'Never to see the like again in this world' - Pepys and the Coronation

by Deborah Swift

I've spent the last three years writing a trilogy about three different women that feature in Pepys' Diary. Now that rather epic journey has come to an end, and I'm leaving Pepys' Diary behind for research in pastures new.

Someone asked me which was my favourite episode in the diary, and the one that stands out for me is the Coronation of Charles II.

'it is impossible to relate the glory of this day'

So says Pepys, never one to be lost for words, and his fly-on-the-wall response to this massive overturning of national events fascinates me. The re-establishment of Charles II as a constitutional monarch changed the country from what amounted to a republic, back to a monarchy-led state with many immediate and long term effects. In these days of entrenched views on Brexit, we can see that populations can, and do, change their minds.

Pepys, who was initially brought up with Puritan leanings, was so taken up by the return of the exiled prince that he couldn't wait to be part of this sudden turn-around and even went over to the Hague to greet the prince and the fleet.

There were a few awkwardnesses though - in the transition from Cromwell's Parliament to the restitution of the monarchy, the old order had to be repealed and the new reinforced. Thus the ships in the fleet that had been named after Parliament victories, such as The Naseby had to be rapidly re-named The Royall Charles.

Whilst journeying back from the Hague, Pepys is treated to the prince's own version of his escape from Worcester. Many of our pubs retain the names 'The Royal Oak' (commemorating his escape from Worcester), and 'The King's Head',  from this era where the celebration of the monarchy was at its height. Pepys's later relationship with the King must have been cemented by the fact he made this extra effort to meet and greet him on his return.

On the day of the Coronation Parade, Pepys is up at the crack of dawn and putting on his new coat for the occasion -

Up early and made myself as fine as I could, and put on my velvet coat, the first day that I put it on, though made half a year ago.

 It seemed no expense had been spared for the procession through London,

The streets all gravelled, and the houses hung with carpets before them...
So glorious was the show with gold and silver, that we were not able to look at it, our eyes at last being so much overcome with it.

The Coronation Cavalcade passed through four specially constructed arches (see picture at the bottom of the post). The designs can be seen here and include titles for the arches like ' Garden of Plenty', 'Temple of Concord' and ''Return of the Monarchy'. That must have been a rush for the masons responsible!

Pepys got up at 4am the next day for the actual Coronation, and found himself a good view from a scaffold at the north end of Westminster Abbey. He had to wait until 11am to see Charles arrive.

And a great pleasure it was to see the Abbey raised in the middle, all covered with red, and a throne (that is a chair) and footstool on the top of it; and all the officers of all kinds, so much as the very fidlers, in red vests.

Unfortunately the crucial moment was lost to Pepys,

the King passed through all the ceremonies of the Coronacon, which to my great grief I and most in the Abbey could not see. The crown being put upon his head, a great shout begun, and he came forth to the throne

Afterwards silver commemorative medals were thrown to the congregation, but Pepys was unable to catch one. Pepys then has to go out to take a pee, but resumes his description of the outside of the Abbey, in which he says he saw '10,000 people, with the ground covered with blue cloth; and scaffolds all the way.' In a city of 40,000, that is a pretty good turn-out.

At one point in the feast afterwards, the King's Champion is brought out, 'all in armour on horseback, with his spear and targett carried before him' and a proclamation made:

And a Herald proclaims “That if any dare deny Charles Stewart to be lawful King of England, here was a Champion that would fight with him;” and with these words, the Champion flings down his gauntlet, and all this he do three times in his going up towards the King’s table.

Charles must have had quite a jittery moment then as he waited with baited breath to see if there would be any objection to him becoming King. But nobody objected, and no doubt the King's Champion was somewhat relieved also.

Once the day's events were over, ' it fell a-raining and thundering and lightening as I have not seen it do for some years' and Pepys tells us that the people set great store by this as an omen from above, though he himself dismisses the idea as 'a foolery to take too much notice of such things.'

Without Pepys's vibrant description, so much detail would have been lost to us. A picture doesn't give you the reaction of the people, and this is what is so appealing about Pepys's descriptions and opinions.

By the evening bonfires are burning all over the city to bathe it in an orange glow, and Pepys is dead drunk, so much so that he says, 'if ever I was foxed it was now, which I cannot say yet, because I fell asleep and slept till morning. Only when I waked I found myself wet with my spewing. Thus did the day end with joy every where.'

You can find the diary entry here: https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1661/04/

All pictures from Wikipedia unless linked.

Find my books www.deborahswift.com

Follow me on Twitter @swiftstory

Oliver Cromwell's Ely by Katherine Clements

Writing historical fiction involves a lot of research and time spent in libraries, museums and archives. It’s part of the job that I love. But when I’m working on a book, creating a sense of place is an important part of the process. Readers often ask how I research locations, how I find out what real places would have been like at a specific point in history.

My first novel, The Crimson Ribbon, is set mostly in London and Abingdon, but it begins in Ely, in the home of one of the town’s most famous residents, Oliver Cromwell. It was during my first research trip there that I learned the importance of visiting real settings, wherever possible.

The book is set during the years of the English Civil Wars when Cromwell was a man of influence in the town. He moved there in 1636, became Governor in 1643 and relocated his family to London towards the end of 1646.

Oliver Cromwell's House

Luckily, the family house still stands and is now a museum. I’d spent a lot of time learning about the man himself and walking around the house was quite emotive. On a practical level, it allowed me to understand the layout of the rooms and the positioning of the house both geographically and socially. Some of the interiors still have their original paneling and the inclusion of seventeenth century furniture gives it atmosphere, despite this somewhat creepy addition of an Oliver waxwork!

As soon as I decided to open the book in Ely, I knew the cathedral would feature in some way. It’s a spectacular building, made more so by the surrounding landscape. Ely isn’t a built up town even today, so it’s easy to imagine how impressive the cathedral would have been when Ely was just a village, and what a presence it must have been in people’s lives.

By the seventeenth century, many of the old medieval cathedrals had fallen into disuse and were beginning to crumble to ruin. They were used as meeting places, or markets and in some cases, such as St Paul’s in London, became hotbeds of sedition and debauchery. But Ely remained partly in use throughout. The structure overshadows Cromwell’s house and St Mary’s church where the Cromwell family worshipped; as a strict Puritan, Cromwell would not have welcomed this ever-present symbol of the old faith and all its associations.

The reputation of Cromwell as an iconoclast is well known but there’s no evidence that he was personally responsible for any damage to Ely Cathedral. It’s been claimed that he oversaw the demolition of the fallen tower and transept but in fact, this fell in the fourteenth century and most of the damage we see today was a result of Reformation zeal a hundred years before. A later Parliamentary campaign to demolish such buildings, never came to fruition.

Climbing the cathedral tower is a memorable experience. The fenland landscape falls away and a huge cloud-filled sky stretches out above. It gives a real sense of scale, quite different from on the ground. I couldn’t help wonder about the atmosphere of awe and superstition that might have surrounded these buildings and what it would have meant to the ordinary people that lived in the cathedral’s shadow during those tumultuous years.

The landscape surrounding Ely would have been quite different then too. By the mid-seventeenth century the Fens were being drained but the Isle of Ely was still surrounded by floodwaters at certain times of year. These days, there’s virtually nothing of the old fenland landscape left, but a visit to Wicken Fen gave me a good idea of how it might have looked. This National Trust nature reserve is doing great conservation work and is very evocative.

And what of the town itself? I began by studying old maps and images, plotting seventeenth century streets onto modern plans, to get a sense of layout and distances. Google maps can be a great help here, but nothing beats an actual visit. Ely is packed with history and walking the streets it’s not difficult to trace the old town seen in this 1610 map.

John Speed's map of Ely, 1610

I’ve also found that local museums, visitor centres and tourist information offices can house a wealth of information. I’ve discovered pamphlets and books written by local historians that give the kind of detail you can’t find elsewhere and lend a bit of colour – great for things like local myths and legends (and, significantly, the names of seventeenth century taverns!).

Turns out Oliver Cromwell’s Ely can still be found, just beneath the modern veneer. All that’s missing is the stink and clamour of seventeenth century England, and for that, we have imagination.


For more about Ely and its history, see these posts by fellow History Girls Adele Geras and Karen Maitland.


Oliver Cromwell's House

Ely Cathedral

Toppings Bookshop (for local history books and much more)


www.katherineclements.co.uk

Two Families in the 1640s - by Ann Swinfen

I have written three novels about two families, set in the seventeenth century. All have their roots in true events. Like most people, I suspect, I’m heartily thankful I did not live in that tempestuous period, yet it is endlessly fascinating. Social and religious pressures had been building up over the preceding hundred years or so, and in the seventeenth century – in England as elsewhere – they exploded. Ordinary men and women were better informed, even more literate, than before. Developments in printing and the foundation of many grammar schools had contributed to educating a population which was prepared to question the traditional religious establishment and the social hierarchy. The dictatorial stance of the early Stuart monarchs, especially Charles I, was the final spark which lit this particular powder keg.

Charles I

It is little wonder that the times gave rise to the revolutionary ideas of Levellers and Diggers, to confrontation between an elected Parliament and an anointed king, to clashes between Puritans and traditionalists. Opportunist land-grabbers fought with rural communities. Soldiers mutinied. Portents were observed. And innocent people – often old and poor – were sentenced to death for witchcraft.

The first of my novels set in this period, Flood, arose from my reading about how unscrupulous speculators seized the communally-held lands of East Anglia and undertook illegal drainage schemes with often disastrous results. The local people fought back, and amongst their leaders were women, many of whom were injured or imprisoned, some of whom died.

h

To compound the horrors of the situation, this was also the time of ‘licensed’ iconoclasts who smashed up parish churches, and of the monstrous career of Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General, whose fanatical search for victims ranged over the same area. 

Matthew Hopkins

I chose as my protagonist in Flood Mercy Bennington, the daughter of a yeoman farmer, who becomes one of the women leaders of the fenlanders, fighting for her family and village, trying to save their lands and livelihood. The second novel in the Fenland series takes the story further; Mercy continues the struggle in the country while her brother Tom travels to the Inns of Court in London, in search of the fenlanders’ charter granting their lands.

So how did I come across the account of this struggle in the first place? It was during my research into events in England in the mid seventeenth century for quite a different book. As part of the general research, it never became an element in that book but remained filed away in my memory, to emerge again later as the story of Flood.

And what was the other book? This Rough Ocean.

I suppose I’m like most writers: some ideas come swiftly and are written at once, others stay with you for a long time, quietly maturing, like a fine wine.

We need to backtrack many years here. My father-in-law had done some research into the Swinfen family of Swinfen in Staffordshire, partly spurred on by another descendent who worked for Burke’s Peerage. It emerged that the family was very well documented. A Norman knight, shortly after the Conquest, had married the heiress to the Swinfen estates and taken the name Swinfen in place of his own (de Auste). As landed armigerous gentry, they were well covered in the historical record and early genealogies. Like most families of their class, they carried out their duties as substantial landowners over the centuries – not aristocracy but holding an important position in their own shire.

Also like other gentry families, they began to rise under the Tudors and came to real prominence in the seventeenth century. An interesting link with my own Christoval Alvarez series of novels is John Swinfen (c.1560-1632), grandfather of one of the protagonists of This Rough Ocean. When Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was executed for treason in 1601, his widow, Frances Walsingham, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham (Christoval’s employer), was deprived of her lands and her son of his inheritance. John Swinfen helped her to recover them from James I. He also christened one of his sons Deveroxe just after Essex’s execution, which must have taken some courage.

Earl of Essex

However, it was this John’s grandson, John Swinfen or Swynfen (1613-1694) who is the most interesting. He attended Cambridge and Grey’s Inn, then became a Member of Parliament at a young age. He was therefore at the centre of the most dramatic events of the seventeenth century – born while Shakespeare was still alive, he lived through the reigns of James I, Charles I, the Protectorate, Charles II, James II and into that of William and Mary, and also through the Plague and Fire of London. Caught up in the struggles between Parliament and the king, he was imprisoned twice – once by Cromwell for opposing the killing of the king, once by James II on a trumped-up accusation of being involved in Monmouth’s rebellion. Ah, the dangers of being a Moderate! Both extremes hate you! He lived long enough to be one of the founders of the Whig (Liberal) Party.

Oliver Cromwell

James II

I found this entire career fascinating, and my husband plans to write the definitive biography, but I wanted to capture some of this rich life in a novel. Clearly the whole life was far too large a subject, so I decided to concentrate on the period immediately following Pride’s Purge. John and his Moderate colleagues had persuaded Parliament to vote to treat with the king on the basis of an agreement whereby most of the powers of government would be handed over from the king to Parliament. The Moderates rejoiced. An end to the Civil War at last, on terms favourable to Parliament.

Pride's Purge

The next morning, all those MPs who had supported the treaty were driven away from Parliament by armed soldiers of Cromwell’s army, commanded by Colonel Pride. The most important, including John, were imprisoned. The MPs not excluded were believed to be favourable to Cromwell and his supporters, but many soon followed their consciences and withdrew, leaving the mockery of the ‘Rump Parliament’.

My novel, This Rough Ocean, tells the story of the imprisoned John and of his wife Anne, who makes a dangerous winter journey home to Staffordshire with her young children. Once there she finds the estate and its people on the brink of collapse into ruin and starvation. She alone must take on her husband’s role, running the large estate and averting disaster. The two stories are intertwined, as husband and wife each fight for survival.

I have always been intrigued by the lives of ordinary people in the past. We hear much about great rulers and men of power, but dig a little deeper and there is a great deal to be discovered about everyone else, the poor, the quiet farmers, the craftsmen, the minor players in the large events. In Flood, Betrayal and This Rough Ocean I’ve sought to tell the stories of those turbulent years of the seventeenth century, based on two families – a yeoman family and a gentry family – ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.

Ann Swinfen

http://www.annswinfen.com

OLIVER CROMWELL...a historical character I can't warm to. By Adèle Geras

It's not his fault, it's mine. It all began when I was very young indeed and my history education came from the wonderful '1066 and all that," In this version of our island story, the Roundheads were 'right but repulsive' and the Cavaliers were 'wrong but romantic' and I knew which ones I preferred, just from the way they dressed. I've always had a soft spot for snazzy dressers (see my previous post about Marie Antoinette) and Oliver Cromwell didn't stand a chance judged by such frivolous standards.

It's extraordinary how many historical periods one can simply miss out altogether, even with a very good history teacher (Miss Butcher, or DWU about whom I've written on this blog). Unless you're studying history for A level, vast tracts of time just don't get looked at, and you have to pick up what you can from books, other people, representations on television, movies etc.

So what, without recourse to Wikipedia or any scholarly tome, but just from my general knowledge, so to speak, do I know about Oliver Cromwell? He had warts. He told a painter to paint him 'warts and all' and that phrase has entered the language. He signed Charles I's death warrant. He sat in various parliaments as an MP for Huntingdon and later for Cambridge. He did a lot to make Parliament into what it is today. He put down rebellions in Ireland with spectacular cruelty. He persecuted Catholics. There was something about his head...

From looking at Wikipedia, I discover that he lived briefly in Ely and his house is now the Tourist Information office.

He is descended from Thomas Cromwell;s family through Thomas's sister, Katherine. Some years after his death and burial in Westminster Abbey,after his state funeral, there was a king on the throne of England again and he was disinterred and his body beheaded and treated appallingly and his remains now reside in Sydney Sussex College in Cambridge. There seems to be online controversy about his head, ..... There are, surprisingly,lots of representations of him in popular culture. He's depicted in a Howard Brenton play by Douglas Henshall. Dominic West played him in a series called The Devil's Whore on television. Antonia Fraser has written a book about him. I feel I ought to be more interested and engaged but somehow I am not. Of his distant relative, Thomas Cromwell, I can never read enough, but Oliver still remains for me, a closed book. If Hilary Mantel ever wrote about him, I might change my mind but for now, here he is, warts and all and not my favourite historical character by a mile.