Hunting for Hellfire by Maggie Brookes

 I felt as though I'd inadvertently stirred a hornet's nest when an Instagram / Facebook post I made about a chance visit to West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire was viewed more than 22,000 times. Some of the comments made me itch to investigate further.

My original post said, 'West Wycombe looks like a quiet English village until you spot the bizarre ball on top of the church tower, the Hellfire caves and the extraordinary mausoleum for the Dashwood family. They were all constructed in the mid-18th century by Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the Dilettanti Society and co-founder of the Hellfire Club.' I suspect it was the hashtag '#hellfire club' which created the viewing frenzy. (Note to self ­– write a novel abut a licentious secret society!)

Fraser Whitelock of High Wycombe responded first: 'St Lawrence's was built on top of the hill, on a pagan site. Later extended and a crypt added said to be an exact recreation of Syrian Sun Temple. The Golden Ball was used as a messaging system using the sun's reflection, linked through buildings such as Crystal Palace, through line of site, (sic) linked across the channel to Paris.  The Hellfire Caves were dug to access underground water systems, the re routed to help flood and create the lakes in Dashwood's grounds, so he could stage epic battles between Spanish galleons he had transported to West Wycombe village.'

Anthony Mealing, also from High Wycombe and a Listed Building Consultant at Garret McKee Architects responded: 'The Dashwoods had two Spanish Galleons transported to West Wycombe, and rebuilt them for battle reinactment (sic) on his lake. Spanish galleons were being taken in Barbados by privateers, and pirates. Also although it is told that locals dug the tunnels, it was actually Cornish workers. The obvious connections between pirates, Cornwall, mining, and overwhelming Masonic connections in the village. Stokes the fire a little more.'

Fraser Whitelock came back: 'I used to knock around the village as a teenager.  The tunnels in the High Street exist. I've seen them.  Used to dare each other to go in them.  No one did....  Don't get me started on Templar history in Wycombe.....'

Head spinning, I set out to see what I could discover. 

The National Trust told me that there was indeed an Iron Age ('pagan') settlement on the hill, dating from the 4th or 5th century BC, and later, the Saxon village of Hæferingdune or Haveringdon. Sadly its population was decimated by the Black Death in the 1340s, and those who remained moved down into the valley to the current village, named West Wycombe. The medieval church of St Lawrence remained on the hill. 

Then, in 1723, the 15-year-old Sir Francis Dashwood inherited his father's estates and Baronetcy. As a young man he did the Grand Tour and developed a taste for classical art and architecture, and a reputation for wild behaviour.  In the 1730's he started the Society of Dilletanti, which his political enemy Horace Walpole said was a 'club for which the nominal qualification is having been to Italy, and the real one, being drunk.' Later Sir Francis founded the Divan Club, for men who had visited the Ottoman Empire. He liked to dress up. This painting was made in his Divan Club outfit.

He seems to have begun the excavation of the 'hellfire caves' to quarry chalk for a new road, and give employment to local men who had suffered three successive bad harvests. A long winding tunnel runs a quarter of a mile into the hill, with many passages and chambers leading off it, including a Banqueting Hall. The caves are said to be the largest man-made chalk cavern in the world.  The 'Inner Chamber' is reputed to lie directly under St Lawrence church, signifying heaven and hell.

Sir Francis continued to love founding questionable 'dining clubs'. The one which is now known as the Hellfire Club, wasn't called that by him.  He called it the Order of Knights of West Wycombe, or The Order of the Friars of St. Francis of West Wycombe. Not such a catchy hashtag! This painting of him by Hogarth shows him as 'St Francis' worshipping a naked Venus.

Members of the not-called-the-hellfire-club may have included important 18th-century figures including William Hogarth, John Wilkes, Thomas Potter and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, though no papers about the club survive. Benjamin Franklin was a close friend of Sir Francis who visited the caves on more than one occasion. The club motto is popularly believed to have been a quote from Rableais: 'Fais ce que tu voudras' (Do what thou wilt).

Horace Walpole (who we have to remember was the author of the first Gothic novel, as well as Sir Francis' political rival) wrote this, about meetings at Medmenham Abbey on the Thames, also owned by Sir Francis: 'Its practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighbourhood of the complexion of those hermits.'

The 'inner temple' of the Hellfire Caves.

But Sir Francis was more than a hell-raiser. He spent most of his life extending and converting the Queen Anne house at West Wycombe into a Palladian mansion with landscaped grounds full of follies. He bought pictures, sculptures and books. In 1732 alone, he purchased over £2700 in books from a bookseller in Amsterdam. 

In the 1750s he had the tower of St Lawrence's Church raised and crowned with an 8 ft wooden ball covered in gold leaf, possibly inspired by the Dogana in Venice. 

Dogana Da Mar, Venice

Various sources say the West Wycombe ball contains seating for six to 10 people. It was described by the author John Wilkes as 'the best globe tavern I was ever in'. 

Back to the comments about the golden ball on my Facebook post:

Craig Jay said 'I remember as a child you could climb the steps into it. I believed it to be a small card room for a select group of hellfire club members to illicitly gamble. Did the earl of sandwich bring a packed lunch?'

Adela Hollingsworth replied 'My mum went inside it when she was a child but it hasn’t been open to the public to enter for years.' 

 Sarah HR wrote: 'There are seats inside and they looked used to me when I looked into it 55 years ago.'

St Lawrence's church, West Wycombe

What about the signalling from the ball? A book about the Dashwoods published in 1987 reports a suggestion that Sir Francis Dashwood used a heliograph to signal through a porthole in the golden ball to his friend, John Norris (1721–1786), who had erected a tower, now known as the Camberley Obelisk, near his home at Hawley, Hampshire, 21 miles to the south. I haven't been able to find any evidence that signals continued across the Channel, and of course the Crystal Palace wasn't built till 1851, but it's a good story, and I love a good story.

The inside of the church was also remodelled in a classical mode, though perhaps not based on a temple at Palmyra. The painted ceiling, by Borgnis, was apparently an adaptation of Robert Wood’s drawings of the Temple of the Sun at Balbec. 

I also failed to find evidence of the two Spanish galleons, though the National Trust says that Sir Francis kept a frigate on the lake, using it to re-enact sea battles as entertainment for guests. Cannonballs dredged from the lake are on display in the house.

Not wanting to be forgotten, Sir Francis also built the Grade One listed  Dashwood Mausoleum on the edge of the hill.

In true Dashwood style, there’s an urn containing the heart of the poet Paul Whitehead, steward of one of Sir Francis's 'clubs'.  In the centre stands a pedestal and urn dedicated to his wife Lady le Despenser, who must have been a long-suffering woman. 

Unsurprisingly, the house and gardens have featured in many TV dramas and films, including Downton Abbey, The Crown, Bridgerton, Belgravia, adaptations of Daniel Deronda, Cranford, Little Dorrit and Howards End, episodes of Endeavour and Foyles War and movies A Clockwork Orange, The Duchess, I Capture the Castle, Bridget Jones' Baby and the one Sir Francis might have loved the most, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  

Alongside his secret societies and his collecting, Sir Francis was a politician, who became the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then the 11th Baron le Despencer, Postmaster General and finally the Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. 

I wondered where Sir Francis got the money to do all his renovations, rebuilds and to fund his wild parties? His father and uncle were successful merchants, who served on the board of directors for both the Royal African Company and the East India Company. As such, their investments were deeply implicated in Britain’s international slave trade. Although we don't know if Sir Francis owned enslaved people, his grandson received government compensation for emancipation of slaves.

 Back on my Facebook feed, Anthony Mealing wrote ' The Dashwoods were slave owners up until 1835 with the end of Empire Slavery (the empire territories) when they received government compensation for emancipation of slaves on three plantations they then had an interest in, Barbados Spring Plantation 161 Enslaved, Barbados Over Hill Plantation 109 Enslaved, Barbados Ashton Hall Plantation 83 Enslaved... From the UCL records.'

What about the link to the Knights Templar? A medieval manor house in what is now High Wycombe known as Temple Wycombe was owned by the Knights Templar from 1227. When they were dissolved it passed to the Knights Hospitallers, who held it until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Of course this was long before the Dashwoods of West Wycombe. A branch of Morrisons now stands on the site.

 Finally there's a mysterious comment from Robert Fox: 'Not forgetting the praying wall in the High Street, where you can see where people have knelt.'

So far my searches haven't turned up any other mention of this wall. I guess I'll have to return and take a look. If I dare.

Maggie Brookes, novelist and poet. Author of  historical novels The Prisoner's Wife and Acts of Love and War. As Maggie Brookes-Butt: Wish, New and Selected Poems.

Instagram: Maggie __Brookes 

Facebook: Maggie Brookes-Butt

Further reading about Sir Francis:  https://www.artandthecountryhouse.com/essays/essays-index/sir-francis-dashwood-connoisseur-collector-and-traveller   Jason M. Kelly is Director of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute and Professor of History in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. 

Of a Cave Unknown By L.J. Trafford

I have spent the past ten years writing about Ancient Rome. I’ve written four novels, three non-fiction books, three short stories and a total of 27 History Girls articles. Somebody really should stop me. After my last History Girls article about Ancient Rome got hit with a content warning, which I suppose I was asking for given the title; How Depraved was Ancient Rome? (the answer being depraved enough to twitch the antennas of Google’s sensitivity robots) I decided that for my next article I would write something much more wholesome, more family friendly, less likely to offend. Which pretty much rules Ancient Rome out as subject.

Instead, I have decided to cast a historical eye over my hometown of Royston. Nobody ever invokes the Google censor robots writing about local history, do they?



My Home Town.
Royston is a small town of around 17,000 people situated on the Hertfordshire/Cambridgeshire border and it’s somewhere I have lived for the last 12 years. The sign that greets you on driving into Royston neatly sums up what my home town has to offer to the would-be visitor.

It’s a historic market town! It has some gardens and a historic church (aren’t all churches generally historical?) There’s parking and toilets and the possibility of eating, drinking and having a cup of tea. And then there is it nearly at the very bottom of Royston attractions, beneath the toilets (which frankly I do not particularly recommend) museum and cave. What says you? A cave? What do you mean a cave? Why would there be a cave in the heart of East Anglia, a terrain so flat that it’s version of hills are nothing more than a slight upward incline and is situated at least 60 miles from the cost?

And here lies a story, a real life mystery and one that really deserves a better more impressive road sign.


The Discovery of Royston Cave.

Scouring my local bookshop, Bows Books, I stumbled across a pamphlet about Royston Cave written by one Joseph Bedlam. Bedlam, a local Royston boy, is an interesting man. A one-time lawyer turned parliamentarian and campaigner against slavery, in his retirement he forged an interest in archaeology and wrote several pamphlets on finds in his local area. Including the one I picked up in Bows Books on the cave.

Bedlam’s account is written only 100 years after the initial discovery of the cave and it is quite marvellous. Take as an example the extremely diplomatic way Bedlam completely demolishes a certain academic’s stated view on Royston’s history: ‘Camden was not quite accurate on that subject; and he may have been misled as to the origin of the Cross.’ Which is Victorian gentleman talk for Camden is both wrong and an idiot. Burn.

According to Bedlam it was in August 1742 that a gang of workmen given the task of erecting a bench in Royston’s butter and cheese market happened upon something curious. It was a round millstone with a hole in its middle only a foot into their digging. Obviously, it would have to be moved, else where would the bench go. But on prising the millstone up the workman found something strange underneath it, there was a shaft. A two-foot-wide man-made shaft that they discovered, by dropping in a plumb line, was at least 16 feet deep. Gazing down into their discovery the workmen noted the ledges carved into the sides of the shaft at regular intervals, they looked uncannily like steps on a ladder, but where did those steps lead to? There was only one way to find out. Send a small boy down there to investigate!

In defence of those workmen this is an era where it was commonplace and indeed expected to send small boys into narrow tunnels, because what are they good for otherwise? This small boy evidently proved himself a useless first responder since they then lower in a ‘slender man with a lighted candle.’ Beldam fails to mention whether the boy or the slender man willingly volunteered for this mission. Nor does he give the boy or the slender man a name, which seems jolly unfair since they are the first people to set eyes on what the workmen have accidentally uncovered.

The nameless slender man does a much better job reporting back than the boy, possibly because they’d at least given him a candle. He tells them the shaft leads to a cavity around 4 feet in height that is filled with loose earth. There was a moment’s pause as everyone digested the slender man’s report, and then a collective conclusion was reached: ‘The people now entertained a notion of a great treasure hid in this place,’ says Bedlam.

One can imagine the excitement of those townspeople, their day was turning out to be way more interesting than the daily purchase of cheese and butter. It must have been akin to how Howard Carter felt when he gazed upon the door of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Or the Italians as they began to slowly uncover the majesty of Pompeii. Or Indiana Jones in that bit in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they find the Ark. Although rest assured that nobody’s face melts off in this tale, thankfully.

It’s amazing the motivation the thought of riches beyond your dreams can inspire, the townspeople working together managed to extract 200 buckets of soil by nightfall. ‘They were quite exhausted by it,’ reports back Mr Bedlam. I don’t doubt it. But what was it? What was it that lay beneath that millstone? What had they uncovered?

Disappointingly it wasn’t a room stacked up with golden treasures like Howard Carter had found behind his door in 1922. What they had found was a cylindrical space 17 feet in diameter with a domed roof some 25 feet high. The most striking feature of this manmade cave, and one as worthy as Howard Carter’s discovery, were the walls of the cave. For on them were carved images, hundreds of images from the floor right up to where the domed ceiling began covering pretty much every spare inch of stone.

From Joseph Bedlam's book, a sketch of Royston Cave.
Wikicomms, public domain

The Carvings

We’ll let Joseph Bedlam have the first word ‘The various groups and figures we are now about to describe are irregularly distributed : they are of different sizes : refer to different subjects : are probably the production of different artists : and exhibit little unity of design.’ In other words Royston Cave is no Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, as Bedlam again bluntly puts it ‘They harmonize chiefly by their general air of antiquity and the quaintness which belongs to the efforts of a rude and superstitious age.’

From Joseph Bedlam's book, a sketch of some of the carvings that adorn Royston Cave.
Wikicomms public domain.

This lack of artistry, skill and talent of whoever carved the images in the cave is informative in itself. It tells us what we are not looking at. We are not looking at the commission of a skilled professional artist the likes of whose works were visible in churches of the time. That different people at different times added to the images ad hocly and often not in keeping to the earlier styles hints that this is not a formal, recognised space.

But it is the images themselves that give us the biggest clues as to what Royston Cave was; they are all to do with Christianity. There is an image of the crucifixion, St Katherine, St Christopher, St Laurence, the conversion of St Paul, amongst many others that have been identified. Outside of the depictions of Christian martyrs who come handily with their own iconography that makes it easier for them to be identified, e.g. St Katherine is always pictured with the wheel she was tortured to death on, there are various figures that could be King Richard the Lionheart, King Henry II and his Queen Eleanor and one who could be Jaques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Scholars examining the clothing and armour of the figurines have concluded that they belong to the mid 1300s. Possibly.

Further drawings of the Royston Cave carvings by Joseph Bedlam.
Wikicomms public domain

Given the nature of the vast majority of the carvings we can conclude that the purpose of the cave was surely religious in nature. But how exactly? And why had the cave been filled in, covered over and deliberately hidden from view? It was time to get the experts in.

Who's theory is correct? There's only one way to find out FIGHT!!!

The discovery of Royston Cave caused a sensation amongst archaeologists and historians of the day and they clambered to answer some of the questions the discovery of the cave had raised. These questions were the cause of an academic bust up that our friend Joseph Bedlam again uses his great tact to describe. ‘So great was the curiosity occasioned by this singular occurrence’ begins Bedlam meaning the discovery of the cave in 1742 ‘that it immediately gave rise to a warm controversy between two eminent archaeologists of the day, Dr William Stukeley and the Rev Charles Parkin, in the course of which though both parties displayed abundant learning and ingenuity, the cause of the truth suffered much from their mutual loss of temper and the too eager desire on both sides to establish a rival theory.’

Stukeley’s theory was that Royston Cave had been the private chapel of Lady Roisia from whom the town, Royston got its name. There is in Royston near the Jolly Postie Restaurant a large round stone known as the Royse stone which is said to be all that is left of a cross that stood there dedicated to Lady Roisia.

The so-called Royse Stone
Picture by John Patridge CC-BY

   
Parkin did not agree. His theory was that the cave was a hermitage, that is the home of a local hermit. A hermit was a man who had opted to live apart from society in solitude in order to concentrate on contemplating religious matters.
Parkin published his theory under the polite title An Answer to, or Remarks upon, Dr. Stukeley's Origines Roystonianæ.
Stukeley responded to Parkin’s theory in a paper entitled Discourses on Antiquities in Britain. Number II. Which caused Parkin to hit back with another paper, this time entitled A Reply to the Peevish, Weak, and Malevolent Objections brought by Dr. Stukeley in his Origines Roystonianæ
Meow.


The Fighty Monks
Another theory, and one that is killer popular on You Tube, is that the cave was a chapel/initiation temple for the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar get dragged into all kinds of conspiracy theories/mysteries which makes them perfect fodder for You Tube and the discovery of strange caves with odd carvings which don’t appear in any historical records.

Historically, in the proper sense that involves actual evidence for your theories, the Knights Templar were a religious order of monks founded in the 12th century. But these were monks with a difference; they were fighty monks! Originally stationed in the Holy land their role was to physically protect visiting Christian pilgrims. Later we find them being very fighty in the crusades. 

As well as being fighty, the Knights Templar were also extremely wealthy and it was this talent in making money that led to their downfall. King Philip IV of France having become indebted to the Templars sought a novel way to get out of paying back the cash he owed – he persuaded/threatened Pope Clement to declare that the Templars were heretics. With an accompanying demand that all the Christian monarchs under Papal influence should arrest the templars and seize their assets. It was a full scale persecution, with those who were captured being horribly tortured and executed. Unsurprisingly many Templars fled to parts unknown and kept themselves hidden.

Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of the Knights Templar, burnt alive as a heretic in Paris.
Wood Engraving by J David. From Wellcome Collection

That’s what we know about them historically from the surviving evidence. In recent times the Knights Templar have been the subject of numerous books of dubious research that claim they were the recipients of secret knowledge relating to the Holy Grail, the Ark of the covenant, the Turin shroud, the true nature of Christ, freemasonry and probably the solution to every single Wordle until the end of time. For many the idea that the Templars were sitting on dynamite info that could seriously damage Christianity is a more convincing reason why Pope Clement was so determined to wipe them all out, rather than Philip IV just didn’t fancy paying back his loans.

In the context of busily hoovering up cataclysmic secrets that they refused to divulge even when they led to their own destruction I can quite believe the Templars found the time to travel to a small Hertfordshire town to deliberately build an underground cave covered in mysterious symbols that they would leave no explanation for. It’s exactly the sort of maddening thing they would do, smugly, in the full knowledge that people would write about it for centuries to come.

On the other hand history is awash with stories of petty men whose pettiness accidentally delivers world changing events. So I can quite believe that Philip IV would happily watch Templars being horribly killed just because he thought their interest rates were crimininally unfair to him.



The Draw of the Cave
Treasure wise the townspeople of Royston were to be disappointed, for all that was recovered from the cave in the way of movable objects distinctly lacked value; there was the fragments of a drinking vessel, animal bones, a human skull and some bits of brass. Certainly not enough to construct a blockbuster exhibition out of that would tour the world.

But even if nobody was going to get instantly rich beyond their wildest dreams there was money to be made from the cave. In 1784 local builder, Thomas Watson dug the tunnel entrance to the Cave that is still used today, issuing this grand statement: ‘T. Watson respectfully informs the public in general and the antiquarians in particular, that he has opened (for their inspection) a very commodious entrance into that ancient Subterraneous cavern in Royston, Herts. which has ever been esteemed by all lovers of antiquity as the greatest curiosity of the kind in Europe. T. Watson hopes that all those who may think proper to visit the above Cave will have their curiosity gratified to the full extent. The passage leading to it is itself extremely curious, being hewn out of the solid rock. N.B. - It may be seen any hour of the day.’

Seen at any hour of the day for a charge of six pence per person.

One of the many mysterious carvings in Royston cave.
Wikicomms CC-by

Bedlam has the delightful story Watson’s wife who designated herself as some kind tour guide/seer to the cave and was ‘accustomed to descant on the exploits and piety of its heroes and heroines, mixing up the legends of saints [] and confidently supporting her statements by quotations from history, which she humorously called The Book of Kings’. Which had to be worth six pence

Bedlam also mentions ‘numerous, distinguished personages’ who visited the cave, including the French King Louis XVIII. For those of you not so hot on your King Louis’ (and by god who is given the huge number of them); Louis XVIII is the Louis who was brother to the Louis that got guillotined during the French revolution and who was brought in post Napolean when the monarchy was restored. It was whilst he was in exile in the years between his brother being executed and Napolean being defeated that he took the time to travel to my small home town to visit the cave.

Portrait of Louis XVIII by Angelique Mongez
Public Domain. Wikicomms

  


So what is Royston Cave?
We don’t know. But the not knowing is what makes it special. To write history is to trawl through literary accounts, local registries, endless inscriptions and documents. That such a cave could exist beneath a busy market without anyone knowing it was there is quite something. I get a kick every time I drive down Melbourn Road in Royston knowing that a few feet beneath my wheels is the cave, silent and empty and hanging onto its secrets. That’s it’s draw; that we don’t know why it was built or why it was destroyed. There hangs the tantalising prospect for every visitor to the cave that maybe they could be the one to finally solve the mystery.


P.S. I’m with Parkin and his hermit theory.

Recommened Reading:

Royston Cave by Joseph Bedlam

The Royston Cave website has lots of information on both the carvings and all the latest theories https://www.roystoncave.co.uk/
 

L.J. Trafford's latest book on Ancient Rome entitled Ancient Rome's Worst Emperors is available from 30th November.

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Quests for the Holy Grail... can they ever succeed? – Katherine Roberts

One of my characters, Rhianna Pendragon, has just finished a Grail Quest. Her quest has been a long one, taking place over four books and coming to a conclusion in the final title “Grail of Stars”. Although this series is aimed at younger readers, writing these books has taken me to some surprisingly grown-up places. Let me take you on my quest.

First of all, it helps to know what you’re looking for!

So what exactly is a ‘Grail’?

The Grail by Arthur Rackham

Many people think first of a cup or chalice. This arises from the Biblical story of the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper to offer his disciples wine. “This is my blood,” he tells them. “Drink in remembrance of me”. Later, so the story goes, Joseph of Arimathea used the Grail to catch Christ’s (real) blood as it dripped from his crucified body. Hence the name 'Holy' Grail.

Cauldron of Inspiration, warmed by the breath of nine maidens

In Celtic tradition, the Grail is a magical bowl or cauldron. Sometimes called the Cauldron of Annwn, the Cauldron of Inspiration, or the Cauldron of Rebirth, it appears in the Mabinogion and may be used to bring the dead back to life.

Roman goddess with cornucopia

A grail might also be a platter or plate, a cornucopia (or horn of plenty) magically overflowing with food, a book full of knowledge, or even a magic stone.

Obviously, there is more than one aspect of the Grail, and I think it can actually take any shape you wish, appropriate for your own quest. At the start of her quest, Rhianna does not know exactly what her Grail looks like, although she has a vision of a dead knight on a ship holding something "too bright to look at" in his hands.

Next, we need to know where our Grail is hiding.

If you continue with the story of Joseph of Arimathea, he hid out in a tomb where Christ's blood sustained him, then carried the cup to Britain and settled at Glastonbury, which at the time was a Roman outpost. The Grail found its way into Corbenic Castle, where it was kept under guard by maidens and a maimed (or wounded) king, sometimes called the Fisher King. Gradually, over the centuries, the location of this magical castle was forgotten, until it turns up again in Arthurian legend, when a vision of the Grail appears to the Knights of the Round Table floating on a beam of light, inspiring them to ride out in search of it.

A vision of the Grail appears at the Round Table

Another story claims the Knights Templar took the Holy Grail from Jerusalem during the Crusades and kept it in a secret location until their order fell from grace, when the Grail (together with the fabled Templar treasure) was lost from history and passed into legend.

The pagan Cauldron, on the other hand, has always belonged in the Celtic otherworld of Annwn, where those seeking its magic need to travel beyond the earthly realm to find it.

Since my series is set in the Dark Ages shortly after the Romans left Britain, I decided Rhianna and her friends must sail through the enchanted mists to look for their Grail - echoing the Celtic tales.

Who quested after the Grail?

In Taliesin’s story Spoils of the Otherworld, King Arthur and his warriors sail to the Celtic otherworld in search of the Cauldron of Annwn. They find it on an island in a castle of glass, where it is guarded by nine maidens. But in the end they have to abandon their mission, because the castle’s magical defences prove too dangerous. Only seven men return home.

How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival were fed with the Sanc Grael

In later Arthurian legends, Sir Percival makes it into the Fisher King’s castle, but fails to ask the right question and leaves empty-handed. Sir Lancelot reaches the castle too, but finds the gates barred to him because of his adulterous love for Arthur’s queen Guinevere. Sir Bors gets into the castle, but does not try for the Grail. Only young Sir Galahad, the most pure-hearted of all the knights, is allowed to gaze upon the Grail - but instead of taking it back to Camleot for his king, he ascends, fulfilled, to Heaven.

Indiana Jones finds the Grail in the Last Crusade, guarded by an ancient knight in a cave protected by lethal traps.  Here, he is presented with a choice of vessels ranging from beautiful jewelled goblets to plain wooden cups. He chooses the right cup and uses it to heal his dying father of a mortal wound – only to lose his Grail again when his enemies seize it from him and try to take it across the seal into the world of men.

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code takes a different approach to the Grail, based on the text Holy Blood Holy Grail, where the Grail is actually the bloodline of Christ, surviving to the modern day in the form of the hero’s female companion. Following the Knights Templar trail, his characters chase clues across the world, ending up at the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, and giving Scottish tourism a welcome boost along the way.

Monty Python also sent King Arthur and his knights in search of the Grail, taking a comic approach to the legends that sees his brave knights using coconut shells instead of horses and fighting killer rabbits - great fun!

There are countless other books and films containing quests for Grails of all shapes and sizes, and now young readers have Rhianna Pendragon's quest for the Grail of Stars.

Rhianna needs the Grail to wake her father King Arthur from his death-sleep in enchanted Avalon and restore him to the throne of Camelot. In the normal course of events, she would succeed in her quest and the series would have its happy ending. But  - as a sharp-eyed librarian pointed out at an early event for the first book “Sword of Light” - we already know her quest fails, because so far Arthur has not returned.

Cue time-twisting plot to get out of a sticky corner? Well, no… Arthur might not have returned from Avalon to save us all yet, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Rhianna fails to find the Grail, because something else could easily happen after she wakes the king to prevent him from returning to Camelot. I decided it would be too much of a let down if she didn't find the Grail at all, so on the cover of book 4 you’ll see Lady Nimue (the mermaid) handing Rhianna something rather Grail-like… but from the Grail Quests mentioned above, we already know that finding the physical object is no guarantee of success! The quest for the Grail has always been a spiritual one. In the end I decided the only way to write a true Grail Quest would be to allow Rhianna herself to tell me the outcome... which brings me to the question Sir Percival failed to ask.

In the legends, this traditional question is “Whom does the Grail serve?” In book 1, the villain Mordred (upon waking terribly injured from his duel with King Arthur) gets this question twisted and asks: “Who commands the Grail?” This is clearly the wrong question, since four books later Mordred loses his quest for the throne of Camelot because of his thirst for power.

Rhianna’s question is different. Lady Nimue asks her “What does the Grail contain?” At first Rhianna (like me when I began writing the series) doesn't know - her first impulse is to answer "stars" but the song she has learned from Merlin says "the Grail said to hold all the stars in Heaven" so she changes her mind. Only towards the end of the final book does she realise what her Grail really contains, and that led me to a natural conclusion for the series.

As an author, I often feel I'm on a quest as I write a book. I suppose my Grail – my ultimate quest – would be the perfect book, which contains all the energy I meant it to contain when I began writing, which makes my readers laugh and cry in all the right places, which is enjoyed by everyone in the world from six-year-olds to great grandmothers, which brings Hollywood knocking at my door, which means I can buy my dream castle and fill the stables with unicorns... oh, but wait! If I wrote that book, the perfect book, then I would never DARE write another word! There could be a good reason Sir Galahad did not take his Grail back to Camelot, and I think the truth is you can never quite find the Grail, at least not in this world.

part of a collage created at a workshop for book trailers

Watch the trailer HERE.

So what does your Grail look like? (And would you really want to find it?)

***

Katherine Roberts writes fantasy for young readers.

Her Pendragon Legacy series for young readers is now complete:

1. SWORD OF LIGHT (hardcover, paperback & ebook KINDLE OFFER 99p)

2. LANCE OF TRUTH (hardcover, paperback & ebook)

3. CROWN OF DREAMS (hardcover, paperback & ebook)

4. GRAIL OF STARS (hardcover only, paperback & ebook publish in February)

More details from www.katherineroberts.co.uk

The Fall of the Red Cross Knights - Katherine Langrish

Two worlds collide.

Everyone’s mental picture of a Medieval Knight must owe something to the Knights Templar.  Here’s a picture of one.  With his distinctive white mantle and red cross, he seems the epitome of the gallant Red Cross Knight himself, or many another knight who lumbers into the joust in films of Ivanhoe or Robin Hood.

When I was a child I read and greatly enjoyed the historical novels of Ronald Welch, whose books followed the fortunes of the Careys, an imaginary branch of the D’Aubigny family, whom he placed in Llanstephan Castle on the Welsh Borders, and whose sons (always brilliant swordsmen or crack shots) manage to be present at nearly every moment of interest in English history, from the Crusades to the First World War.  The first of the series, Knight Crusader (Oxford, 1979) won the Carnegie Medal: it is a well researched, exciting, and remarkably well-balanced story about Philip, a young knight born in Outremer (as the crusaders called their heavily defended eastern kingdom). He fights in the Battle of Hattin against Saladin, is taken prisoner by a Turkish knight, Usamah, who treats him well, and eventually escapes to fight for Richard Lionheart, and to make his way to England for the very first time.

Krak des Chevaliers, Syria

One of the things that struck me about the book, reading it for the first time, was the contrast Welch draws between the Muslim-influenced luxury and cleanliness of the Outremer castles, opposed to the squalor of a smoky, draughty Borders castle of the same date.  Annoyingly, I seem to have mislaid my copy, but I recall Philip wondering why a recently-arrived comrade is so smelly (because he baths only once a year) – and so uncouth.

I now suspect Ronald Welch may have been indebted to a book I’ve discovered entitled ‘Memoirs of an Arab-Syrian Gentleman’, originally written by one Usamah ibn-Munqidh, who died November 16, 1188 (or the 23rd of Ramadan, 584) at the grand age of  96. Usamah’s reminiscences include fascinating stories of the clashes, not only military but cultural, between the invading and occupying Frankish forces and the Islamic armies.

Usamah regards the Franks with bemused wonder as ‘animals possessing the virtues of courage and fighting, but nothing else.’ Here are some of his accounts. Circa 1140, Usamah befriended an elderly Frankish knight who had come to the Holy Land on pilgrimage.  When it was time for him to return home, he asked Usamah to send his son with him to Europe.  It was the Western custom for noble boys to leave home and become squires, but a custom unfamiliar and unwelcome to Usamah, who needed a get-out:  
    

When he resolved to return by sea to his homeland, he said to me, "My brother, I am leaving for my country and I want thee to send with me thy son” (my son, who was then fourteen years old, was at that time in my company) “to our country, where he can see the knights and learn wisdom and chivalry.  When he returns, he will be like a wise man.”

Thus there fell upon my ears words which would never come out of the head of a sensible man; for even if my son were to be taken captive, his captivity could not bring him a worse misfortune than carrying him into the lands of the Franks.  However, I said to the man:

“By thy life, this has been exactly my idea.  But the only thing that prevented me from carrying it was the fact that his grandmother, my mother, is so fond of him, and … did not let him come out with me until she exacted an oath from me to the effect that I would return him to her.”

Thereupon he asked, “Is thy mother still alive?”  “Yes,” I replied.  “Well,” said he, “disobey her not.”

11th century Frankish medicine

Usamah provides examples of  the Franks' curious medication, both bad and good in effect: a knight with an abscess in his leg was being successfully treated with a poultice, until a Frankish physician arrived and asked the knight:  “Which wouldst thou prefer, living with one leg or dying with two?”  and proceeded to cut off the leg with an axe: gruesomely, “the marrow of the leg flowed out and the patient died on the spot.”  A happier outcome was that for a knight called Bernard, who…

was one of the most accursed and wicked among the Franks.  A horse kicked him on the leg, which was subsequently infected and which opened in fourteen different place.  Every time one of these cuts would close in one place, another would open in another place. All this happened while I was praying for his perdition.  Then came to him a Frankish physician and removed from the leg all the ointments which were on it, and began to wash it with very strong vinegar.  By this treatment all the cuts were healed and the man became well again.  He was up again like the devil.

Medieval amputation

The Knights Templar were so called because their headquarters were on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in a wing of the royal palace close to the Al Aqsa Mosque. They became second and third generation expats, who as expats often do, adopted a number of foreign ways and, paradoxically, acquired some respect and tolerance for the Islamic culture which surrounded them, even though they were officially its enemies. Usamah has an interesting story to relate of different attitudes to prayer:

Everyone who is a fresh emigrant from the Frankish lands is ruder in character than those who have become acclimatized and have held long association with the Moslems.  Here is an illustration of their rude character.

Whenever I visited Jerusalem I always entered the Aqsa Mosque, beside which stood a small mosque which the Franks had converted into a church.  When I used to enter the Aqsa Mosque, which was occupied by the Templars, who were my friends, the Templars would evacuate the little adjoining mosque so that I might pray in it.  One day I entered this mosque, repeated the first formula “Allah is great,” and stood up in the act of praying, upon which one of the Franks rushed on me, got hold of me and turned my face eastward saying, “This is the way thou shouldst pray!” A group of Templars hastened to him, seized him, and repelled him from me.  I resumed my prayer. The same man, while the others were busy, rushed once more upon me and turned my face eastward, saying, “This is the way thou shouldst pray!”  The Templars again came in to him and expelled him.  They apologised to me, saying, “This is a stranger who has only recently arrived from the land of the Franks, and he has never before seen anyone praying except eastward.”  Thereupon I said to myself, “I have had enough prayer.”  So I went out and have ever been surprised at the conduct of this devil of a man, at the change in the colour of his face, his trembling, and his sentiment at the sight of one praying towards the qiblah [the direction of Mecca].

The Al Aqsa Mosque

The Templars’ full name was The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. Originally they relied upon donations to survive, but on acquiring St Bernard of Clairvaux as a sponsor (and paying no taxes) they rapidly became rich, with financial networks stretching across Christendom. There’s an irresistable comment in the wikipedia entry on them, suggesting they represent the world’s first multinational corporation.  And we know how popular large multinationals are. 

That wealth and power, coupled with the xenophobic suspicion ‘back home’ that the Templars had become the degenerate and luxurious sympathisers of a foreign creed, led to their downfall. In 1307, Philip of France ordered the arrest of the Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, along with many of his order.  The warrant opens with the words, “God is not pleased.  We have enemies of the Faith in the Kingdom.”  Charged with multiple offences from idolatry, homosexuality and obscene rituals, to fraud and financial corruption, the Templars were accused, tortured, convicted, and eventually many of them burned.  The order was broken up.  One of the saddest ‘confessions’ is this:

‘I, Raymond de la Fère, 21 years old, admit that I have spat three times on the Cross, but with my mouth and not from my heart.’

One wonders what young Raymond made of a world in which he could be tortured into making such a statement (is the ambiguity deliberate? - is he implying that not the act, but the admission of the act comes from his mouth, not from his heart?) when he came from a world in which Christian Templar Knights could rush to protect the sanctity of a Moslem gentleman at prayer. 

Picture credits: 

Knight Templar, image from Wikimedia Commons, author Vahakn
Krak des Chevaliers, Syria from Wikimedia Commons  posted to Flickr by james_gordon_losangeles at http://flickr.com/photos/79139277@N08/7435880868
11th century medicine Wikimedia commons
Medieval amputation (Kaiser Friedrich III, 1493) Wikimedia Commons
Al Aqsa Mosque: author Barbara Kabel Wikimedia Commons
Burning of Templars. (British Library, Royal 14 E V f. 492v) (wikimedia commons)