows in the library, with Bishop Bubwith's crest.

I'm not that brilliant at remembering dates. But in quiet moments, when the past seems very close, I often wonder about the people who moved through the serene spaces of this most beautiful of cathedrals - those who built it, but also those who lived in the city and came here to worship. In those days, the magnificent West Front, with its layers of figures, saints, kings, angels, right up to the head man up at the top, would have been brightly coloured. Did the ordinary people - the tradesmen and women, the children, the pedlars, the beggars - did they come and stare at it and recognise the stories that it told? Were they allowed to wander round inside, and recognise their neighbours, carved in stone at the top of pillars - several with toothache, one stealing grapes, all with faces full of expression?

The West Front

One of the loveliest spaces in the cathedral - the staircase up to the chapterhouse, with its steps worn by centuries of footsteps.

Some local people...

There is little trace in the records of these people and what their lives were like. There's more of Bishop Nicholas Bubwith (1355-1427), who left money in his will for the building of the library. I think I have a sense of him. He was remarkable, but not in a showy sort of way. 

He was born in a little village in Yorkshire called Menthorpe, not long after the first major plague outbreak, which killed half the population and led to all sorts of unrest and turbulence. Little is known about his early life, but he entered royal service in the 1360s, and rose to become a significant figure - Lord Treasurer and Lord Privy Seal. Then in 1406 he became a bishop, first of London, then of Salisbury and finally of Wells. But he was still given responsibility by the King - by this time Henry IV - being sent as Ambassador to the Council of Constance, which was convened to sort out the mess the church had got itself into, with several would-be popes and considerable disagreements about doctrine.

But finally he came back to Wells, and busily set about sorting things out back home, improving education for the clergy (hence the library), regularising the cathedral's financial affairs, and looking round to see what needed to be done to improve the lot of the townspeople. In his will he left money to improve Somerset's roads (an ongoing endeavour!), to build almshouses, and for the poor back in Menthorpe.

So he survived life at court - and my guess is that this was because all three monarchs under whom he served recognised his value as someone who absolutely wasn't in it for himself; someone who was an effective administrator who spent his life trying to make things better for other people, not for himself.

So - we can look back at this period of British history, which was turbulent and must have been harsh in so many ways. But here we find also someone who was just getting on with things, doing the best he could, not just for himself but for other people too. Which is what, despite all the awful things that are happening in the world at the moment, most of us are trying to do.

At least, I hope so. 

PS - I am indebted to Austin Bennett, another volunteer at Wells, for his comprehensive notes on Bishop Bubwith. 

1968: The Year That Changed America (by Stephanie Williams)

 

                        Davis Hall, Wellesley College October 1966

I'm eighteen years old in 1968, a sophomore at Wellesley College. As girls of the time, our childhood had been spent in the sheltered 1950s. We were demure, conservative, and gently reared. We arrived at college to be educated in the liberal arts—as the world began to change around us. 

 

We were rule-bound: curfew at 11 pm, men permitted in your room only on Sunday afternoons, dress code for football games requiring suits, heels and white gloves. Sunday mornings, girls poured over the engagement columns in the New York Times. But three undercurrents were rising—women's rights, civil rights, and the war in Vietnam—and 1968 would be the year they crashed together.

 

Winter: hope rises
It is election year.

By early 1968, almost half a million American troops were fighting in Vietnam. Every month 40,000 boys were being drafted. Undergraduates could still defer, but draft deferments for graduate students had just been cancelled. The system protected the privileged—those who could afford four years of college—while working-class boys were sent to war. The men we knew were drawing closer to being drafted.

 

Eugene McCarthy campaign poster 1968

All of us were canvassing the streets of New Hampshire in support of Eugene McCarthy—a Democratic senator from Minnesota challenging President Lyndon Johnson on a peace platform. Through mushy snow, we knocked on doors, handed out leaflets for McCarthy. On March 12, he secured 42.4% of the vote to Johnson's 49.5%. The primary should have been a shoe-in for Johnson. We were jubilant. Days later, Bobby Kennedy, much more well known, who'd watched from the sidelines, declared his candidacy.

Two weeks later, on Sunday evening, March 31, President Johnson delivered his famous address to the nation, withdrawing from the race. He declared he would not seek the nomination and would begin to de-escalate the war by halting the bombing of North Vietnam. He invited Hanoi to join him in moves towards peace. The next day he announced he would meet Bobby Kennedy and work together towards national unity. By Wednesday, the North Vietnamese were ready to talk peace.

It was all wonderful for 24 hours.

Spring: everything shatters

On Thursday, April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Johnson cancelled his flight to Hawaii. Hanoi cancelled plans for talks. Fierce riots broke out in Washington, Baltimore, New York, Boston. All the momentum toward peace—gone in an instant.

The weather was beautiful that spring of '68, but the violence kept escalating. At Columbia University in New York, 1,000 students invaded five campus buildings protesting the university's involvement in weapons research and plans to encroach on Harlem. Police were called. The campus exploded. Unrest spread to Chicago, to Paris and the Sorbonne.

Columbia protests, April 1968
Hugh Rogers Photography/ /Columbia College Today

 Night after night on TV, grainy scenes from the jungle showed wounded men on stretchers being run to hovering helicopters. Footage came straight from the battlefield, uncensored, deeply traumatizing. The crump of bombs, the walls of flame cascading over grassy villages. Wailing children fleeing barefoot. The war was morally indefensible, and we were culpable.

 

Guiding a medivac helicopter to pick up casualties, near Hue, April 1968
AP Art Greenspan/Alamy

Not long after Christmas the year before, I'd had breakfast with Hillary Rodham, who lived across the hall from me. She was talking about the National Organization for Women, formed just the previous October.

"What do you think," Hillary said to me, "should Wellesley join?"

"I think the basic question is: are we feminists?"

I suppose I am fortunate to have first heard the term from Hillary Rodham Clinton.

By the following spring, something had shifted in us. We realized we had been raised in a world that turned entirely on men and their view of things. The childhood activities thought appropriate for boys rather than girls. The stories and films in which the male is in charge, noble and dominant; the female a possession, passive, unable to negotiate the world alone. We were waking up.

Summer: the second assassination

We had hardly got home for the summer holidays when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles on June 5.

Two murders in two months. Two leaders who represented hope for peace and civil rights, gone. The violence wasn't theoretical anymore—it was consuming the people trying to end it.

August: Chicago

My roommate Anne traveled to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Everyone knew the city was armed to the hilt. A peaceful anti-war demonstration was planned for the last afternoon. Young men offered up draft cards like communion chalices to burn before the crowd. The crowd chanted, "Hell no, we won't go."

Burning a draft card, Grant Park, 28 August 1968.
Anne Trebilcock

 Kennedy's assassination had left nearly 400 delegates uncommitted. McCarthy was still in the race. But Johnson's favorite, Hubert Humphrey, was trying to pave a middle way. By nightfall, it was cold. Everyone knew the Convention had slipped away from the peace candidates. The Vietnam war would go on. Nothing would change.

Outside in the park, Anne was exhausted. There were so many people. Floodlights glanced off police helmets. All of a sudden—no one knows why—huge armored cars barreled down the street. The National Guard fired tear gas. Police with clubs moved in a line and began to run, swinging left and right. Canisters popped. Smoke rose. The air burned. Sirens wailed. Protesters seized trash cans and hurled them back. Anne's eyes teared up. She couldn't breathe. She covered her mouth and nose with her McCarthy scarf and ran. There was a shriek as a baton cracked hard on someone's head. A girl was dragged by her hair and tossed into a paddy wagon. People were screaming.

All of it, seventeen minutes, was broadcast live on television around the world.

The whole world was watching the American government turn violence on its own citizens who were calling for peace.

Fall: a new view of the world

By fall 1968, there was a new vibe on campus. Hemlines were mid-thigh. Girls went about with no makeup, their hair long and loose. Some Black girls adopted Afros—emulating Angela Davis. Everyone talked of the relief of not wearing bras.

Over the summer a group called Cell 16 had set up a "female liberation front" in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Women had had enough of listening to men on ego trips, of being assigned to take minutes and make coffee, of being treated as objects to be possessed. The scales fell from our eyes. The term male chauvinist was coined. 

In November, the Democrats lost the election. Richard Nixon was elected president. The war would continue.

All the things we had been raised to believe in, all the systems we had taken for granted—the structures of government, not perfect, but relatively benign—all of it now known to be corrupted and degraded. Two-thirds of government resources devoted to war and outer space. Basic human dignity denied to Black citizens. Our own role as women of no consequence. The planet threatened by pollution and nuclear annihilation.

Who could you trust in authority anymore?

The echo across decades

In the winter of 1967, I had stayed with Yale's chaplain, William Sloane Coffin—one of the Freedom Riders arrested in 1961, a man Martin Luther King had bailed out of jail. Over drinks, the talk was electric. About conscience—and the role of civil disobedience.

William Sloane Coffin on his arrest Montgomery Alabama,
25 May 1961

How far are you prepared to let something go before you stand up to be counted?

Looking back across nearly 60 years, I see 1968 as the year America broke open. In twelve months we went from hope to despair, from believing in our institutions to watching them fail us, from trusting authority to questioning everything. We watched two assassinations destroy the peace and civil rights movements' momentum. We watched police violence broadcast into living rooms. We watched a war grind on despite massive opposition.

The patterns feel disturbingly familiar in today's America. Deep divisions. Struggles for civil rights taking new forms. Women fighting again for control over their own bodies. The sense that institutions meant to protect us have been corrupted.

The question Bill Coffin posed that electric night remains: how far are you prepared to let something go before you stand up to be counted?

Each generation must answer for itself.

Stephanie Williams is a historian and writer who lives in north London. 

 
Her latest book, telling the story of her four years as a Canadian, convent-educated girl at an elite American women's college is The Education of Girls -- coming of age in 4 years that changed America, 1966-1970.

 

'A rich and stirring history of a moment when everything was changing for women in higher education.' Hillary Rodham Clinton

Queens and Empresses: When Women Ruled Japan ~ by Lesley Downer

‘Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming of age ceremony.’
Prince Hisahito, September 6th 2025

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako of Japan

On Prince Hisahito’s 19th birthday, September 6th 2025, there was an elaborate coming of age ceremony at the imperial palace in Tokyo. The prince wore the Kakan-no-Gi, the traditional golden yellow garment with a long train to mark him as a youth, and was presented with a black silk and lacquer crown by deferential courtiers in rustling black robes, recognising him as second in line to the throne after his father, the Crown Prince.

He then changed into the black robes of adulthood and set off to the next ceremonial event in a horse-drawn carriage.

Princess Aiko, December 23 2022 

Prince Hisahito is the nephew of the Emperor of Japan; his father is the emperor’s younger brother. His cousin Princess Aiko is the only child of the Emperor and Empress and, at 23, is older than him. So how does Prince Hisahito come to be second in line to the throne?  

Princess Aiko can’t accede to the chrysanthemum throne for one simple reason: she is a woman.

This is not ancient tradition. Until the passing of Japan’s first constitution in 1889 there was no such rule. The aim of the constitution was to make Japan appear similar to western nations, on the surface at least, so as to end the unequal treaties which forced Japan to kowtow to the west - though ironically at the time Queen Victoria was firmly on the throne in Britain.

After the war the American occupying forces drew up a new constitution which set in stone the law that only men could accede to the throne. Empress Masako, the present Empress, was under great pressure to produce a son and didn’t succeed, though she did have a daughter, Princess Aiko.

But before that first constitution things were different. Female emperors were not common but there were some who played major roles in the development of Japan. And in ancient times there were plenty.

The Sun Goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami
by Utagawa Kunisada 1856

In fact the claim to legitimacy of the imperial family is - again, ironically - that they are descended in an unbroken line from the female Sun Goddess, Amaterasu.

Queens and Empresses part I

Shaman Queen

The very first named person in Japanese history is a woman - Queen Himiko, who ruled from about 190 to 248 AD, just over a hundred years after Boudicca. At the time the kings who ruled the various kingdoms that made up Japan were always fighting and in order to maintain the peace decided to set a woman on the throne.

Himiko, who came from a line of queens, maintained peace for 60 years. She was not only a temporal ruler but a shaman who could intervene with the gods to ensure the food supply and protect her people from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. After her death a king took the throne and fighting started again. Peace was only restored when Himiko’s 13 year old niece Iyo, who was also a shaman, became queen.

In the years that followed there was a succession of empresses, six in all.

Suiko: Long reigning empress who established Buddhism

Empress Suiko: imaginary picture
by Tosa Mitsuyoshi (1700 - 1772)

Empress Suiko (554 - 628) came to the throne in 593, succeeding her husband, Emperor Bidatsu, and ruled for 35 years. Like Himiko she was installed on the throne in order to establish peace among warring factions, the Soga and the Mononobe clans. Her father, Emperor Kinmei, had been given a statue of the Buddha by the King of Baekje, now part of Korea, who urged him to adopt this ‘most excellent’ religion.

Under Suiko’s rule Buddhism was recognised as the official religion of the country and the country absorbed a great deal of Chinese culture - politics, poetry, laws, religion, food, clothing, architecture and music. Chinese and Korean craftsmen came to Japan. Her government sent its first official embassy to the glorious Chinese court, introduced the Chinese calendar, replaced the Japanese system of hereditary ranks with the Chinese bureaucratic system and established the supremacy of the emperor, laying the foundations for Japan as a unified country rather than a collection of warring states.

Empress Kōgyoku witnesses a spectacular coup d’état.

Empress Kōgyoku

Empress Kōgyoku (594 - 661) had a rather dramatic story. She was the widow of the previous emperor, Suiko’s great-nephew. She came to the throne in 642 and had a new palace built, the Itabuki no Miya. In those days people founded a new capital every time a new emperor came to the throne so as to avoid being jinxed by the ghost of the previous incumbent. She then brought an end to a drought by praying.

But she’d barely settled into her new palace when there was an upheaval. Her son Prince Naka was tired of the Soga clan controlling power. He started meeting with a nobleman called Nakatomi no Kamatari in a wisteria grove where they claimed to be studying Chinese texts but in fact were plotting a coup d’état.

On July 13 645 there was a grand meeting at the new palace. Prince Naka ordered all the gates to be locked, smuggled in a sword and in full view of everyone lopped off the head of the young leader of the Soga clan, Soga no Iruka, thus ejecting the Soga from power. Empress Kōgyoku abdicated immediately because she was polluted by being in the presence of death.

Prince Naka killing Soga no Iruka
from the Tōnomine Engi scroll, Edo period

Empress Kōgyoku’s brother took over but everyone understood that the real power in the land was now Prince Naka and that power was now in the hands of the imperial family again.

After her brother died Kōgyoku came back to the throne with a new, unpolluted name - Empress Saimei. She then set off to lead an armada to attack the Chinese and Sillan (Korean) ships that were threatening Japan but on the way she died. Prince Naka finally took power as the great Emperor Tenji.

The empresses who were to follow played a major part and varied roles in shaping the country Japan was to become. For their stories, watch out for my next riveting instalment!


All images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and in particular all things Japanese. She had two books out last year: The Shortest History of Japan (Old Street Publications) - 16,500 years of Japanese history in 50,000 words, full of stories and colourful characters - and her first ‘real’ book, On the Narrow Road to the Deep North, reissued by Eland under her new pen name to acknowledge her Chinese roots - Lesley Chan Downer. For more see www.lesleydowner.com