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.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment