Novelists and their sources - by Gillian Polack

Today I want to explore primary sources. Let me be honest: every day I want to explore primary sources. Today, however, I have a special reason. I’m in the middle of an online chat with some of my writer-friends about making a choice about what a character is going to do in a novel. The novel is set in the nineteenth century (and it’s not mine, so I can’t share more details, I’m afraid) and the character has done something that requires deep secrecy or they will lose everything.

Something that I always return to is that the type of secret a character will have depends very much on the nature of the historical novel rather than the nature of the history. If the novel is Gothic, there might be a child out of wedlock or an imprisoned wife. If the novel is historical fantasy, then the secret is likely to be hidden magic or a family heirloom that could destroy the world or that proves the character is royalty. If it’s historical fiction, then the secret is likely to be something that has been demonstrated as a secret in history as we know it. The character might be Giulia Tofana and the revelation would then be that she had poisoned an extraordinary number of people, for Tofana was possibly the seventeenth century’s most notorious professional poisoner.

The type of novel helps decide the type of secret. That’s a key part of how we tell our stories: finding the right example for the tale we’re telling. When you’re reading a fine novel and you stop and blink and think “That can’t be right” one of the reasons might be that the secret was perfect for another novel, but not for this one.

One of the aspects of historical fiction that I love most is that all these secrets can call on primary sources. Our actual past is complex enough and rich enough so that choosing the right sources can give the perfect secret for a character. The best historical novelists often have an almost uncanny knack for matching up story with source material. (Some of the best have an uncanny knack for inventing an entirely false past that feels perfectly real, but that’s another subject.)

The historian in me has a lot of primary sources on the shelf. I selected three volumes pretty randomly (if I’d seen my copy of Mary, Queen of Scots' trial record, I’d have selected less randomly, but it’s currently hiding from me). I want to introduce you to these three sets of sources and talk about how they might be used in historical fiction. As I said, today is a day for exploring primary sources. This whole article is an excuse for me to play with books, which is one of my favourite, favourite things in life. The reason for this isn’t because I am desperately intellectual. Some days things go wrong and today has been one of them, so this is me sharing comfort food with people who will appreciate it.

The first volume is The Letters of JRR Tolkien. The cover was viciously attacked by silverfish years ago, so it has a false air of antiquity. It’s a modern edition of a modern writer.

What do I need to know about it as a writer? 

Firstly, it’s an edition of selected letters. This means that the editor, Humphrey Carpenter, is presenting us with his view of Tolkien using Tolkien’s own words. Volumes of selected letters for some other writers on my shelves are very selected indeed. So much has been edited out that the person is a shadow of themselves. The first thing I did when I read this book, many years ago, was ask myself how much was Tolkien and how much was Carpenter’s view.

If I were writing a novel about Tolkien, this would be a critical question. These letters explain Tolkien’s interests and his writing style. They’re full of insightful thoughts and self-disparaging wit.

If I were using the letters to give glorious colour to an historical novel set in England’s literary scene in the middle of the twentieth century, then it’s easier. Tolkien’s letters are full of his participation in that world and illustrate it beautifully. 

If I were writing historical fantasy based on anything other than the quite specific world Tolkien inhabited, these letters would be no use at all.

The type of novels we write governs the way we use sources.

Let me go back in time. 

The wonderful thing about going back in time is one reaches a moment when one doesn’t have to seek permission to use a writer’s words directly. Their writing still has to be acknowledged: to claim the words as one’s own is still plagiarism, but it doesn’t break copyright law. This is why some writers use many, many words from Shakespeare’s plays in novels about Shakespeare. It’s an easy way to get colour. It’s not always a wise way to get colour. I’ve pointed out elsewhere that using the very clearly metred lines Shakespeare uses in his plays can totally foul up dialogue when Shakespeare is speaking them as part of ordinary conversation.

Some of Tolkien’s letters may give a hint of his speech. Others are purely formal. 

My next volume is Ethel Turner’s diaries. Turner (1872-1958) is best-known for the  novel Seven Little Australians (published 1894), and she was a very popular novelist of her time. Ethel Turner’s diaries were written in her private voice, and are more likely to reflect some aspects of her actual speech. In some conversations, it would be possible to reflect her actual words. It’s still not a good practice, for her words are from  a different time and place and carry a different shape to the words of a novelist in the twenty-first century. 

What I’m saying is that another reason we, as readers, might be jolted out of a perfectly good book is because something inside us is noting that change of voice when the writer has used the words of someone else without making it clear. If there is a paragraph added as “Bob read in Ethel Turner’s diary…” and then the words from that diary are quoted, that’s less likely to jolt the historically-aware reader.

Apart from helping a writer understand the voice of a character, what use are the diaries? So very many uses… They’re one of the best sources around for bringing everyday life to the reader. Letters can be good (I love the Paston letters specifically for the moment when Margaret Paston demands a tub of treacle – that demand brings all the Pastons into everyday life) but a good diary shows what the writer did that they felt worthy of comment. 

It might be waking up with a headache, or it might be writing down a secret. It might be hints as to family relationships.  Opening Turner’s diaries at random, I find that, on 26 June 1893, that someone said “a very wicked word, and I overheard’. She went through his denial and his excuses and then declaimed that the child was being ruined. This is immediately followed (in the same paragraph!) by a note about her newest publication.

One small day, and one small diary entry and it reaches out to us. This is why diaries are so handy for historical fiction writers who can use them (not all cultures and not all time periods have diaries): a good diary can make the everyday in a novel vibrant. 

I love diaries and letters so much that I have four shelves of them. They give me time with fascinating people. That’s the gift they give fiction writers who use them cleverly, too.

Alas, I’m a Medievalist, and very few diaries exist for the Middle Ages. In fact, most written sources are quite different for the Middle Ages. The random primary source I pulled down from a shelf (do not ask how many shelves I have of Medieval material, for it’s embarrassing) was Pipe Roll 45, of John I, or, to be more precise, The Great Roll of the Pipe for the First Year of the Reign of King John, Michaelmas 1199. This is one of my actual favourite books. In my perfect world I own many more volumes of pipe rolls. In my imperfect world I have wonderful friends, one of whom gave me this volume.

This volume was published in the year that Tolkien let his friend CS Lewis read The Hobbit for the first time and when Ethel Turner had her sixty-first birthday. It was over seven hundred years after John’s administration was documented in the Pipe Rolls.

It takes a lot of work to write fun stories of daily life from this kind of document. First, knowing Latin helps. Second, knowing the sort of documents copied into these rolls is essential. They’re not casual documents: they’re part of governance. 

Understanding the rules and the background means that a lot of cool stuff can be obtained to write fiction about or to use to bring a place and time to life… but it’s hard work. I was going to do what I did with Ethel Turner’s diaries and open this volume at a random place and give you a cool quote, but the pipe rolls are not written the way diaries are. They’re full of abbreviations and formulae. Names are there, easy to read (Hugo Bardulf, Galfridi f. Petri, Willelmus de Stuteuill) but they are the Latin forms and if you shouted that out to the street only some of the owners of the name would recognise themselves. The language of formal record and the language of every didn’t overlap the way they do, say, for modern England: they were entirely different languages. 

The writer needs to know more about what actually happened in England under John’s rule to effectively use a pipe roll. These rolls were not made to be read alone. They work alongside other documents. This gives writers handy approaches, for used alongside chronicles of the early part of John’s reign and the reasons for some of the entries springs out and gives novelists tools to illustrate disturbances and unrest or to give the actual names of those who might have met with John during his month in England that year.

Not all primary sources are easy for writers to use, and this is an excellent example. Where these are the critical sources for a place or time (as the pipe rolls are for John’s reign) then novelists depend more on the work of historians to make sense of it.

This brings us full circle, for the choice the novelist makes of which historian to use will depend very much on the story they want to tell.

KING JOHN'S BLING by Elizabeth Chadwick

King John's tomb Worcester Cathedral

As a writer,  much of the need-to-know detail for my novel is the background material culture of my settings. While it's vitally important to get the mindset and attitudes right so that I don't end up with modern people in fancy dress, a part of this is knowing the world in which my characters lived, and immersing myself in it as thoroughly as I can in order to convince the readers – although the more I study the more I realise how much in the shallows I still am even after more than 40 years of research!

Since King John and Magna Carta are so much on the agenda at the moment I thought this might be fun for my June post on The History Girls.

Supposing King John walked in on us right this minute. What might we see? Let's take it that it's a decent time for him and not too politically fraught. He is prepared to be affable. What does he look like?
We don't have a lot to go on from his own time. Contemporary historian Gerald of Wales tells us that his height was slightly below average and he was not as tall as his father or his older brothers Henry and Richard.  His tomb in Worcester Cathedral was opened in 1797, where he was found to have been placed in a stone coffin. The corpse was somewhat decomposed with the dried skins of maggots dispersed over the body. He had been dressed in a full length robe of red damask. That's a kind of wool fabric woven with silk and often patterned. There was a badly decomposed sword and scabbard in his left hand. He didn't wear a crown, but on his head was a coif that the antiquarians thought was perhaps a monk's cowl, perhaps placed on his head to cut down the time he might have to spend in purgatory. Modern historians now believe the cowl to be the cap he wore on his head at his coronation that was intended to soak up the holy oil with which he had been anointed. So it was in its own way as Royal as a crown. The skeleton was measured and turned out to be 5 foot 6 1/2 inches tall. So we know John's height and part of what he was wearing. It's the same outfit more or less, that is on his tomb effigy today. He may well have worn this robe to his coronation too.

We don't know what colour his hair was. People often think that he was dark-haired but that comes from books, film and TV. An illuminated sketch of him hunting from a century after his death shows him as being blonde, but really we have no idea.

A blonde king John out hunting - made 100 years after his death.

We do know from his correspondence that he liked to wear jewels around his neck and a black leather belt. Here's the letter about the jewels:
  'The King to Geoffrey FitzPeter. We had lost the precious stones and jewels which we were accustomed to wear around our neck: and Berchal the bearer of these presents, found them, and liberally and faithfully brought them unto us; and for his service we have given him 20 shillings worth of rent at Berkhamsted, where he was born.'

And the piece about the black leather belt
'on 27 June at Winchester, know that on the Friday next after the nativity of St John the Baptist, we received at Winchester 12 silver cups, and amongst other articles is specified the plain black leather belt with which the king was usually girt.'

Plaster cast mould of John's effigy in the Cast Court
at the V&A Museum. Note the jewelled collar and red robe

So, we can imagine him in a full-length red patterned gown, jewels around his neck and a black leather belt around his waist. He might have one of those silver cups in his hand and it will contain wine. Perhaps a strong one from Poitou. We know his wife liked to drink strong wine from that region because he ordered it for her when she was at Marlborough. John himself enjoyed wine from Le Blanc near Poitiers. 150 casks of it were delivered to his sellers at Southampton sometime before September 1202. There were numerous wines at that period and they had different qualities. The wines of Auxerre were famous for being as 'clear as a sinner's tears.' Or how about this one  - here's a description of a raisin wine from John's time, written by Alexander Nequam who have been Richard the Lion heart's breast-brother.  Oz Clarke eat your heart out!

'Raisin wine which is clear to the bottom of the cup, in its clarity similar to the tears were penitent, and the colour is that of an ox horn. It descends like lightning upon one who takes it – most tasty as an almond nut, quick as a squirrel, frisky as a kid, strong in the manner of a host of Cistercians or grey monks, emitting a kind of spark; it is supplied with the subtlety of a syllogism of Petit-Pont; delicate as a fine cotton, it exceeds crystal in its coolness'

Royal servants Reginald of Cornhill and John Fitzhugh were vitally important in the procurement of luxury goods in John's household and the maintenance of the same. Luxury goods they purchased included spices, fabrics, fruit, nuts, fresh fish, wine and wax. Cups and dishes were bought and mended. There is a mention on the accounts requiring five drinking horns to be ornamented with silver, and for the Kings own drinking horn to be ornamented with gold. So perhaps we ought to take that silver cup off him and put a drinking horn in his hand instead, and it will be decorated with emeralds rubies and sapphires. Rings were bought from Italian merchants at one point amounting to £226 13s 4d. The major producer of emeralds, rubies and sapphires were India and Sri Lanka (the latter known in the Medieval period as Sarandib), so these jewels had a long way to travel. At this point in history the faceting that we see today on gemstones was unknown and the jewels would have been polished in the smooth cabocchon style that makes them look like lumpy boiled sweets!

Cabochon tourmaline ring circa 1200

If John was feeling magnanimous, he might hand over some of these cups and jewels as gifts, or as diplomatic sweeteners. So for example he gave three gold rings set with sapphires to the King Norway

William, John's tailor (who also had brief to buy luxury goods for the King), in November 1214 was given a pile of textiles intended to be made into clothes as gifts from King John to Peter des Roches Bishop of Winchester. The materials included silk cloths, quilts, squirrel furs, scarlet cloth, grey cloth for a bed covering, six pairs of fasteners, and a gilded saddle with silk cloth and gilded bridle reins. Scarlet cloth cost eight shillings for a length of 37 inches -a measurement that was known as a cloth yard. Each finished cloth was made of 24 of these clothyards and required about ninety pounds of the finest English wool. This would take at least 36 sheep to provide and probably a lot more and that was before the cost of the dyestuff.  Just over three modern yards of cloth cost eight shillings which would be somewhere around a week's wages for a household knight.

If King John's cloak happened to be lined with super special ermines, that is the winter coat of the stoat, it would have cost him 100 shillings. Lambskin linings cost between six and seven shillings each, and a panel of northern squirrel fur cost 20 shillings.

If King John had walked into this room with his servants you would have noticed that their outfits were colour-coded. Stewards had robes of black and brown. Huntsmen wore blue and green. The nurses and washer women wore blue and green also

Back to John himself. In March 1213, Reginald of Cornhill supplied gold lace to William the Tailor to make a surcoat for the King. That's interesting because lace from the 13th century doesn't seem to have many surviving examples. In Winchester in 1210, miniver was bought to make John a nightgown. This doesn't mean he actually slept in it as such, it was more in the way of a luxurious dressing gown to lounge about in!

At Easter 1213 William the Tailor made three blood red robes, one for John, one for his queen and one for William D'Albini, although the latter's cost less. He also received a gift of a ruby red robe that was lined with green cendal (a form of silk). True red being such an expensive dye, it was commonly featured in royal robes. Ghent in Flanders was the centre for the best dyed red cloth. There are more accounts for robes lined with green cendal for members of the royal household including John's brother William Longespee Earl of Salisbury and John's own bastard son Richard FitzRoy.

John loved his jewels and display as we've already seen. One of his purveyors bought  150 gold leaves to gild 567 lances for theatrical display. We have a chamber receipt for 'one staff ornamented with 19 sapphires, and another with 10. A golden cabinet set with stones. 21 rings. A staff ornamented with six garnets, a silver cabinet with precious stones. Then there was the golden case made to hold the Kings 'ambergris apples' - an early form of pomander. This really gives you a feel for the colour and the richness of the period which you don't see in the bare shells of  the draughty castles that are all that are left to use,  but if you go somewhere like reconstructed interpretation of the King's bedchamber at Dover you begin to realise what a colourful, rich and textured world the 12th century aristocracy lived in.

casket late 12thc

You see reenactors today – and I'm one myself - who strive to emulate the clothing and trappings of the time, but in high status cases we cannot begin to replicate the wealth of a medieval king such as John. People often say that his reign wasn't his fault that inherited Richard's debts and a bankrupted realm. Does this look like bankruptcy? John, whatever you think of him has to be one of the most gifted fiscal geniuses in terms of raising money that England has ever known. It's also one of the reasons among many for Magna Carta.  But I just wish I could blur time for a moment and experience the full effect as it originally was.
Elizabeth Chadwick

Henry II's bed replica. Dover Castle

If you can get to the Magna Carta Exhibition at the British Library in London, do go - there are some bishop's accoutrements that give an idea of the wonderful textiles being produced in the 13thc, as well as a scrap of embroidered fabric from John's tomb.

Other sources used in this article:
Lost Letters of Medieval Life English Society 1200-1250 edited and translated by Martha Carlin and David Crouch - University of Pennsylvania Press 2013

A Description of the The Patent Rolls in the Tower of London to which is added an Itinerary of King John with Prefatory Observations by Thomas Duffus Hardy, F.S.A. of the Inner Temple. 1835

Serving the Man that rules: Aspects of the domestic arrangements of the Household of King John 1199-1216 - Henrietta Kaye.  Thesis submitted to the School of History at the University of East Anglia 2013.

King John - Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta by Marc Morris - Hutchinson 2015

ISABEL DE WARENNE: An exercise in joining the dots by Elizabeth Chadwick.

When an author writes about people who actually lived, one of the challenges is finding out about the secondary characters; the people who interacted with the stars of the show but have left less of a trace. When writing my Eleanor of Aquitaine trilogy, I needed to find out about the life and circumstances of a lady called Isabel de Warenne, countess of Surrey and Warenne. She was a contemporary of Eleanor's and sometimes moved in her circles. Although she has left traces in the historical record, they're more hidden and fragmentary than Eleanor's, so it has involved some digging around.

I became interested in Isabel de Warenne because her second marriage was to Henry II's illegitimate half brother Hamelin, the latter of whom features as a strong secondary character in my Eleanor trilogy.  As I wrote his story into the fabric of Henry and Eleanor's, it became obvious that his wife was a major part of that thread, and when I began digging, I came across some very useful details and plot opportunities.

 Isabel de Warenne belonged to an illustrious line of Anglo Norman nobility with extensive lands in England and Normandy. Lewes Castle belonged to her family and they had the patronage of the Cluniac priory there founded by Isabel's grandfather.  Castle Acre in Norfolk, Conisbrough Castle and Sandal in Northern England were also theirs. In Normandy the castles of Bellencombre and Mortemer were de Warenne strongholds.   We don't know exactly when Isabel was born; dates are obscure, but a ball park of 1130 is not unreasonable to suggest.  Her family were one of the first to adopt a distinctive personal blazon of blue and yellow chequers and were already using the chequered device on their seals by the mid 12th century.

seal of John de Warenne, Isabel and Hamelin's grandson: 13th century

Her father, William de Warenne joined the Second Crusade in 1146 and never returned. He was cut to pieces when the army of Louis VII of France was crossing the slopes of Mount Cadmos (now  Mount Honaz) in Turkey and suffered a heavy mauling from the Saracens,

 Isabel's widowed mother married again, to Patrick Earl of Salisbury. Isabel herself, now in her teens and a great marriage prize as the sole child of the Earl of Warenne, was married to William of Boulogne, the youngest son of King Stephen, who, was a child of about eleven years old.  King Stephen at the time was at war with his cousin Matilda over the right to the English crown and Isabel would have grown to adulthood during a time fraught with anxiety and violence.  The situation was eventually resolved  when Stephen came to an agreement with Empress Matilda's son Henry, that the crown would pass to him when Stephen died.  Stephen's sons would be required to step down from their claims to the throne. Stephen's older son Eustace, died during these negotiations (some say very fortuitously) thus removing one stumbling block from the agreement. During this delicate time of settling the matter of the succession, there seem to have been plots by both sides to be rid of the opposition. An assassination attempt on  Henry II was foiled, and there may have been one on Isabel's young husband William, whose leg was broken in a fall from a horse.

Eventually, matters settled down.  William abjured his right to the throne. Given a different set of circumstances, he may have become King, and Isabel would then have been queen of England,  In the event, Stephen died and  Isabel and William of Boulogne swore allegiance to the new king.  Henry kept William on a tight leash and he was obviously watched just in case there was a chance that others would see him as a figurehead for rebellion.  Did Isabel stay on her estates during the early years of Henry;s reign or play her part at court?  We don't know, but she and her husband had no children and in my novel The Winter Crown I have thought it not inconceivable that some of her time was spent at court with the Queen to whom she could have imparted valuable information about the dealings of the English court prior to Henry's accession.  She was also in the same position as Eleanor of having married a husband several years younger than herself.

Isabel and William were still childless in 1159 when he went on battle campaign with King Henry to Toulouse and died later that year of disease during the retreat. He was buried at the abbey of Montmorel in Poitou.
His death left Isabel an heiress of considerable wealth, still only in her twenties. In usual medieval fashion this state of affairs had to be remedied and Henry II thought she would be the perfect wife for his youngest brother, also called William like her first husband.  What Isabel thought about this notion is not recorded, but if she had been at court in earlier years, she probably knew him and he her.
As it happened, the marriage never took place because Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury banned the match on the grounds that it was consanguineous.  Usually when this happened - that the couple were too closely related within the proscribed degree - a dispensation could be obtained, but Becket, whose quarrel with Henry II was beginning to escalate made his position clear. There was to be no dispensation.  Becket may have been making a stand because of Henry's dreadful behaviour in 1159/60  where he was behind the hauling of Isabel's sister in law Mary of Boulogne out of the convent where she had been a nun (an abbess no less) for ten years and forcing her to marry his nephew Matthew of Alsace.
There was nothing to be done. William went off empty handed to Normandy to visit his mother, and died soon afterwards - of a broken heart so the anti-Becket propagandists of the time were quick to say. However, no Angevin princeling ever died of such a complaint. One of the murderers of Becket, Richard Brito, had been one of William FitzEmpress's knights and as he struck his blow is supposed to have said 'And that is for the love of my lord William, brother of the King.'  One suspects that as a household knight Brito would have been hoping for gifts of land and money from the largesse William would have access to by marrying Isabel. This now being denied to him, he was bound to be miffed!

Henry II was furious at being thwarted but there were always ways round. Becket had played the consanguinity card, but there was still another Angevin brother waiting in the wings - Hamelin, Henry's bastard half brother and he had no blood ties to Isabel that would prevent the marriage taking place. Thus Henry still managed to draw the de Warenne estates firmly into his own family enclave.

Hamelin and Isabel were married at Easter 1164.  In March of that year a record appears in the pipe rolls for clothes for Isabel amounting to £41 10s 8d, presumably a wedding dress and trousseau.  She was now the King's sister in law and also sister in law to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Did this bring the women closer to each other still? We don't know, but there is a later reason to think that the two branches of the family kept close company - some of the time at least.  Isabel was no mere cipher and witnessed charters under her own seal during her widowhood and in her own court.

'coram Isabel comitissa Warennie domina nostra'  heads one such charter. 'Before Isabel, our lady, Countess of Warenne' is the heading on one such charter.

Example of 12th century silk textile from Sicily. Possibly Isabelle's wedding dress was
made of fabric like this.  She and Hamelin may have visited Sicily in 1176. V&A

We don't know from this far distance of time if Hamelin and Isabel's marriage was a happy one, but certainly in financial and business terms it appears to have been compatible, and was also a dynastic success.  Isabel had not borne any children to her first husband William of Boulogne, but she and Hamelin were to have three girls and a boy. William, their son and heir, and daughters Isabel, Adela and Matilda.  We don't have a specific birth order for the children,  Hamelin took his wife's family name and became Hamelin de Warenne, Earl of Surrey and Warenne.
In 1176, Hamelin escorted his niece Joanna, daughter of Henry II to Sicily for her marriage. We don't know if Isabel was with him, but Joanna would have had female attendants, so it's possible her aunt Isabel accompanied her, although again it is one of those grey areas where novelists have the leeway to explore the spaces between the lines.

Some time in the 1170's Hamelin set out to build a fine castle for himself and his countess at Conisborough in South Yorkshire.  The keep, recently refurbished by England Heritage is well worth visiting and features Isabel's own chamber near the top of the keep.  You can see a cutaway diagram of the keep at Conisbrough on the Castle's English Heritage website. with Isabelle's chamber near the top of the keep and Hamelin's below. There was also a chapel dedicated to St. Philip and St. James.

Conisbrough today

Isabel's chamber, complete with fireplace

An artis's impression of the chamvber brightened up and lived in.

Access onto the battlements from the chamber

One of the reasons I am positive that Isabel and Hamelin kept in close touch with their royal Angevin kin is because of an event that happened some time after 1180.  One of the de Warenne daughters became pregnant by her cousin John Count of Mortain, later to become the infamous King John.  We don't have a date for the event and we don't know which daughter.  Only one chronicle tells us that a daughter of Hamelin de Warenne bore John's son, and there are no charters mentioning her name in connection with the birth to give us any sort of idea. Popular histories online make all sorts of claims for this one or that one, but basically it's all utter speculation because we just don't know.  What we do know is that young John was sufficiently close to his de Warenne cousins to get one of them with child. While royal illegitimate children were often accepted as a matter of course, I suspect this particular pregnancy was regarded with a degree of dismay!
The child was christened Richard and can be found in various charters and in Henry III's pipe rolls. He is variously known as Richard of Dover, Richard of Chillham, Richard Fitzroy, and Richard de Warenne. There may be a clue to his mother in that Richard named his own daughter Isabel, but at the same time it was his mother in law's name (and his grandmother's), so there are no guarantees, however, it may be a pointer.

Another link that Isabel may have had with Eleanor of Aquitaine is Old Sarum which in the 12th century housed a royal palace and a cathedral. (It was the original Salisbury. The town and cathedral we now know as Salisbury was relocated from Old Sarum in the first quarter of the 13th century).  Eleanor was kept here under sometimes strict house arrest several times in  her 16 year imprisonment by Henry II.  Isabel may have visited her here, or have had some access to her because her own half-brother was the Earl of Salisbury and her mother the dowager countess, and family connections counted for much.  Again, it's one of those things we can't say for certain but it's one of those areas where as the novelist I can explore the possibility as a story line and know I am not going wildly outside the parameters of what is known.

To complete Isabel's story, she died on July 12th 1203, a year after her husband Hamelin and 9 months before Eleanor herself died at Fontevraud Abbey. Isabel was buried at Lewes Priory beside Hamelin and although their graves have been lost over the centuries, their bones are still there somewhere and near each other.

Since William Marshal and his family are my specialist subject I was interested to discover that Isabel's mother Adela was William Marshal's aunt by marriage, and her son William, Isabel's half-brother, was the Marshal's cousin.  There is a further link in that Hamelin and Isabel's son William, later married William Marshal's eldest daughter Mahelt when her first husband died in 1225.
When you begin looking, everything is connected to everything else!

Selected Sources:
Early Yorkshire Charters Volume 8 edited by William Farrer and Charles Travis Clay - Cambridge University Press
Noblewomen Aristocracy and Power in the 12th century Anglo Norman Realm by Susan M. Johns. Manchester University Press
Thomas Becket by John Guy - Penguin
Blog article by Elizabeth Chadwick Hamelin de Warenne
Online Dictionary of National Biography - article by Susan M. Johns
The Image of Aristocracy in Britain 1o00-1300 by David Crouch


Elizabeth Chadwick is a best selling, multi-award winning author of fiction set in the Middle Ages. She is currently completing The Autumn Throne, the 3rd book in  trilogy of novels about Eleanor of Aquitaine - and featuring among its cast Isabel and Hamelin de Warrene and their children.

MAGNA CARTA By DAN JONES: Some thoughts from Elizabeth Chadwick

Front cover 

June 2015 sees the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta at Runnymede and in this book Dan Jones presents a useful guide to bring the general reader up to speed. Dan Jones is of course, the author of the bestselling non fiction work THE PLANTAGENETS which sets out the dynasty's rise to power and eventual ruin over several centuries of medieval British history. The work is also the basis for the recent TV series, written and presented by the author.

The following blurb is from the inside jacket of MAGNA CARTA and an excellent summary of what the book is about:

 '"On a summer's day in 1215, a beleaguered English monarch met a group of disgruntled barons in a meadow by the River Thames  named Runnymede. Beset by foreign crisis and domestic rebellion, King John was fast running out of options. On 15 June he reluctantly agreed to fix his regal seal to a document that would change the world.
A milestone in the development of constitutional politics and the rule of the law, the 'Great Charter' established an Englishman's right to Habeas Corpus and set limits to the exercise of royal power.  For the first time a group of subjects had forced an English king to agree to a document that limited his powers by law and protected their rights."

This book  is a joy to read, not just for a medieval-obsessive like myself, but for anyone with a general interest in history. It's one of those reference works that should be on every non fiction bookshelf.
The writing style is clean and accessible, edged with dry humour  and has broad appeal. Dan Jones educates his readers without patronising, and he never dumbs down the content. The history is straight, clear, and unfudged.  Oh what a joy and a relief this is to come across.  I have studied the Angevin period for more than forty years.  I'm not university trained, but I am very well read in non fiction works of this era (12th and 13th centuries). Often the academic studies are dry and soporific. The eyes glaze over, the same 5 pages take an hour to read and the information doesn't stick, but  unabsorbed, just passes through.   Unfortunately the popular books with a less dense writing style are frequently unreliable and have to be double-checked and taken with large pinches of salt.  Dan Jones, however, walks a perfect line between the popular and the academic. He puts over the need to know material with depth and complexity while telling it in a vibrant way that hold the reader's attention. That's a very rare talent indeed.

The book itself is a tactile thing of beauty.  It's ornate, with gold embossing on the cover to give that added luxurious feel of holding the real thing in your hand.  The paper is of thick, fine quality,perhaps gently hinting at parchment.   The rich ornamentation and fabulous illustrations  are put together in an uncluttered way that means the book is simple and practical to use.  It is divided into ten easily digestible chapters beginning with an introduction that sets the scene and discusses the fame of Magna Carta and then continues to the historical background including an assessment of the reign of King John, not forgetting the input of his predecessors.  He might have brought about Magna Carta by his policies and the way he dealt with his barons, but he wasn't acting in a vacuum and Dan Jones takes us through the wherefore and the why.
There is a section on what happened between 1215 and now, and a couple of wonderful quotes from David Cameron and Winston Churchill which made me laugh - albeit wryly. Dan Jones has a wicked sense of humour and appreciates the ironies.

Section heading from the contents.

Having guided us through the history, the book follows with several appendices including the full text of the Magna Carta in the original Latin with an English translation alongside so the reader can see the exact wording for themselves. There are interesting short biographies of the barons involved in witnessing and enforcing the charter, and a timeline of the charter from its origins to where it sits now.

By the end of the book the reader has been given an in depth history lesson but in such a way that there's not a single moment of eye-glaze or stodge. Hooray!   There are copious illustrations and page breaks that will suit those with shorter attention spans but at the same time, those who prefer a meaty read will not be let down. There's a lot of learning crammed into these 190 pages.

Any caveats?  I suspect that there may be a few raised eyebrows among those in the know about the comment accompanying the illustration of King John's tomb in Worcester cathedral. The caption says it's made from 'carved wood' when it fact it's Purbeck marble.  It seems a pity for that one to have slipped through the editorial net when King John is one of the major players.  However, that really is a nit-pick when compared with the rest of the book's excellent content.
Highly recommended.  Everyone rush out and get a copy for your bookshelves. It's one of those heirloom reference works that will stand the test of time - a bit like the charter itself!

Detail from the back of the book

KING JOHN AND THE CHARTER OF RUNNYMEDE: Some lecture notes. by Elizabeth Chadwick

I'm doing a spot of multi tasking for my feature this month -  I'm posting some notes from an informal lecture I gave on  the 22nd November concerning King John and Magna Carta.

My lecture had a different slant in that I had been asked to give it to to the committee members of  NARES The National Association of Re-enactment Societies, a body that sets safety and professional standards for re-enactment groups. The talk took place in The Crow's Nest at the top of the National Motorcycle Museum just outside Solihull - what an interesting venue!

It won't have escaped anyone's attention that in 2015 we celebrate the 800th year since the signing of Magna Carta by King John at Runnymeade. With this in mind, the various medieval re-enactment socities are going to be very busy throughout the season it was thought it would be useful for someone (I was volunteered!) to give a half hour talk on the basicis.

Having been  a member of re-enactment group Regia Anglorum for 23 years, and also with my author hat on having written several novels about the reign of King John,  I was asked to give a brief overview to the re-enactment community as they plan next year's shows.

I thought it might be useful to post my piece here for posterity and to reach a wider audience as
 a resource/aid to further individual research.  So here it is:

KING JOHN AND THE CHARTER OF RUNNYMEDE: A talk given by Elizabeth Chadwick to the National Association of Re-enactment Societies on 22nd November 2014.

Magna  Carta 1215. Held in the British Library.

Magna carta was signed on the 15th of June at Runnymede near Windsor in 1215. King John was 49 years old at the time and had been on the throne for 16 years. He was forced to submit to the demands of a vocal party of his barons who were in rebellion against him. The Magna Carta or great charter was a document of 63 clauses aimed at limiting royal authority and establishing the principle that the King was subject to the law, not above it. It was originally known as The Charter of Runnymede and only became known as Magna Carta when it was reissued by William Marshal in the name of John's youngest son Henry III in 1217.

Two of its most famous clauses, numbers 39 and 40 have been enshrined in constitutions throughout the world including that of the United States of America. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950 also used these clauses and are the ones that will be most in evidence over the coming year's events.

39. No free man shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed - nor will we proceed with force against him or send others to do so - save by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.

40. To none will we sell, to none deny or delay right or justice.

Obviously these clauses have been adapted to the times and cultures of ensuing generations and don't always have the same meanings as they did then. For a start the 'free man' wasn't aimed at the run-of-the-mill population, many who were bound to their Lord and the land, but to the barons whose interests these clauses served. For example:

'Heirs may be given in marriage, but not to someone of lower social standing. Before a marriage takes place, it shall be made known to the heir's next-of-kin.

No man shall be forced to perform more service for a knight's fee or other free holding of land than is due from it.

So in other words, the first clause, was a protest about John selling off marriages to reward, bribe and sweeten men he desired to cultivate and bring into his affinity. In the second, the protest was that the king was demanding work above and beyond what was in the original contract!

 . Having set his seal to Magna Carta, John immediately reneged on it and had himself absolved of the deed by the Pope. The barons (who had known he would renege), continued in their rebellion, and for a while it was almost as if the charter had never been sealed at all. However, Magna Carta, was reissued after John's death with more success (and several tweaks) by the Regent William Marshal, and then again in 1225 under Henry III, by which time it had been substantially rewritten.

But how did this charter come about? How did we come to this place?

King John: there's a name to conjure with. He often gets a bad rap, justified in my opinion. W.L. Warren in his excellent biography of John sums him up thus:

It seems clear that he was inadequate to the tasks confronting him as king. Even in his achievements there was always something missing. He subdued nations to his will, but brought only the peace of fear; he was an ingenious administrator, but expedience came before policy; he was a notable judge, but chicanery went along with justice; he was an able ruler, but he did not know when he was squeezing too hard; he was a clever strategist but his military operations lacked that vital ingredient of success - boldness. He had the mental abilities of a great king but the inclinations of a petty tyrant.

The Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal, completed within 10 years of John's death says:
'But all the time the king's pride and arrogance increased; they so blurred his vision that he could not see reason. Indeed, I know for a fact that as a result he lost the affection of the barons of the land before he crossed to England.'

And on his deathbed, William Marshal said to John's nine-year-old son Henry III: 'and if it were the case that you followed in the footsteps of some wicked ancestor and that your wish was to be like him, then I pray to God, the son of Mary, that he does not give you long to live and that you die before it comes to that.'

He earned himself the title of 'Softsword' when he lost Normandy. Compare that to his brother Richard the 'Lionheart' who earned his own title at the age of 19, or his half brother William 'Longsword', Earl of Salisbury. In his own lifetime, John was neither liked nor respected.

In appearance if anyone is going to represent him on the field and wants to be realistic, let me say we don't know a great deal, but we do have a few telling snippets. Chronicler Gerald of Wales tells us that he was a little smaller than average height but not greatly so. His older brothers Henry the Young King and Richard were tall. Geoffrey his third brother (died 1186) and John were not. We don't know his hair or eye colour. We do know that he was very fond of wearing a black leather belt, because it is mentioned in his chamber accounts and that he was accustomed to wearing it - as in it was a favourite. He also wore jewels around his neck. We don't know what kind but we do know he wore them because he lost them the paid the person who discovered them a nice reward, and again that went through the accounts, as did a chaplet of flowers to his mistress. We know that he bought in some ornate jewelled staffs, and again these are paid into his chamber. 'The 4th July at Marlborough. Note that we received in our chamber at Marlborough, on the Saturday next after the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul one staff ornamented with 19 sapphires, and another with 10.
We know he had tunics lined with green cendal (a form of lightweight silk) and that he bought a black dress lined with saffron coloured cendal for Susanna, one of his mistresses. We know he had a 'ruby-red robe lined with green cendal.' And one of a russet colour lined with ermine. We also know that he clothed his huntsmen in blue and green, and his stewards in black and brown, so the servants were colour-coded!

This is a Victorian reproduction of King John's effigy at Worcester Cathedral.
It's in the V&A and shows the embellished jewelled neckline of John's tunic to good effect

You will sometimes hear people say that many of his problems stemmed from Richard's spendthrift ways in bankrupting England to pay for his crusade and then his ransom. It's true that was a big and difficult financial drain on the country, but it didn't bankrupt England by a long chalk. John was still able to spend four times more than Richard raised for the Crusades in preparing for his own war to regain the Angevin lands across the Channel. The annual expenditure for England in the year running up to the crusade came to £31,089. Once Richard had departed there was a steep drop to £11,000 a year. The ransom bit hard after he was captured and illegally imprisoned on his way home from the crusade - 100,000 marks was a lot to find, but found it was  A mark was approximately two thirds of a pound.

John meanwhile had been trying to take over the country and tell everyone his brother was dead. When it became known that Richard had in fact been captured and imprisoned by the Germans on his way home, John then tried to strike a deal with Richard's jailers to keep him locked up indefinitely (didn't work - where would John get the money from?). It didn't do a lot for John's reputation in people's eyes.

When Richard eventually arrived home, he magnanimously forgave John, rubbing salt into the wound by telling him he was a child who had been misled by evil men i.e. John didn't have the necessary backbone or manliness. All of which would have been taken on board by those standing around listening. Here they had a real king, and a pretend one who had turned out to be a scheming loser.

Back to the money. Richard went to war with France and the annual expenditure rose again to around £24,000 a year. John's revenues in the early years of kingship averaged £22-25,000 but then skyrocketed in 1210 to £50,000 and in 1212 rose again to £83,000. By 1213, as a result of interdict profits and tallages he gathered in a staggering sum for the times £145,000. There was still money to be had and have it John did. In 1207 he levied a tax of a thirteenth on everyone's movable goods, and for the barons this included all their bling. Many of them were having none of it and resorted to hiding their wealth in the monasteries who owed them patronage. The king would then send in his heavies to search these monasteries and confiscate the goods if found, and levy a fine. So as far as taxes being levied and taxes being dodged goes, nothing changes.

A single mark of silver - 13 shillings and four pence or 160 pennies.

Basically John did not have the respect of his barons as they had respected and trusted Richard as an energetic military leader with clear directives. John was more of a tunnel building sort of person. If he could take the convoluted route, he would. He was renowned for giving secret signals and dodgy handshakes which only he and his spies knew. He'd send one message that was open, and a second message in secret code that was only to be acted upon if the dodgy handshake was activated. Sometimes he forgot whether he'd attached the dodgy handshake command to a letter and then he had to send follow-up letters with more instructions.

Following the incident of being caught with his fingers in the cookie jar when trying to keep Richard incarcerated, John mostly behaved himself. Once he became king he started off reasonably well without too many difficulties, but within the first five years his reputation was going to to hell in a hand cart. Richard had had to ceaselessly fight against the French to keep a grip on Normandy and the Angevin cross-Channel lands - but he had been winning according to historian John Gillingham.

As an aside here, you'll often hear it said that Richard didn't care about England because he didn't spend any time there after he was king, and sold offices to the highest bidder in order to fund his crusades. I've even heard it claimed that he hated England, but that's nonsense. The bottom line is that we just don't know what Richard thought of the country. He was born here and he spent time here before he was king - as a child, as an adolescent, and as an adult returning for family meetings while his father was still on the throne. It is true that Richard's focus was Aquitaine because he was its dedicated heir. If all Henry II's sons had lived, Richard would not have had England but that doesn't mean he hated it. Many of his Administration staff were English and many of his key players - William Marshal for example. By contrast John is sometimes claimed to have loved England, but we don't know if that's true either. John was the first King thrown back on his English dominions because he'd lost Normandy and Anjou - but his rule in England certainly ended in tears before bedtime!

King John Stag hunting Early 14thc. British Library

John was not made of the same military stuff as Richard. He was good on the short campaigns it's true but wasn't a man for the long haul. He did score a terrific victory at Mirebeau where he rescued his elderly mother from being besieged by her grandson Arthur. Arthur was John's rival for the English throne and the Angevin Empire. He was the teenage son of John's deceased older brother Geoffrey and a huge thorn in John's side - he had a valid claim to the English throne and was French-backed.  However, at Mirebeau, Arthur was taken prisoner along with many other dissidents and the black legends began in earnest.

'When the King arrived in Chinon, he kept his prisoners in such a horrible manner and such abject confinement that it seemed an indignity and disgrace to all those with him who witnessed his cruelty.'   This is from the Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal - an eyewitness source. It is often said that every reign  in the Middle Ages was full of violent barbarism perpetrated by its kings and we shouldn't judge by modern mindset. That is very true, but this is eyewitness mindset of John's life and times.

Arthur went to Rouen and was never seen again. Rumours hinted that John had personally murdered him while in a drunken rage and had his body cast into the River Seine. Whatever the truth of the matter we know for a fact that Arthur entered Rouen Castle in April 1203 and was never seen again. King Philip of France demanded that John produce him and when John could not it was the excuse Philip needed - along with complaints of John having denied justice in his court to his vassals, to invade Normandy. From the high point of that moment of victory in taking Arthur, John was now on the slippery slope. As town after town fell or yielded to the French, John retreated and eventually quit Normandy. This was seen as a humiliation and disaster especially as many of the barons had land on both sides of the Channel and had to make a choice as to what they kept and what they lost, and naturally John got the blame. The Lionheart have protected them. John Softsword had failed and abandoned them.

Smarting from his losses, John began raising money via aforementioned unpopular taxes to get an expedition together to regain his lost continental lands. To compound his problems his very able Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter who had been an astute administrator with tremendous vision and drive, died. The man John would like to have appointed, John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich was not approved by the Canterbury monks who wanted one Stephen Langton for Archbishop. A huge argument ensued, that might well have gone the way of Becket. It didn't, but the country was put under interdict and sanctions by the Pope were imposed. Basically it meant the church went on strike and refused to perform its usual functions. So now people were lacking in the comfort and security of ecclesiastical routine, they were being taxed to the hilt, and had seen their king humiliated on the continent.

Ever suspicious, John had a penchant for employing mercenaries to do his work both the aboveboard kind and the dirty stuff. They were more trustworthy in the long run as long as you paid them, but the barons hated and despised them. Hence clause 50 of the Magna Carta

"We shall entirely remove from their bailwicks the relatives of Gerard D'Athee, so that they shall henceforth have no bailwick in England;Engelard de Cygnes, Andrew, Peter and Guyon de Chanceles, Gyon de Cygnes, Geoffrey de Martin and his brothers, Philip Mark and his brothers, and Geoffrey his nephew, and the whole following of them."

John  then fell out with one of his barons, William de Braose. He claimed that de Braose, a man of widespread lands and power and originally in high favour with him, owed him a lot of money for those favours but was showing contempt by not repaying any of it. The sums John was demanding of de Braose were astronomical and it was obvious that it was an excuse to bring him down. Perhaps John feared him with good reason. He demanded hostages from de Braose but when his agents turned up at the family domicile demanding hostages, their mother, Matilda, said that there was no way she was giving any of her children up to the man who had murdered his own nephew. How was she in a position to know this?  Interestingly de Braose had been at Rouen in April 1203 and if anyone knew what happened to Arthur, it would be him. The reports of the death of Arthur can be found in a Chronicle titled the Anals of Margham.  Margham Abbey's patron was William de Braose... Make of that what you will.

John went after the de Braose family with a vengeance, especially Matilda and her oldest son. They fled to Ireland where William Marshal gave them succour for a while and then they fled again, heading north, but were betrayed and caught. Matilda and her eldest son was thrown into prison at Corfe and starved to death. When the bodies were brought out of the oubliette into which they had been cast, it was found that the son had bite marks on his arm where his mother had turned cannibal in an effort to sustain her own life. This was shocking beyond belief to John's nobility and almost not quite the last nail in the coffin.

The final twist came when John taxed everyone until they squealed in order to raise the money for a huge campaign to win back his Norman and Angevin heartlands. He put everything into that campaign. This was the huge push to put the French back in their place. Unfortunately for John things didn't go to plan and the Battle of Bouvines in July 1214 (still a day marked by the French even now) was an utter disaster for the English. It left John's continental policy in ruins; it left him with a massive bill for the ransoms of those who have been captured and sent him crawling back to England with his tail between his legs - 'Softsword' indeed - at least as far as the barons were concerned. Bouvines was the final jigsaw piece slotting into the landscape that led to Magna Carta. Had Bouvines been successful, then Magna Carta may never have come to be. In failing to defeat the French it led the English barons to tally up their discontent against John. What they saw was an inept king who oppressed them, ignored their advice for that of his favourites and mercenaries, who taxed them to the hilt and then wasted their coin and their prestige by losing the battles. A man who quarrelled with the church, a man who disparaged them and disrespected their women (he had a reputation for being lecherous with the wives and daughters of his barons) indeed murdered them if he thought they were becoming nuisances or knew too much. It all had to stop, hence the organised rebellion against him, and the putting together of the clauses of the great Charter.

So, where did those clauses come from? Did they just spring out of the heads of the ringleaders? Of Stephen Langton the Archbishop of Canterbury? Well yes and no. The barons who gathered to form a committee to tie down King John and commit him to these reforms looked back in history for their initial source. The rough draft of the Magna Carta was based on a document titled The Charter of Liberties which had been issued in 1100 at the coronation of John's great-grandfather, Henry I. Prior to Henry I's reign, there had been charters on which Henry had loosely based his own - promises by kings to work for the common weal, but Henry I Charter went a lot further than that and was laid out a series of 14 promises concerning his behaviours King.  Such as:

'If any of my barons or other men should wish to give his daughter, sister, niece, or kinswoman in marriage, let him speak with me about it; but I will neither take anything from him for this permission not prevent his giving her and that she should be minded to join her to my enemy. And if, upon the death of a baron or other of my men, a daughter is left as heir, I will give her with her land by the advice of my barons. And if, on the death of her husband, the wife is left and without children, she shall have her diary and right of marriage, and I will not give her to husband unless according to her will.' 

He also promises that he will take away all the bad customs by which the kingdom of England has been unjustly oppressed.

This document then, more than a hundred years old was the inspiration and working blueprint for the Magna Carta, with Stephen Langton at the head of the steering committee, John was loath and indignant to put his seal to such a treaty. He felt he was being very wronged and that his own liberties were being undermined. The moment it was sealed, he reneged on the deal. Some of the barons was so convinced he would renege that they rode off in the opposite direction and continued to make war. At this point John had  'sold' England as a vassal state to the Pope, and thus put an end to threats of excommunication and interdict. Instead, these were turned on the French who were intent on invading England and on the rebellious barons desiring to get rid of John.

The only real answer was for John to die, which he duly did, having lost the crown jewels in the Wash - as everyone has joked about for decades. He ended his life in Newark Castle in October 1216, the traditional cause of death is stated at a surfeit of peaches and cider, but that may not be the literal truth. Peaches were viewed in the Medieval table of humours as being cold and moist and could very dangerously put out one's internal fire and cause death. So it was a good way to explain a terminal stomach disorder. The same goes for Henry I's surfeit of lampreys.

John's body was borne to Worcester Cathedral. William Marshal became regent of England, responsible for the nine-year-old Henry III and for getting the country back on its feet, reunited, rid of the French, and solvent, all of which he more or less succeeded in doing before his death in 1219. With William Marshal at the helm Magna Carta could be reissued and tweaked to make it acceptable to all, and the rebuilding could begin. Not everyone was enamoured but people trusted and respected the Marshal and recognised a safe pair of hands, especially as under the latter's generalship the French were whipped twice, once at the battle of Lincoln Fair in May 1217 with the Marshal leading from the front, and then at the sea battle of Sandwich later that year when the Marshal watched from the clips. The force was with the Marshal, and unlike John, his light sabre was the right colour!

There has always been push and pull between ruling factions. Magna set out the interests and requirements of a disgruntled nobility, that weren't being met by a king they saw as being tyrannical and absolutist. Perhaps in a perverse way, we could say that King John is at the root of it the man responsible for the words enshrined in many of the world's democracies - countries he didn't know existed when he sat down under coercion to put his seal to a most historic piece of parchment.

For anyone wanting to read more on the subject, I would particularly recommend online  The Magna Carta project which contains enough detail to satisfy the most voracious of scholarly appetites. Magna Carta project

Reading wise - you can do no better at the moment than W.L. Warren's biography of King John. Next year, however in March, Marc Morris's new biography of King John is being published and that should prove well worth reading.

Select Sources for this article
King John - W.L. Warren - Eyre & Methuen
The Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal vol II  - translated and edited by Holden, Gregory and Crouch - Anglo Norman Text Society.
The Angevin Empire - John Gillingham - Hodder/OUP
A Description of the Patent Rolls in the Tower of London to which is added an itinerary of King John with prefatory observations.  By Thomas Duffus Hardy F.S. A.

Elizabeth's novel To Defy A King about one family's road to Magna Carta won the RNA Award for historical fiction in 2011.