Cardinal Beaton: Villain or Statesman? by V.E.H. Masters

 A day out in Edinburgh recently and walking through the Cowgate, I passed this sign.

Few figures in sixteenth-century Scotland aroused stronger opinions than Cardinal David Beaton. To his supporters he was a skilled diplomat and defender of Scotland’s independence and Catholic faith. To his enemies he was a corrupt churchman whose death marked the beginning of the Scottish Reformation.

Born around 1494 into the powerful Beaton family of Fife, David Beaton rose rapidly through the Church and royal administration. Educated at St Andrews University and in France, he became an accomplished diplomat, serving James V before being appointed Cardinal in 1538, making him Scotland’s most influential churchman - and a very wealthy man. The house referred to above was only one amongst many which he owned.

Beaton was also Archbishop of St Andrews and it was as such that we were told about him in primary school – for I grew up in St Andrews, Scotland. His Bishop's palace was St Andrews Castle, the ruins of which were very exciting to visit especially because of its long siege tunnel.

                                           St Andrews Castle

Beaton was a determined opponent of Protestant reform and a staunch defender of Scotland’s alliance with France. These policies brought him into direct conflict with Henry VIII, who had broken with Rome and sought to dominate Scotland through the proposed marriage of his son Edward to the infant Mary, Queen of Scots – both of whom were only small children at the time.

Henry regarded Beaton as one of his greatest obstacles. English agents closely followed the Cardinal’s activities, and the English government viewed him as the chief architect of resistance to English influence in Scotland.

                                                       King Henry VIII

Determined that the marriage would happen, Henry conducted a campaign of raids into Scotland known as the Rough Wooing. He also had a number of Scottish supporters, referred to as his 'pensioners' who he paid for their backing.

Cardinal Beaton, as he moved around his domain, was aware of how vulnerable he was. Here's an exert from my novel, The Castilians which explains more fully.

Out Bethia goes into the twilight in time to see Cardinal Beaton’s entourage returning to St Andrews. He’s not there, no doubt ridden ahead with his guard of soldiers tight about him, the townsfolk made to line the streets and bow as he passes. The baggage train, although well guarded, will travel too slow for his safety. She’d heard it was recently attacked but, not finding the Cardinal, the ruffians indulged in a spot of thievery, stealing a chest full of gold coin.

A small crowd is still there. They’ve seen it many times, for the Cardinal never travels lightly, but the wonder of the long line of carts carrying food, fine wine, bedding, clothing, silver plates, fuel, a hundred servants both French and Scots, and the final crowning glory, his four- poster bed perched upon a broad cart, never fails to entertain – although she can hear angry muttering too. She turns to leave, after the passing of the bed, and finds the lanky figure of her brother behind her, his face dark with anger.

‘You know it is his fault.’

‘What is?’ she says, wearily. She’s cold, and in no mood to stand listening to another of Will’s rants, as well as fearful someone might overhear him.

‘Come, let me show you.’

He turns and marches for home and she trails behind. Waving her to wait, he disappears up the spiral to the attics. She stands warming herself, her back to the fire, longing for the unseasonably wintry May to pass. She can hear Will rummaging in the room above, boards creaking, and then he’s thundering back down the stairs, bursting into the room waving a paper.

He kicks the door shut, flapping it in front of her face. 

It’s a notice. She can see the hole where it was once pinned to a church door or a tree, or, most likely, a Mercat cross. She tilts it, trying to read in the firelight.

‘You may thank your Cardinal for this...’ it begins.

She looks at Will questioningly.

‘When Henry Tudor’s troops sacked Haddington and all the other towns, and even burnt the kirk at St Monans, over the past two years, they left a notice each time with these words,’ he explains.

She feels the fear, like a punch to her belly. ‘And how is it that the King of England invades our country and it becomes the fault of our Cardinal, who has been the great defender of Scotland? Take care, Will, this is anglophile talk, and treason forby.’

‘It was us who broke the treaty promising our infant queen in matrimony to King Henry’s son,’ he mumbles, looking down at his feet.

‘It is a too rough wooing of our wee Queen Mary,’ she says angrily.

‘Why can’t you understand Bethia – we must have reform of the church, and Cardinal Beaton blocks it. And he’s all about supporting French interests, for they align with his own.’

She reaches up and touches his face. ‘Will, please don’t listen to those lairds. Father says they are not good men.’

He knocks her hand away and leaves the room, slamming the heavy door behind him. 

Cardinal Beaton is most widely remembered for ordering the execution of the reformer George Wishart for heresy.  Wishart was burned outside the walls of St Andrews Castle in March 1546. According to some accounts, Beaton watched the execution from a castle window, wrapped against the cold. Yet he did order that Wishart, once he was tied at the stake, be draped in gunpowder so when the fire caught it would explode and Wishart's torment would be over swiftly.

                                                      George Wishart

One of the reasons Beaton had Wishart killed was Wishart's advocacy, amongst other ecclesiastical reforms, for the right of clergy to marry. The Cardinal staunchly defended the principle of clerical celibacy and yet had a long term relationship with Marion Ogilvy with whom he had eight children.

Increasingly fearful for his life, Cardinal Beaton ordered the strengthening of St Andrew's Castle defences. In late May 1546, barely three months after Wishart's death, a group of Protestant lairds, taking advantage of the work being carried out, disguised themselves as stone masons and entered the castle in the early morning. 

Taken unawares, Beaton was stabbed to death in his chamber and his naked body hung from the ramparts so that all would know that these men were now in control. They called themselves The Castilians, as in holders of the castle – hence the title of my book.

                                            Geddy Map of St Andrews, 1580

In school, we were always told the men who took the castle were the good guys because they were the Protestants. But many were in the pay of Henry VIII and they ran amok in St Andrews during the fourteen months in which they held the castle.

These dramatic events form the backdrop to my novel The Castilians, which follows ordinary men and women of St Andrews caught up in the chain of events that led to Beaton's assassination and the long siege which followed. 

To Protestant reformers, Beaton was a symbol of corruption and tyranny. Modern historians tend to see a more complex figure: an able diplomat, a determined statesman, a flawed churchman and a man attempting to preserve a political and religious order that was already beginning to collapse.

Nearly five centuries after his death, Cardinal Beaton remains one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the Scottish Reformation.

References:

Sanderson, Margaret H. B, Cardinal of Scotland: David Beaton c.1494–1546.

Dawson, Jane E. A., Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587

Donaldson, Gordon, The Scottish Reformation

Knox, John, History of the Reformation in Scotland.

Author Bio

V.E.H. Masters is the best selling author of the award winning Seton Chronicles, which follows a Scottish family caught up in the religious and political upheavals of sixteenth century Europe. She grew up on a farm near St Andrews and drew on her own experience of farming life when writing her most recent, and contemporary, novel Keeping Distance. She lives in the Scottish Borders with her husband and two cats.

For three free short stories which tell more of the Seton Family visit www.vehmasters.com and pick up your copies of A Bonny Lass, Sounds of Silence and A Long Wait. 

The Ayrshire Vendetta by Margaret Skea

The Ayrshire Vendetta.

It is 440 years since the Massacre of Annock. Though not an unusual occurrence in the lawlessness of Scotland in the 16th century, that event, and particularly the extent and ferocity of the reprisals that followed, marked the beginning of a change in attitude towards blood feud. 

‘Blood feud was the custom of the times.’ So wrote William Robertson in Ayrshire. Its History (1908) 

Of course, feuding between Scottish clans wasn’t a new phenomenon, nor did it entirely end with the 16th century, and it certainly wasn’t confined to Ayrshire. There are many well-documented, long-standing feuds between families throughout Scotland, from the Scotts and Kers in the Borders, to the Campbells and MacDonalds in the west and the Gordons and Stewarts in the Highlands. However the Ayrshire Vendetta, as it became known, is a classic example; the Cunninghame and Montgomerie families later dubbed the ‘Montagues and Capulets’ of Ayrshire. 

All that remains of Eglinton castle – Primary residence of the Earl of Eglinton – head of  the Montgomerie family.

Nothing remains of Kilmaurs, the seat of the Cunninghame family.

Various factors contributed to a culture in which violence was considered the most appropriate manner of dealing with dispute. Foremost was the weakness of the Crown.  Of the seven Scottish monarchs of the 15th and 16th centuries, only one (James IV, aged 15 when he became king) was able to rule in his own right from accession. Of the others, three inherited the throne as infants (James V, Mary Queen of Scots and James VI) and two at less than ten (James II and III), while James I, aged twelve, was captured, still uncrowned, and detained in England for eighteen years.  As a result the years of successive minorities were characterized by a nobility jostling for precedence and for control of the monarchy, allied to a general acceptance of the rule of ‘might’ regardless of ‘right’.

On his accession in 1488 James IV set out to establish stable government at local level, appointing representatives in each district to dispense justice. A laudable aim, marred in Ayrshire by an error of judgement, when he passed control of the bailiwick of Cunninghame to Hugh, Lord Montgomerie, thus sparking the 150 + year feud. 

Although the original affront had been to the Cunninghames, the first blow in the feud was the sacking of Kerelaw - a Cunninghame tower situated in the midst of Montgomerie territory.  The years that followed were punctuated by repeated acts of brutality and murder on both sides, separated by periods of temporary quiet. 

In 1505 Cunninghame of Craigens was attacked and wounded by the Master of Montgomerie; and in 1507 the Cunninghames retaliated, attacking the newly created Montgomerie Earl of Eglinton, with lives lost on both sides. 

Meanwhile the issue of the bailiwick became the subject of arbritation, the decision in favour of Eglinton in 1509 failing to satisfy the Earl of Glencairn, head of the Cunninghames. 

However, as is so often the case when a country is threatened by an external enemy, private grievances are set aside. So it was in the years before Flodden, clans uniting in the face of the English threat. The Scottish losses, whether one accepts the lower estimate of 5,000 or the higher one of 10,000, decimated the nobility and left the country once again with an infant king. 

                           Site of Flodden Battlefield – very atmospheric even today. 

It is interesting to note that though both Eglinton and Glencairn were on the same side in the unsuccessful conspiracy to depose the Duke of Albany, Regent for James V, it failed to diminish the ill-feeling between the two families.  Just four years later, in 1517, hostilities flared again with the wounding of John, Master of Montgomerie and the killing of his followers. Though Albany extracted an agreement from both factions to lay aside their quarrels, it served only to delay revenge, Cunninghame of Auchenharvie and of Waterston becoming the next victims.  

These tit-for-tat murders led to one of the most significant episodes in the vendetta, when in 1528 a large force of Cunninghames rode through Montgomerie territory, causing wholesale destruction: decimating crops, stealing and killing stock and burning the dwellings, leaving the tenantry penniless and homeless. The raids culminated in the burning of Eglinton castle itself, destroying all the contents, including tapestries, furniture, paintings, armaments and most important of all, family records going back as far as the Norman Conquest, as well as their Charter to the Montgomerie lands. This time the Montgomerie earl, perhaps tired of violence, or feeling his increasing age, accepted a cash settlement as compensation, and for a period of almost sixty years there are no records of atrocities, though whether as a result of external pressures or a genuine attempt at peace is hard to gauge.  

The external pressures were certainly significant - war with England, the Scottish defeat at Solway Moss and the subsequent death of James V; resulting in the accession of 6-day old Mary and a new cycle of government by regency. Then came the ‘Rough wooing’ as Henry VIII tried to force a betrothal between his son Edward and Mary; the English incursion into southern Scotland; and two battles: Ancrum Moor, where the Scots were victorious, and Pinkie Cleugh where the honours went to England, precipitating the smuggling of the young Queen Mary to safety in France. 

     

But it seems that old enmities are hard to stifle and when the country was once again secure, with James VI on the throne and hopeful of inheriting the English crown, the feud erupted once more, with the massacre at Annock in 1586. Most sources agree on the main facts: a small group of Montgomeries stopped at Langshaw on route to the court at Stirling; the Cunninghames, having been alerted to their presence, lying in wait at the Ford to ambush them. Though the numbers killed appear to have been small, the aftermath was brutal and wide-ranging. As Robertson put it: 

‘All the country ran to arms, either on one side or the other, so that for some time there was a scene of bloodshed and of murder in the West that had never been known before.’ 

One person’s fate seems particularly poignant: Lady Margaret of Langshaw, a Cunninghame by birth, but married to a Montgomerie, was held responsible for the ambush and forced to remain in hiding for many years - a heavy price to pay for a family name.

James VI, determined to outlaw blood feud, brought forward laws restricting the carrying of firearms, and commanded opposing lords to process hand in hand up the High Street in Edinburgh as a symbol of the new, peaceful order. It wasn’t quite the end of the Ayrshire Vendetta, however, for in 1606, while Parliament was in session, a battle between the followers of the families was waged on the streets of Perth, lasting for three hours. 

But in contrast to Shakespeare’s ‘Montagues’ and ‘Capulets’, 

the marriage of William, 9th Earl of Glencairn to Margaret Montgomerie, daughter of the 6th Earl of Eglinton, did finally seal the peace in 1661.

And in an interesting postscript the Lord Lyon recognized a new chief for Clan Cunninghame in 2013. 

His name? Sir John Christopher Foggo Montgomery Cunninghame.

Margaret Skea is the award-winning author of three books focusing on this long-running feud, which together comprise the Munro saga:  Turn of the Tide, (Historical Fiction Winner in the Harper Collins People’s Novelist competition and Beryl Bainbridge Best First Time author Award), A House Divided (Long-listed for the Historical Novel Society New Novel Award) and By Sword and Storm. 

They tell the story of a fictional family trapped in the middle of the conflict, with all the challenges and difficulties it poses for their relationships and their safety; along with the pressure it places on conscience and integrity.

For details of these and Margaret’s other books visit www.margaretskea.com 

Ebooks can be found at https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Margaret-Skea/author/

 

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.  

'How to Fake a Dragon' by Karen Maitland

A Jenny Haniver
Photo: M.Violante

It is so important to take children to museums, I mean proper museums with real objects in glass cases, not ones simply filled with interactive computer screens.

I vividly remember a childhood trip to a museum where I became enthralled by a dry, brown creature in a case that looked exactly like a mummified imp with bat-like wings, spiky tail, and a demonic, human-like face. I felt I was staring at a grotesque that had come to life and flown down from the roof of a gothic Cathedral. The label stated that the dried imp was a 'Jenny Haniver', a fake, but it looked as real as any of those two-headed chicks, shark pups or goat embryos preserved in jars, which lined our biology lab at school.

And the sight of that creature fascinated me so much as a child that, decades later, the image would wriggle to the surface of my mind and become a clue to an assassination plot in my Jacobean thriller ‘Rivers of Treason.’

'Little Dragon' form of Jenny Haniver
(Made from a stingray in 18th Century)
Photo: Didier Descovens
Museum de Toulouse

The term Jenny Haniver is used to refer to the corpse of any real animal that is fashioned to resemble a mythological creature such as a demon or dragon. Jenny Hanivers started to be made in great numbers in 16th and 17th centuries, the centuries of exploration, when travellers and sailors were returning to Europe with tales of the wonderous animals they had encountered. Jenny Hanivers were usually fashioned from the carcass of a ray, skate or devil fish that had been tied into a monstrous shape and dried, resulting in a mummified specimen. Since these flat fish have eyes and mouths that resemble human or mammalian faces, the features could be moulded into grotesque expressions. They also have barbed tails and so was possible to make them look like demons or small dragons by cutting and shaping the body to create wings or limbs before drying the carcass. 

Face of a Ray fish
Photo: JoshBerglund19

These fakes were manufactured in great numbers in the ports of Belgium and Holland, where they were sold as curios to mariners and travellers to take back home, to show the monsters they’d encountered on their voyages. It has been suggested that one possible explanation of the origin of the name may be the French phrase jeune d’Anvers – Anvers being the French name for Antwerp– which English sailors corrupted into Jenny Haniver. 

Jenny Hanivers were crafted to look like imps, baby basilisks, newly hatched dragons, wyverns and even the legendary ‘sea monks’ and ‘sea-bishops’ which were believed to conjure storms at sea. 

Sea Monk & Sea Bishop
Illustrations from 1669
Taken from a woodcut of 1558
Carver: Conrad Gesner (1516-1565)

An illustration of a Jenny Haniver appeared in Konrad Gesner’s Historia Animalium in 1558, where Gesner firmly states that these are simply dried rays, and that people shouldn’t be tricked into believing they are dragons or monsters. However, the tales of the creatures encountered by European sailors visiting tropical islands, as well as the skins and often badly stuffed specimens brought back by those exploring the Americas, only served to convince a public who had never seen such animals before that these fakes might also be real.

Later, in the 19th century, people in Europe paid to view dried mermaids brought back by merchants and sailors from Japan. Japanese fishmen had learned to supplement their income by creating grotesque little mermaids from monkeys and fish. The fishermen would claim they had found a mermaid alive in their nets, who before she died, had warned of a terrible plague about to sweep the land from which people could only be saved if they wore a mermaid charm. Naturally the fishmen ensured that they just happen to have these charms for sale.

Mummified mermaid
Archivio fotografico 
Museo Civico di Modena

And it seems we are still just as willing to believe in strange creatures from distant realms as our forebears did. In 2023, two small mummified ‘alien’ corpses from Peru were subject to months of scientific investigation and journalistic speculation about whether these diminutive, three-fingered beings could possibly be real ‘aliens’ from outer space or an elaborate hoax. The consensus of most scientists in the end was they were composites of pre-Columbian human remains and animal bones coved in plaster or glue. But the question remained, were they created as part of an ancient Peruvian burial rite or mocked-up in our own century by someone out to make money, just like those creative Jenny Haniver makers of Antwerp? Human nature doesn’t change!

A Jenny Haniver
Photo: Vassil
Museum d'Histoire Naturelle de Geneve, 
Geneva

............................

Rivers of Treason, set in 1607, is the 3rd book in the Daniel Pursglove thriller quartet by KJ Maitland. Book 4, Plague of Serpents, is out now.

The Men who Ate Gold ~ by Lesley Downer

Like a great cloud
The Wiraqochas [Whites]
Demanding gold
Have invaded us.         The Death of Atau Wallpa, Runasimi [Quechua] epic lament

                                           put into writing in the 18th century

Inca Emperor, Museo Inkaryi, Valle Sagrado

I was recently lucky enough to go to the enchanting country of Peru and was captivated by its extraordinary landscape and tragic history ...

The all-conquering Atahualpa
In November 1532 the emperor of all the Incas, Atahualpa, was marching south to his capital, Cusco, accompanied by an army of 80,000 men in a vast triumphal cavalcade. After a long civil war he had captured his half brother, the then Inca, and made himself emperor - Inca - of the whole vast land of Tawantinsuyu.

Deep in the mountains he ordered his men to pitch camp in a lush fertile valley outside the small city of Cajamarca. There were so many tents pitched across the hillside that it was like a city. Atahualpa and his women stayed in a beautifully-appointed residence a few kilometres away, at a hot spring where mineral waters hissed and bubbled out of the ground. There was a bathhouse, hot and cold running water and a garden. There he engaged in a ceremonial fast, took the waters and recuperated from a war wound.

Inca emperor and courtiers in a palace 
of Inca stonework, Museo Inkaryi

 Atahualpa was an incredibly impressive presence. His crown was a multi-coloured braid like a coronet from which hung the imperial fringe ‘of fine scarlet wool’ spreading across his forehead. When he travelled he was borne aloft in a gold litter with such majesty that people left the roads on which he passed and ascended the hills to worship and adore him. He was far too grand for his feet ever to touch the ground.

The Four Quarters of the World
His grandfather, the great emperor Thupa Inka, who died in 1493, had been an Alexander the Great, who expanded his territory across not just modern-day Peru but much of modern-day Ecuador and Chile, creating the empire of Tawantinsuyu, ‘The Four Quarters of the World’, which ran along most of the east coast of South America. 

This was an incredibly sophisticated empire with a network of roads built for llamas to walk on, carefully irrigated agricultural terraces, great monuments and

Performer depicting an Inca woman

public buildings of masonry, great blocks of perfectly smooth stonework that slotted together like pieces of jigsaw puzzle and were never toppled even by the most violent earthquake. The Incas were the last of a long line of peoples all of whom left their mark on Peru; the Inca themselves were only here for a hundred years.

After his grandfather’s and his father’s deaths, civil war broke out between various half brothers; the old man had had some sixty sons. Eventually Atahualpa proved victorious. Now the time had come to consolidate his empire and establish his rule.

He’d already had news of the extraordinary strangers who had landed on the coast.

The gold eaters
There are coming men who never sleep and who eat silver and gold, as do their beasts who wear sandals of silver. And every night each of these speaks with certain symbols; and they are all enshrouded from head to foot, with their faces completely covered in wool so that all that can be seen are their eyes.

Waman Puma, 16th century native chronicler 

Performer depicting an Inca 

The newcomers were pale and hairy. People soon realised that they were not half man and half beast, like centaurs, but sitting on enormous animals, the likes of which no one had ever seen before. Atahualpa also heard that they were pillaging the countryside and abusing the local people.

But there were not that many - 168. Atahualpa had bigger things to worry about. He was still tidying up pockets of resistance, issuing orders to his army, arranging the occupation of the newly-won empire, awaiting reports from his commanders in the south and planning his journey to Cusco. In fact one of his nobles on his way south had already met the newcomers and spent a couple of days with them. He had even given them stuffed ducks to eat and gifts of pottery.

 

Atahualpa, 14th Inca, 18th century portrait,
courtesy Brooklyn Museum/wiki commons

The Spanish sent representatives to Atahualpa, who agreed to meet their leader, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, the following day in the central square of the town of Cajamarca. The town had been largely evacuated for the war. The barrack-like buildings that surrounded the square on three sides were empty. There Pizarro hid his men, horses and cannons. The 168 Spanish crouched in the shadows, awaiting the Inca, trembling with fear.

  
Showdown at Cajamarca

It was November 16th 1532.

Atahualpa arrived in a ceremonial parade. First came liveried men in chequered coats who sang as they cleared and swept the ground before him. Then came a troop of five or six thousand, almost all bearing only ornamental weapons. He left his main troops outside the town. He was not expecting an attack.

Gold and blue chequered cape
of feathers, Museo Larco, Lima

 
All the retainers wore large gold and silver discs like crowns. Eighty lords in rich blue livery carried Atahualpa’s litter on their shoulders. The timber ends were covered in silver and the litter was lined with multi-clouded parrot feathers and gleamed with plates of gold and silver. Atahualpa himself wore his imperial crown and a collar of large emeralds around his neck. A staff bearer carried Atahualpa’s royal standard with his personal coat-of-arms.

Perhaps Atahualpa was expecting this tiny contingent of men to be awestruck by the grandeur of his procession. He demanded that they return everything they had stolen since they had arrived in his kingdom.

Pizarro meets Atahualpa, by Waman Puma,
courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 But things did not go as expected. A Spanish friar stepped forward and started talking what must have sounded like nonsense to Atahualpa’s ears. He thrust a breviary - a service book - into the Inca’s hands. It must have been closed in some way. Atahualpa tried to open it and at first he couldn’t. He finally succeeded and stared at the pages, turning them over, not seeing the purpose of them. The Incas had no writing at this point. Then he tossed it impatiently onto the ground, looking furious.

 
‘By the grace of God’
It was the moment the Spanish had been waiting for. The Spanish Royal Council had issued a Requirement proclaiming that the newly discovered peoples should submit to God and the king of Spain and had declared that this Requirement had to be delivered before any bloodshed could take place. The friar screamed that Atahualpa had desecrated Holy Writ, giving the Spanish the excuse they needed to rush out and start killing.

What followed was a massacre. The Spanish, firing cannons, wearing armour and mounted on horses - none of which the Incas had ever seen - burst out of the barracks and into the square. The Inca troops were utterly panicked by the smoke and fire and steel and charging animals. Hundreds, trying to flee, trampled each other to death. The Spanish killed almost all the rest.

Portrait of Atahualpa, Museo Inka, Cusco

Atahualpa’s retainers gathered around him, protecting him and holding his litter high. When the Spanish sliced off their hands with their swords they heaved the litter up on their shoulders and when some were killed others rushed in to take their place. But eventually they were all slaughtered.

A Spanish soldier tried to kill Atahualpa but Pizarro parried the blow, shouting, ‘Do not kill him.’ Then he personally dragged the Inca emperor out of his litter by his hair.

As the Spanish records recount triumphantly, ‘And since the Indians were unarmed they were routed without any danger to any Christian.’ They later added, ‘It was by the grace of God, which is great.’

Gold, gold, gold!
Atahualpa was dragged off and imprisoned in a small room in Cajamarca. The Spanish were impressed with how very intelligent he was and what an able and resourceful man he was - obviously so if he’d won all these battles to make himself emperor. He was very curious about the Christian way of communicating by writing and spent his captivity learning Spanish, chess and cards.

Pizarro, Lima Cathedral

He quickly became aware of the Spanish obsession with gold. In fact he wondered whether they ate gold or were suffering from a disease for which gold was the only cure. To the Incas and the preceding peoples of Peru, gold and silver were beautiful materials from which to make marvellous objects. They were not interested in money, they had no money. They saw gold and silver as beautiful and even with religious significance.

 

Pachacuti, the great 9th Inca, Atahualpa's
great grandfather, in Cusco

Atahualpa offered to fill a large room, 22 feet long by 17 feet wide (6.7 by 5.17 metres), with gold objects and two equivalent rooms with silver in exchange for his freedom.

Even though he was imprisoned he was still emperor of his country. He ordered his general to strip Cusco of its gold and silver. He had never lived there - he’d grown up in the equatorial north - and had no attachment to it. Also it was the headquarters of one of his brothers who was of course his rival.

Between December 1532 and May 1553 caravans of precious objects crossed the mountains on llama-back to Cajamarca. When Atahualpa had fulfilled his part of the bargain and the rooms were full, Pizarro had it all melted down into ingots and shipped to Spain. Then he had Atahualpa garrotted and the Spanish marched on Cusco.

Cusco, Plaza de Armas

My sources are three wonderful books: The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming; Cut Stones and Crossroads by Ronald Wright; and 1491: The Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. Plus my own experiences of Peru.

All pictures except the Brooklyn Museum portrait of Atahualpa and Waman Puma's depiction of Atahualpa meeting Pizarro are mine.

Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and an inveterate traveller. She is the author of many books on Japan, including The Shogun’s Queen, an epic tale of love and death, out now in paperback. And watch out for The Shortest History of Japan, out soon! For more see www.lesleydowner.com

Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours by Judith Allnatt

 On 19th May this year I visited Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn's childhood home. It was on this day in 1536 that Anne was beheaded at the Tower of London following charges of adultery, incest and plotting to kill her husband, Henry VIII. Modern historians regard these charges as fabricated: the couple had failed to produce a male heir; several miscarriages had followed the birth of their daughter Elizabeth and Henry had begun to court Jane Seymour. In memory of Anne, on the 19th of May 2023, her precious Book of Hours was brought out from the archive and put on display at Hever, along with fascinating historical details that could be deduced from it.

A Book of Hours is basically a Christian prayer book designed to guide the spiritual life of a secular person. It often contains psalms, hymns, extracts from the gospels and prayers to be read at the canonical hours of the day from Matins to Compline. Affluent owners often had their books lavishly illuminated and sometimes they were wedding gifts given by a husband to a wife.  The books were  sometimes personalised through having the owners  themselves featured in the paintings or through featuring local saints; some have notes written in the margins, some were so much a part of daily life that they were hung from a woman's girdle, like her keys. In the case of Anne Boleyn's Book, the prayers in English show more wear, from kissing or rubbing the pages, than the Latin prayers. It is tempting to see in this the enthusiasm Anne had for promoting an English Bible for all to be able to read, as shown by her protection of those working on English translations. However, the Hever exhibition points out that after Anne's death the Book was owned by various Kentish women who may not have known Latin and whose use of the book would have left its mark. 

The English Schoolhttps://thetudortravelguide.com/2019/09/21/hever-castle/

Anne was originally a maid of honour to the Queen, Catherine of Aragon, but by 1527, the year of the book's printing, Henry was hotly pursuing Anne and was considering the annulment of his marriage to Catherine. Assistant creator Kate McCaffrey explains in the Hever exhibition that books from this printing were commissioned for the English court, including both Catherine and Anne, but that their copies are of different quality.  

The vivid colours used in illumination were made from sources such as charred wood (black)  lapis lazuli( blue) gold, cuttlefish ink (sepia), crushed insects ( crimson)  or limonite (ochre). Anne's Book of Hours is decorated with gold borders, red and blue corner patterns and oval borders with inscriptions, whereas Catherine's is plainer. Whether this was perhaps due to Anne, full of confidence as she moved towards becoming Queen, commissioning the books herself, or whether the books were gifts from the King  that reveal his  coldness to  Catherine and his passionate interest in Anne is a matter for speculation.

The rivalry between Anne and Catherine is further shown in a tiny illumination in Anne's music book in which her emblem, the falcon, is shown pecking rather viciously  at Catherine's emblem, the pomegranate.   

Leaving aside the machinations of Court, I was also intrigued to see an inscription in Anne's own hand at the foot of one of the pages of her Book of Hours.

In June 1528, when Henry was still married to Catherine and pursuing Anne, a 'sweating sickness' occurred in London that sent the court, in action all too reminiscent of the last few years,  scattering to the countryside to quarantine. Anne and her father at Hever became dangerously ill and Anne's brother-in-law died of the virus. Kate McCaffrey's research suggests that the inscription was written at around this time, possibly while Anne battled with the death-dealing illness. 

It reads:

 Remember me when you do pray

that hope doth lead from day to day

 - Anne Boleyn 

It  made me shiver to think about what lay ahead of her only eight years later. I reflected on the relief she must have felt on her recovery, the determination to seize the day and her opportunity to become Queen and how fragile human hopes can be.