Mediterranean Time Travel

by Caroline Lawrence

Mediterranean countries are wonderful for catching glimpses of the past. Not only can you wander among extensive ancient ruins, but there are still elements of the past visible in daily life all around you.

Boy shovels sawdust into hammam furnace

In the souks of Morocco you can still find coppersmiths, acrobats and pavement dentists, just as you could have done in Roman times. We know from primary sources that ancient Roman tourists also endured annoying beggars, pushy shopkeepers, unwanted guides, unscrupulous innkeepers and overpriced food, just like today's tourists. A door opened in the Fes souk, and I saw a boy shovelling sawdust into the furnace of a hammam the same way bath-slaves would have fed a Roman hypocaust.

In Greece you can still see peasant women sharing donkey's backs with piles of firewood. You can sit at a table in the cool shade of an ancient plane tree sipping resinated wine from a copper beaker and eating olives, 'a taste as old as cold water', as Lawrence Durrell writes. 

St Panteleimon with ex votos on Kalymnos

In holy places, saints have taken over the duties of the gods. On the island of Kalymnos in a cave sacred to Panteleimon, a saint who heals, you can see votive plaques of tin or copper offered for the afflicted part of the body. Such votive offerings go right back to Greek and Roman times, when suppliants offered clay parts of the body to remind the healing god Asklepios which of their bits needed healing. On another part of Kalymnos, you can buy little nuggets of ivory coloured resin. This is mastiha, an ancient version of chewing gum, still recommended to freshen the breath and calm stomach upsets.

A roadside shrine on the Evil Stairs

On the Greek mainland, the road from Corinth to Athens is virtually the same route Theseus took 3000 years ago. You can still see a stretch of road called the Evil Stairs (Kaka Skala). It was here that the robber Sciron forced travellers to wash his feet. Then he would kick them over the precipice to be eaten by his pet turtle. Our taxi driver knew they were called Evil Stairs but didn't know why. He had never even taken the coastal road, having always gone on the modern bypass. Along the coast road are many shrines. Some are dedicated to those who died on the road, but others are just shrines to Mary and Jesus.

In most Mediterranean countries, taxi drivers and truckers still hang votive charms from their rearview mirrors. Roman cart drivers would have done the same thing. At the stern of every Roman ship was a small shrine to Venus, protector of sailors.

Moroccan version of a chariot or cisium

In Italy the locals recruited to excavate Pompeii in the summer months rush to gather handfuls of wildflowers and weeds, the same medicinal herbs Pliny the Elder recommends in his Natural History. Or they might find the iron remains of an ancient Roman hoe which perfectly fits the wooden haft of their zappa at home.

fango is Italian for "mud"

Today's spas and retreats go right back to the hot springs of Baiae and other Roman sites, where the rich would flock to cure their ills and indulge in orgies. On the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples I took a 'fango bath' in glutinous black mud to the smell of suphur. Is this an experience Pliny the Elder might once have experienced? I'm sure it was!

In 21^st century Rome, after a day exploring Roman ruins, you can sit in the Piazza Navona  (built on the site of a chariot racecourse) and watch the modern Romans promenade. It's not hard to tell which are descended from patricians, which from plebs and which from peasants. In ancient Rome, the patron had power and he looked after his clients. In return they did favours for him. The word padrone means godfather. I will not even mention the M-word. 

Roman fountain

The first century poet Martial writes 'All Rome is at my bed-head.' Anyone who has spent a summer night in a Roman hotel room with no air-conditioning will sympathise. Through the open window, you can hear arguing spouses, amorous lovers, crying babies, barking dogs and loud music. A street sweeper sounds like he's right in the room with you. Other sounds that won't have changed in 2000 years include the spatter of a fountain as the water strikes the cobblestones, the piercing cries of swifts wheeling overhead, a distant bray of a donkey and the incessant shimmering cry of the cicadas in summer.

Bull ring in Spain before the show

Ancient Romans didn't go to the cinema to watch violent, bloody films. Instead they went to the Colosseum to watch the real thing. The closest modern equivalent are the bull fights still held in Spain. Just as in Roman times you would have an opening procession, musicians playing in the stands, touts selling cushions, drinks and nuts, the waving of handkerchiefs to show approval, the raking of bloody sand between bouts, and the movie-star status of popular gladiators or beast-fighters. These bullrings are mini replicas of the ancient Roman amphitheatres, sometimes even down to the garlands draped from awnings. 

Can you see Byron's graffiti?

On the walls of buildings in Pompeii and Ostia, if you know where to look, you can still see graffiti scratched or painted on stone or plaster: LUCIUS LOVES JULIA Or: DON'T PEE HERE, STINGING NETTLES! Or: VOTE FOR GAIUS, FRIEND TO SHOPKEEPERS and on the marble column of the temple to Poseidon at Cape Sounion you can find the classic grafitti: BYRON WAS HERE

My Travel Guide

L.P. Hartley famously said 'The past is a foreign country', but I see it the other way round. Every time I travel to another country – especially the Mediterranean – I go back to the past.

Caroline Lawrence writes history-mystery books for kids (and secretly for grown-ups). Her Mediterranean Travel Guide, From Ostia to Alexandria With Flavia Gemina, is now available on Kindle. 

Quickie Divorce the Medieval Way by Karen Maitland

Some years ago I went to Nigeria to teach Technical English in a College of Agriculture. I was assured I would be provided with suitable text-books supplied by the World Bank, which turned out to be Cold Comfort Farm, presumably on the grounds it sounded ‘agricultural’, and The Mayor of Casterbridge. It took me quite some time to convince the students that wife-selling was not a regular feature of British society.  But, of course, it wasn’t so long ago that was. Ordinary people throughout history have frequently been at odds with the legal and religious authorities on marriage and divorce and often come up with their own unofficial solutions.

Handfasting started as a betrothal ceremony in Saxon times when the couple would swear to be faithful to each other for a year, after which the engagement was either annulled or a full wedding would take place. In the Middle Ages it became a lay wedding ceremony performed by the couple and their families without a priest, who often couldn't afford all the various scots and taxes involved in an legal wedding. And if man’s wife ran off, or a woman’s husband had gone missing in war, the Church deemed they were still married unless they could prove their spouse was dead. If they could not, the abandoned partner could not remarry, so handfasting was also a way round this.

Likewise, wife-selling became the poor-man’s divorce. It had been unofficially practiced in the England since the 1400’s when it became increasingly difficult for those without money or power to obtain a divorce. It was not really a sale, but it was governed by all the market rules in order to make it binding in the eyes of the local community.

All three parties would agree the sale in advance. On market day, the wife would be led to the market place by a halter round her waist, and sold in the manner of a mock auction. The market officials, who verified the sale of any item in the market, could then act as witnesses that the former husband was free to remarry. From the 1800’s the authorities tried to stamp down on it, which in 1847, led to curious trial in the respectable little market town of Barton-upon-Humber in North Lincolnshire.

An announcement was made that the wife of George Wray of Barrow would be offered for sale by public auction in Barton Market Place. She was duly led there with the halter round her waist and sold to William Harwood, waterman, for 1s.3½d. The sum having been handed over and witnessed, the money was returned to William Harwood in the former of ale to celebrate his new union. All parties, included the woman, were said to be delighted.

However, the celebrations were short lived, for both men were summoned to appear before magistrates in Kirton-in-Lindsey on a charge of misdemeanour to which they pleaded guilty. Not that they could dispute it, considering the whole town had witnessed the transaction. They were sentenced to two months imprisonment after which they returned home to their new brides.

But William’s hopes of a peaceful marriage were once again dashed, when he was sued by Mr Thornton of Hull for a debt of 3s. 6d incurred by his wife. Harwood told the judge he was not responsible for his wife’s debt saying when he ‘bought his wife he had not bought her debts with her’. The bemused judge, plainly unaware of the magistrate’s case, demanded to know what he meant and the wife stepped forward explaining helpfully that ‘she had been bought in the usual way.’

It was accepted among ordinary people that neither the old or new husband could be pursued for the debts of the wife, if a ‘petticoat wedding’ had taken place showing that the wife had taken nothing from her former marriage and brought neither debts nor goods to the new one.

I imagine there are quite a few celebrities, forced to pay out thousands in divorce settlements, who look back with envy to the ‘good old days.’ On the other hand they may like to take comfort from the knowledge that, in a custom dating back to the 1300’s, there were two villages in England which annually awarded a flitch of bacon to the couple who had ‘not repented of their marriage for a year and a day.’ One was Great Dunmow in Essex, the other was Wychnor in Staffordshire. However, throughout all those centuries the Wychnor flitch has never once been awarded!

 

 

 

 

 

An interview with Livi Michael by Adèle Geras

Livi Michael and I share a birthday, though she's much younger than I am. She was born in Manchester in 1960 and her first novel, Under a Thin Moon, was published in 1992. Since then she's written for both adults and children. Her Frank the Hamster books are for younger readers but she's also published historical novels for older children (see the interview below.) She has a doctorate from the University of Leeds where her thesis was about Lewis Grassic Gibbons's A Scots Quair in the context of working class fiction. She's taught creative writing and English literature at Sheffield Hallam University and and is at present teaching these subjects at Manchester Metropolitan University. She lectures and gives workshops all over the country. She lives on the edge of the moors in Saddleworth.

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When I read her latest book, MALKIN CHILD I was very impressed and as well as reviewing it (my review appears at the end of this interview) I wanted to ask Livi some questions the answers to which I thought would interest readers of this blog. I sent these questions by email and here reproduce them, and Livi's answers to them.

AG: You've written many different kinds of novel throughout your career, and you write for both adults and children. I love your historical novels in particular and you've brought into the light areas and periods not often written about in fiction, such as the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution (in THE WHISPERING ROAD.) Were you always interested in history? Or was there some other impulse which led you to write about the kinds of things you do write about?

LM: Yes, I've always been interested in history and historical fiction – I loved the novels of Rosemary Sutcliffe and Henry Treece as a child, and took a long time to decide whether I wanted to do English or History at university. These days I usually find that the best stories are often the ones I don’t make up – history is full of amazing stories and I just see myself as presenting or interpreting these in a particular way for the reader.

AG: You are very good at mixing the very real and gritty with an element of magic or the supernatural. Does this create particular problems? How do you overcome these?

LM: I have been known as a writer of ‘realist’ fiction but my idea of realism doesn’t exclude magic or the supernatural. For many people, including the ones who were persecuted for witchcraft, what we think of as ‘supernatural’ was just an accepted part of their lives.

AG: I think of you as very much a northern writer. Is this fair? How large does your own background/upbringing/education loom in what you've written?

LM: Yes, I think I’m a northern writer – haunted in a particular way by its landscapes and by certain voices. My grandmother, for instance, spoke a Lancashire dialect that no longer exists.

AG: The anniversary of the Pendle Witch trials has brought us your excellent new short novel MALKIN'S CHILD It's marketed as being for children and indeed would be a good introduction for them. But as an adult I found it particularly chilling and hard-hitting and this without any grotesque or detailed descriptions of violence. Is less is more a tenet of yours? How did you approach this harrowing story? Was writing it your idea or someone else's?

LM: I was commissioned to write the book by the Litfest organization which has set up the imprint Foxtail in order to publish a few books that commemorate aspects of Lancastrian history. MALKIN CHILD is the third of these books, and, like the others, is beautifully produced. I said yes to the commission straight away, because I was immediately interested in the story, but very quickly realised that there were difficulties. Firstly, it is a very dark story to tell for children, which is why it hasn’t been done for this age group before. No happy ending here. These people were actually sent to their deaths on the testimony of a nine-year-old girl. Secondly, it could have been a huge story. in order to get a clearer picture, you need to go back to the Reformation, and then consider the changes brought about by King James I, and other major factors, geographical and social. But I was asked to write quite a short book, of no more than 20,000 words! Thirdly, if you tell children you are writing a story about witches, in all probability they will expect something like Harry Potter and I didn’t want to disappoint them, but there is a real story here which is powerful and gripping in its own right. Less is more is a good one, Adele – I suppose I saw my job as allowing it to speak for itself. But I really knew I could tell the story when I first heard Jennet’s voice in my mind.

AG:Do you read historical fiction? If so, can you tell us what your favourites are? Would you say that there are writers who have influenced the way you write?

LM: I do read historical fiction and think that some of the best novels around on the contemporary scene are historical – Colm Toibin, Hilary Mantel, Rose Tremain, Sebastian Barry. I've also just read Andrew Miller’s PURE, which I thought was excellent. Also there are your own novels for young adults such as TROY which I loved.

AG: That's very kind of you, Livi. Have you any plans to write further historical novels? And if not, can you tell us what you will be doing next?

LM: I am writing historical fiction at the moment for adults and have just hopefully got an agent interested. Different period this time – 15th century!

I'm very grateful to Livi for answering my questions and now I'll add a brief review of her latest book, which I do urge everyone to read, especially if you've read THE DAYLIGHT GATE by Jeanette Winterson, which deals with the same subject matter in quite a different way.

MALKIN CHILD is a short, beautifully produced novel in which Michael does the seemingly impossible. She finds a way of telling a story of witchhunting and huge suffering and violence in such a way that children can read it both as a tale of the supernatural, and as an accurate depiction of impoverished life in Lancashire hundreds of years ago. She does this sublty, at no time revelling in horrors but because she has found the voice of a child with which to tell the tale, the events of that time are brought very close to us indeed. The great thing about this book is that all parts of it: the content, the manner of its writing, the brevity of it, come together to make a novella that punches above its weight. I can't recommend it enough and to give you a flavour of Michael's style and whet your appetite, I wll quote a passage very near the beginning of the book:

The walls were black with smoke because we had to keep Our Granny's old bones warm. That's her own bones, of course,and the ones she kept in a bag and shook from time to time to keep them lively.

The Autograph Book - Katherine Langrish

This is an autograph book which was given to my great-aunt, Minnie Davies, by her mother, on January 13th 1911.  Or possibly not: the date below looks  like 13th January1912; it's so close to the corner of the paper that it's hard to tell: but quite a lot of the autographs inside the book are dated 1911.  Which is baffling - unless Minnie's mother gave her the book in 1911, but didn't get around to signing it herself for months? These things do happen.

The book is covered in soft purple suede, with differently coloured pages in pale pink, cream and blue, and people seem to have dotted their autographs around the pages at random, maybe choosing by colour.

A lot of the verses inside are somewhat Hallmark in quality.  "All the sweet things that the birdies/Twittering on the dewy spray/Wish each other in the springtime/I wish you every day," writes 'Auntie Kate' on September 12th 1911.  But 'Uncle Will', on the same day, writes more sternly underneath: "Nature often enshrines gallant and noble hearts in weak bosoms - oftenest, God bless her! in female breasts." (Dickens).

A month or so later, the splendidly named Ethelwyn Strongman is exhorting Minnie thus:

"May she to whom this book belongs/Few troubles have if any/Her hours of grief may they be few/her sunny moments many.

Be a good girl/Lead a good life,/Choose a good husband/Make a good wife."

Pretty soon, though, the entries become more elaborate, and humour makes a welcome appearance with this oil painting - yes, oils! - of a joke:  The Burning Question.  A couple hidden behind a parasol...

 ... and a little boy who interrupts the idyll with the burning question: 'Have you any cigarette cards?'

People clearly went to great lengths to shine in autograph books.   There isn't a single example, in the entire book, of 'merely' a signature.  Everyone wrote a verse or drew a picture.  Did people have a fund of little verses or jokes at the ready, for the next time someone whipped out an album?  I suspect they did.  In 1913 Jock Jowitt of  'Kirkee', somewhere in India (?) must have been happy to have found this simple no-fuss solution:

One half-anna stamp of the King-Emperor, and the simple pun, 'By gum it's stuck'.  Others, however, took the postage-stamp solution to elaborate lengths:

but whoever did this one forgot to add their name.

Romance creeps in. No importunate little boys in this pen and ink picture signed 'Love LL Gordon, 1914'.

And there's a poem from G H C in March 1913:

'You can't stop the sun from beaming/You can't stop the birds' refrain./You can't stop yourself from dreaming,/You can't stop the drops of rain./You can't stop the stars from gleaming/Up in the heaven above,/And you can't stop your heart from beating/For the boy you love.'  It could almost be a Cole Porter lyric.

But the War to End All Wars was looming.  Where was JF heading from or to, in 1916, I wonder, when he paused to carefully draw and paint this?

And the war actually enters the autograph book on these pages here: two carefully executed illustrations by P.V. Bastin, 4th Devon Regt, dated 14.1.15.  The left hand page is a watercolour painting of a ketch entitled 'Running Into Harbour'.  The right hand page, in pen and ink, is labelled in meticulous, tiny handwriting:
'Whitby Abbey (Bombarded by the Germans, Dec. 1914).  What was he thinking of when he drew these?

The last entry in the book, although not the last chronologically, is a set of jingoistic dialect verses entitled - ominously, I think -

'The 'Great War 1914 - 15 - '

Aw! I've listed, mai dear, for a sawjer
Ess, I've tooked the ole shillin' for sure
They've give me a kit and they've give me a gun,
And I'm gwain away to the War.

... An' I'll bet ee a pound to a vardun [farthing] cake
The when us comes marchin' back,
The maidens'll all turn their smiles to me
And give 'Molly Coddlins' the sack.

So blaw up the boogle and sound the Volleen ['the Fall In']
My how they bagginets shine,
'Tion! Move to the right in four.  'Form fours'.
Right. Forward, into the line.

Dalhousie July - 1915 - Geo. E Hart.

I just hope he really did come marching back...


Photos: copyright Katherine Langrish 2012

Poppies by Eve Edwards

A couple of days ago, my children and I were at Paddington on a half term trip to London.  Sadly, a fatality on the line had sent the trains into chaos, so we had plenty of time to watch the veterans selling poppies for Remembrance Day.  I sent my children over to get theirs from the one with the most medals.  He took a shine to my pretty sixteen year old daughter and started telling her his story.  A naval veteran, he had a picture in his poppy tray of a kamikaze plane like the one that hit his ship. What is for her subject for a history lesson, he had lived through.  She was mightily impressed.

When my three returned from this impromptu brush with the past, I told them we had picked our veteran well as he was in the service their ancestors joined.  Their great-grandfather had been in the navy throughout the war on a military gunboat.  He had had his hat shot off his head in the Channel, been present at Dunkirk, and spent many months patrolling the Straits of Messina.  And his father (their great-great grandfather) had been at the Battle of Jutland during World War I - the most important naval engagement of that war.  The navy runs strongly in the family tree on my father's side so I hoped they felt just a tingle of a sea shanty in their genes as they listened to our lovely veteran.

In 2014 we will be remembering the centenary marking the beginning of the First World War.  Such encounters with WWI veterans are no longer possible, though many families still have memories of conversations with members who lived through it.  Even the veterans of 1939-1945 are getting thin on the ground, providing the obituary pages of the broadsheet press with fantastic and inspiring material as many of them pass on at a good old age.  This is perhaps why some of us History Girls are turning to these conflicts for our novels, a sense of capturing the moment while these memories are still available for us to tap.  You'll see from the books in the sidebar that we have some well known writers in this era.  I'll be joining the First World War crew next year with my next book, called Dusk (from Razorbill - a Puffin imprint for teens).

Officer's Kit - WW1 - can't live without tea!

My inspiration came from the source I've described: capturing the family reminiscences, most particularly of my East End grandmother, and using them as a way of telling the story of that conflict for the teens who endured it.  Did you know for example that London had a Blitz in that war too?  As you read this blog, you probably did but I've found most teens I've talked to only know about the war in the Western front sense, in many cases thanks to War Horse and Private Peaceful.  I'll be blogging more about this over the next few months but needless to say, buying a poppy this year has meant more than ever to me after months of research.

Do you have any family memories handed down from either of the World Wars?  If so, do tell me about them in your comments as I am always interested in these gems that didn't make it into the history books!

www.eve-edwards.co.uk

Interview with Cornelia Funke - Lucy Inglis

In October, I was lucky enough to interview author Cornelia Funke for the History Girls. Cornelia is the author of many books for children and young adults, including the Dragonrider series and the Inkheart trilogy, the first of which became the subject of a film in 2008.  Her latest book is Ghost Knight, set in Salisbury and starring Jon Hartgill. Jon narrates the book, looking back on his eleven year old self from his late teens. Young Jon is a spoiled boy, sent away to his late father’s old boarding school because of his jealousy directed towards his mother’s new boyfriend. He arrives in Salisbury and takes up a place the cathedral school, where he soon gets more than he bargained for; an ancient grudge against the male members of his family brings ghosts back from the grave. Soon, Jon and his new friend Ella are in danger. They turn to another ghost for help, that of William Longespee, the Plantagenet bastard brother of Richard and John. Longespee is a medieval knight, handsome, armoured, chivalrous and in centuries-old mourning for his dead wife, Ela of Salisbury, interred in Lacock Abbey. Yet history tells us Longespee has a chequered past, filled with betrayal. Is Longespee the man Jon and Ella take him for? Or will he betray them in death, as he betrayed his brothers in life?

I’ll be honest, I’m a big fan of Cornelia Funke and jumped at the chance to interview her. I had written down a long list of questions about the book and her writing process, but in the end it felt more natural to follow the conversational hare. Her books are for the 9+ market, but possess deceptively complex structures and address difficult emotions. Ghost Knight is no exception: Jon is not immediately likeable, revealed honestly by his appealing older self as narrator. All Funke’s books have a strong plot and drive the reader forward, and again, Ghost Knight keeps you turning the pages. I asked Cornelia how much of this structure she planned before writing. About half was the answer, with the other half being allowed free rein. 

This led on to the intriguing choice of William Longespee as both Jon’s hero, and the hero of the book. There is, throughout, the sense the Longespee may not be the shining protector he appears and may, as so often happens with our childhood heroes, let Jon down. He entered into a marriage of convenience with a child (Ela was anywhere between nine and twelve at the time), but history also tells us they lived happily and Ela bore him as many as ten children, all of whom survived. After his grisly death at the hands of a poisoner she refused to marry again and retired to Lacock Abbey, becoming beloved amongst her followers there. Amongst the conflicted Plantagenet brood, William was no exception: violent, self-serving, charismatic and passionate. His life was lived in the extremes of warfare, deception and royal politics. Not, on the surface, the man to play the hero in a book for young adults. I asked Cornelia first, what made her choose Longespee, and second, how obligated did she feel to a man history has not painted kindly? ‘Very’ was the immediate answer! Longespee came as a kind of compulsory gift after Cornelia was captivated by Salisbury on a visit to England. She researched the character thoroughly (I sensed throughout the interview that meticulous research and planning are what allows her to let that ‘other half’ of the book write itself), and it really does feel as if she knows him. She summons him as a youngish man perhaps thirty or so, in love with his wife, torn by his compromises. I was intrigued by this choice; William died as a battle-hardened old war dog of around fifty. This was part of the obligation Cornelia felt towards him, that he was still a young man, trying to make things right. The quest for William to find his lost heart is the grail quest of the book. It becomes Jon’s journey too, and in helping William to be reunited with his heart (and of course, his wife), Jon finds himself.

I liked very much the way Funke does not shy from the compromised reality of a medieval knight’s life. The chivalry and glamour were there to put a gloss on medieval warfare. One of my favourite moments in the book is when Jon experiences war through William’s memories. The recreation of the horrors of a medieval battlefield brings a new level to the story: it takes a children’s ghost story into the realms of real danger and is a wonderful achievement. The danger isn’t only physical, but emotional. When I put this to Cornelia she agreed, and said she had tried hard to create that feeling of true danger. Children have become accustomed to peril, through video games or television, but the idea of mortal danger for young boys on a battlefield was something she deliberately summoned. Gone are Jon’s petty concerns at the outset of the book. He must not only acquit himself with honour in what lies ahead, but protect his own Ella. 

The story works on so many levels, and is a compelling and satisfying read for fans of YA fiction, of all ages. Cornelia Funke’s skill in rendering it so is clear, but I think the sheer effort she puts into her books is cleverly concealed. Even the illustrations scattered throughout the pages are a reflection of the care lavished on this story, and Orion have produced a beautiful book. Cornelia Funke’s standards are high: her earlier career was as an illustrator and she had definite ideas about how the characters and settings should appear. 

Finally, eager to keep chatting but anxious not to outstay my welcome on a busy day, I asked Cornelia if she believes in ghosts. Her reply was that she had never seen one, but that there are many things we cannot explain. An expert in the paranormal (whom she had contacted when researching the book - see what I mean about dedication?) had once described ghosts to her as recordings of a moment in time when someone, somewhere, felt something so extreme it became implanted in the fabric of that particular place. 

As I got up to leave, Cornelia signed my copy of Ghost Knight. As she opened the front cover revealing the crimson endpapers, I was reminded of Inkheart’s Mo Folchart, a bookbinder and master storyteller who brings characters from books alive by reading aloud. Mo thought that all good books should have endpapers in ‘dark red or dark blue...when you open the book it’s like going to the theatre. First you see the curtain. Then it’s pulled aside and the show begins’. I wondered for a moment at such a happy accident and was about to mention it, before realising I would be telling a master storyteller something she already knew.

Lovell our dog by Mary Hoffman

Minster Lovell Hall ruins photo by John Salmon

"The Catte, the Ratte and Lovell our dogge rulyth all England under a hogge"

So ran the lampoon pinned to the door of St. Paul's cathedral in July 1484. It was a dangerous time for political satire. Little over a year had elapsed since the Duke of Gloucester had ascended the throne as Richard the Third, after the death of his older brothers, Edward the Fourth and George Duke of Clarence, and while his nephews, Edward and Richard, were still alive.

Whether or not you believe that Richard ordered the murder of the Princes in the Tower - and History Girl Laurie Graham doesn't - there was already a strong opposition to him. And one of its number was William Collingbourne, who wrote the squib above.

It's always stuck with me as a little prose earworm but more so since we moved to Oxfordshire twelve years ago. The Catte was William Catesby, at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Commons (George Osborne and John Bercow in one - the mind boggles). His family crest was a white cat. The Ratte was Sir Richard Ratcliffe, a Knight of the Garter and High Sheriff of Westmorland.

And Lovell our dogge? Well he was Francis, Viscount Lovell, whose family emblem was a silver wolf and whose family home was just down the road from where I live now. That's it above: Minster Lovell Hall, now a picturesque ruin by the river, where I last went for a picnic on the one hot day of summer, when it looked like The Grande Jatte. It was built around 1440.

The "hogge" was of course King Richard  himself, whose coat of arms showed two white boars.

The three men were all close associates of the King, who definitely visited Minster Lovell Hall (there is a room in the Swan Inn opposite where it is claimed he also stayed).


William Collingbourne, a Commissioner of the Peace, was a supporter of Henry Tudor, who was wisely living in France while building up a following in England. Collingbourne, unwisely for him as it turns out, wrote to Henry encouraging him to land in England. By the autumn of 1484 Collingbourne had been arrested and he was tried and convicted of High Treason in early December. His sentence was hanging, drawing and quartering.

I recently had a brisk exchange of views with a friend on Facebook about what "drawing" meant in the context of such a sentence. You can read about the various theories.  Ian Mortimer, who will be a guest here next year, believes that it did not always mean disembowelling, but being "drawn" to the place of execution on a hurdle.

Still, there was no doubt about what it meant in Collingbourne's case; a Tudor historian John Stow tells us:

"After having been hanged, he was cut down immediately and his entrails were then extracted and thrown into the fire, and all this was so speedily done that when the executioners pulled out his heart
he spoke and said, 'Oh Lord Jesus, yet more trouble!'"

The execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger 1470s

A severe punishment for a little lampoon, maybe, but it was much more likely to have been the contact with Henry that condemned him. (And the following year his great enemy, King Richard was dead too)

The fate of Francis Lovell is more mysterious and romantic. For a long time it was believed that he had died at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, fighting alongside his friend King Richard. Then there were stories that he had fled the field and fought in another battle in the north in 1487 in support of Lambert Simnel. But in 1708 the skeleton of an adult male was found in a secret chamber at Minster Lovell Hall and the legend grew up that Francis had died in hiding.


The novelist in me would love to believe it and the ruins at the Hall certainly cry out to be featured in such a story but it has been pointed out that, since the mansion was given to Jasper Tudor, Henry's uncle after the victory at Bosworth,  it is most unlikely that the Viscount would have had any loyal servant still there to give him a hiding place.

If the bones recently found in a Leicester car park turn out to be those of Richard the Third, after DNA testing for a match with a descendant via his sister Anne of York, they won't tell us anything about his life, other than that he died in battle, still less anything about his three boon companions.

And alas  the skeleton of 1708 crumbled to dust as soon as it was brought to light, long before DNA testing existed. It isn't known if there are any descendants whose DNA could have been used to check it.

So Lovell our dogge lives on only in the ruins and my earworm but at least he is not entirely forgotten.