Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 143

A Yorkist princess and a Borgia Pope

On August 11, 1467, Mary, the second daughter of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville was born. Sadly, Mary died in 1482, a few months shy of her fifteenth birthday. She was buried at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, where her father would be buried the following year after his own untimely death. In 1813, Mary’s lead coffin was opened and it was discovered that she had pale gold hair. Supposedly, those opening the coffin said that her eyes were open and they were blue, but her body disintegrated as soon as it was exposed to the air.
And on August 11, 1492, Jeremy Irons became Pope. Whoops, I mean Rodrigo Borgia was elected as Pope Alexander VI. The Borgia Pope was one of the most controversial in the history of the papacy, and Jeremy is, of course, magnificent in the Showtime series, The Borgias. I didn’t know enough about the Borgias to have their screenwriters’ liberties do damage to my blood pressure—unlike The (shudder) Tudors. I am sure they did indeed take such liberties, but I was rather surprised when I did a bit of Borgia reading—out of morbid curiosity—for some of the improbable events I was sure were sheer fantasy were actually true; for example, Lucrezia Borgia really did escape her first marriage to Giovanni Sforza on the grounds of his purported impotence.
Well, back to the 12th century. But as Edward IV said when he was forced to flee England in 1470, “I shall return!” Or was that General Macarthur?

On the road to Poitiers

I managed to escape from Bordeaux, but now I’m stuck in Saintes, so I will be MIA on Facebook and Goodreads and my blog till I can get Joanna and Berengaria safely to Poitiers. Good luck to all in the path of those violent storms today. Tristan has been wearing his thunder-shirt all morning, which means I’ve had to keep a hawk-eye on Holly, who is set on stripping him of it….sigh.

Caesar, Saladin, and the white wolf

In the non-medieval world, Caesar defeated Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus on August 9, 48 BC; Pompey fled to Egypt, which, of course, did not end well for him. In the medieval world, not much happened, though. Wikipedia says that Saladin’s father died on August 9, 1173, but a Wikipedia report is not exactly like Moses bringing the Ten Commandments down from Mt. Sinai and I don’t have time to verify this for myself.
So, I thought I’d range further afield today and give my fellow dog-lovers an update on the white wolf. For new readers, Tristan is a white German shepherd that I adopted last year from Echo White Shepherd Rescue, a wonderful organization that has saved hundreds of dogs from death. Tristan’s Echo Angel pulled him from a high-kill Florida shelter just hours before he was to be put down, and then 13 wonderful volunteers drove him up the coast to me as we followed his odyssey on Facebook. He was painfully skinny and bald in patches from near starvation, but he has made a remarkable recovery, morphing from a frail senior shepherd into a 95 lb Godzilla. He’d had a rough life before Echo rescued him, but he adjusted very well to such creature comforts as air conditioning, a soft bed for his aging bones, and the occasional scoop of ice cream. But one psychic scar from his Florida years remains, his fear of thunderstorms. He was an outside dog, chained up 24-7 in a backyard, so it is all too easy to understand how he developed this phobia. I can always tell when a storm is coming, for suddenly I have a second shadow, sometimes a second skin. During really bad storms, he has been known to dive into the bathtub, not showing Olympic form but still an impressive feat for a dog with arthritis. At the suggestion of friends, I bought him a Thunder-shirt, which is supposed to sooth his fears by constricting them. I am a huge fan of the writer Temple Grandin, who has written several books about her struggles with Asperger’s Syndrome, and she said that a similar device helped to control her panic attacks. I am happy to report that the Thunder-shirt seems to be helping Tristan, at least somewhat. He is never going to be a happy camper during a storm, but we’ve had some very violent ones this summer, and I really think the Thunder-shirt has eased some of his anxieties. He hasn’t been diving into the bathtub as much, for example. The only fly in the ointment is Holly, his little groupie, the spaniel I adopted last December, who is as great a fan of Tristan as I am of George Clooney. The first time I tried the Thunder-shirt, I’d turn around and it would be loose and flapping in the wind. I’d re-attach it, and then it would happen again. Baffled, I kept vigil after the third time, and caught Holly in the act of tugging on it till the Velcro straps loosened. Apparently she prefers him in all his naked splendor, and has been sulking now that I’ve spoiled her fun. But for those of you with nervous dogs and no crazy little spaniels, I do recommend giving the Thunder-shirt a try. Any one else have stories about whether it worked or not?
PS I won’t be around much for a while, as I am bogged down in a challenging scene at Ombriere, Eleanor’s palace at Bordeaux. And my friend, Koby the Omnipotent, confirmed the death date for Saladin’s father!

The Bishop and the Queen

A slow medieval news day for this date. On August 8, 1171, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, conniving younger brother of King Stephen, died in his episcopal palace. I always thought he was a contender for the title bestowed on the French king, Louis XI, “the Universal Spider,” as I saw him as the driving force behind Stephen’s usurpation of the Empress Maude’s crown. He was also a self-server, bouncing back and forth between Stephen and Maude like a wayward Ping-Pong ball. But in his later years, he seems to have developed a conscience, possibly because he’d lost his sight and realized he needed to mend fences with the Almighty.
And on August 8, 1503, King James IV of Scotland wed Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, in Edinburgh. Margaret was only 13 and her mother had died just a few months before her journey to Scotland. Her husband was not faithful to her, and her dower castle of Stirling contained the royal nursery for his seven illegitimate children. There was a lot of tragedy in her life. Her first son was born in 1507, which indicates James waited until she was at a suitable age for sexual relations, as was usually the case in the MA; the birth of Henry Tudor to his thirteen year old mother, Margaret Beaufort, was fortunately not the norm. Margaret’s first son died within a year, and a few months later, she gave birth to a daughter who died that same day. A second son, named Arthur, was born in 1509 and died the following year. She had a stillborn daughter in 1512, and another son born in 1514, after his father was slain at Flodden in 1513, who died in 1515. She did have one surviving son, who’d become James V. She forfeited the regency when she took a second husband, the Earl of Angus in 1514; this marriage would end in bitter enmity, and her third marriage would fail, too. She was unpopular with the Scots, who felt that she was partial to English interests. When her brother Henry VIII tried to gain control of her sons, James and Alexander, the latter by the Earl of Angus, the Scots took both boys away from her. Having lost her regency, her sons, and her revenues, she fled to England in 1515, where she nearly died giving birth to a daughter. She was still extremely ill when her two year old son, Alexander, died, and for a time they kept the news from her in her weakened state. The remainder of her life continued to be turbulent, with estrangements from her brother Henry and her third husband and her son James. She died of a stroke in 1541, at age 52. While she found little happiness in Scotland, the Stuart line that would eventually rule England resulted from her marriage to James V; he was the father of Mary Queen of Scots and thus grandfather of the man who’d assume the English crown after Elizabeth Tudor’s death.

The first Tudor and the Blood Countess

August 7th is not a date I’m likely to celebrate, for on this day in 1485, Henry Tudor landed at Milford Haven in Wales, and began the march that would lead to Bosworth Field and eventually to the Showtime series, The Tudors, both of which I’d expunge from our collective memories if I could. And one of history’s more monstrous figures was born on this date in 1560. Elizabeth Bathory is the Hungarian countess often compared to Vlad the Impaler, who is said to have been the inspiration for Dracula. The countess was accused of the most horrific crimes, of torturing and murdering hundreds of young girls, and lurid tales were told of her bathing in the blood of virgins in an attempt to retain her own youth and beauty. How much of this is true? I honestly don’t know. All I can report is that the accusations were made, and while she was not brought to trial herself, her accused accomplices were found guilty and put to death. She was bricked up in a windowless chamber at Cachtice Castle, with air vents and slots for food and water to be slid in to her; amazingly enough, she survived for three years in this living entombment.
Sorry the stories are so gruesome today—the coming of the Tudors and a mass murderer. But our news is not much better; that massacre at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin is as brutal as any medieval murders. My heart goes out to the victims and their families.

Last chance for book giveaway

On August 6, 1171, Henry II returned to England for the first time since the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. He did not linger for long. After paying a dutiful courtesy call upon the dying Bishop of Winchester, the scheming brother of King Stephen, who’d lost his sight and gained a conscience in his last years, and who was said to have lectured Henry for the part he’d played in Becket’s death, Henry sailed for Ireland, where he lay low waiting for the furor over Becket’s killing to die down. He would return to England in April, 1172, which coincidentally marked the beginning of Devil’s Brood.
On August 6, 1195, Heinrich der Lowe—Henry the Lion—the former Duke of Saxony and Bavaria died. He was the husband of Henry and Eleanor’s daughter Matilda (Tilda in my books to avoid a surfeit of Matildas) and was buried at her side. Their daughter Richenza was a character in Devil’s Brood and Lionheart and will appear again in A King’s Ransom, as will her brother Otto, both of whom were very close to their uncle Richard.
And on August 6, 1623, Anne Hathaway, the mysterious wife of the equally mysterious William Shakespeare, died at Stratford upon Avon.
Lastly, there is still time to enter the book giveaway on my blog; anyone who posts a comment is eligible to win a signed copy of Lionheart, Devil’s Brood, Time and Chance, or The Reckoning, the winner’s choice. I plan to put up a new blog to announce the winner by week’s end. Here is the link for those who’d like to enter it. http://sharonkaypenman.com/blog/

August 5th, from a Welsh king to a Hollywood star

On August 5, 1063, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, was betrayed and slain by his own men while struggling to repulse an invasion by Harold Godwinson, later King of England. Gruffydd is the only man to rule over all of Wales, from 1057 until his death, allthough he was called King of the Britons, not King of Wales. His wife was Ealdgyth of Mercia, who would later wed Harold. Was she willing to wed the man responsible for her husband’s death? We know virtually nothing about this woman, aside from the fact she was said to be beautiful, so we can only conjecture about her marriage to Harold. She would be widowed again three years later when Harold was slain at Hastings, but she then disappears from history, her fate unknown.
August 5, 1100 was the coronation of Henry I, just days after his brother William Rufus’s death in the New Forest.
August 5, 1301 is the birthdate of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, son of Edward I and thus half-brother to Edward II. He would be executed in 1330 for engaging in a plot to free Edward II from captivity. Since Edward had been declared dead in 1327, historians have not been kind to Edmund, seeing him as gullible at best, a fool at worst. His is a complicated story and I hope I can persuade Kathryn Warner to stop by and explain it since I am urgently needed back in Narbonne to finish a scene with Joanna and Berengaria and it is bad manners to keep queens waiting.
On August 5, 1305, William Wallace was captured near Glasgow, betrayed by a Scottish knight loyal to Edward I. He would be executed in a truly barbarous fashion (being drawn and quartered, one of Edward I’s more dubious contributions to the English judicial system). What he said at his trial could also serve as an epitaph for the last Welsh prince, Davydd ap Llywelyn, who was drawn and quartered for treason 22 years earlier: “I could not be a traitor to Edward for I was never his subject.”
Lastly, two non-medieval events worth mentioning. On August 5, 1620, the Mayflower and Speedwell sailed from Southampton for the New World. They had to turn back when the Speedwell sprang a leak. The Mayflower would subsequently sail alone on September 6th, anchoring off the tip of Cape Cod in November after two harrowing months at sea. I have always marveled at the courage it took to sail in bygone times. When I was writing Lionheart, I watched some truly terrifying videos on YouTube of ships being tossed around like toothpicks by angry seas, and these were large ships equipped with modern technology! Imagine how it would have been to be caught in a storm in a medieval ship like Richard’s galley, the Sea-Cleaver. I would so have been a stay-at-home had I been born back then.
And it came as a minor shock to me to realize that it has been 50 years since the death of the American film icon Marilyn Monroe on August 5, 1962.

"For battle it was none."

August 4th is the date of two significant medieval battles. On August 4, 1192, Richard Lionheart won a remarkable victory at Jaffa against a much larger Saracen army. Richard was camped outside the city walls, having managed to regain control of Jaffa. Learning that re-enforcements would not be coming, Saladin staged a surprise attack upon the crusaders. He may have won a huge victory if not for a sharp-eyed Genoese who’d risen early to relieve himself and spotted the sun glinting off the shields and spears. Richard had time to rally his small force and they held off assault after assault, until late in the day he took the offensive with barely a handful of knights and scored one of the more improbable triumphs in military history. For those who haven’t read Lionheart yet (what are you waiting for???), I naturally dramatize this battle in considerable detail, for I was lucky enough to have eye-witnesses accounts from both the crusaders and the Saracens who actually fought in this conflict.
And on August 4, 1265, another brilliant medieval general, the future Edward I, trapped his godfather and uncle, Simon de Montfort, at Evesham. Edward had earlier staged a successful assault upon Simon’s son, Bran, who was camped at Kenilworth Castle, and he used some of the captured banners so that Simon would assume this was his son arriving with the much-needed reinforcements. By the time they realized the truth, it was too late. Simon, watching the approaching army from the bell tower in Evesham, said, “They come on well. He learned that from me.” He then uttered one of history’s better exit lines, saying to his sons and soldiers, “We must commend our souls to God, for our bodies are theirs.” In the ensuing battle, a violent thunderstorm broke out over the field at the height of the battle. Simon was slain and his body horribly mutilated by Edward’s men. Simon’s eldest son died on the field with him and his younger son, Guy, was gravely wounded. Edward showed no mercy; even the squires were killed, which was highly unusual. A chronicler would later write, “Such was the murder of Evesham, for battle it was none.” Simon’s son, Bran, would arrive on the battlefield in time to see his father’s head on a pike. Simon’s widow and daughter were allowed to go into French exile. Simon’s death was not forgotten; much to Edward’s frustration, people began to make surreptitious pilgrimages to Evesham to pray to a man some saw as a saint. A saint, he most definitely was not. As I said in the Author’s Note for Falls the Shadow, “A French-born English hero, lordly champion of the commons, an honorable adven-turer, Simon continues to be as controversial and enigmatic and paradoxical a figure in our time as he was in his own.” I think he’d have been pleased, though, with the memorial stone erected in his honor at Evesham on the 700th anniversary of his death, which was unveiled by the Speaker of the House of Commons and dedicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury:
HERE WERE BURIED THE REMAINS OF
SIMON DE MONTFORT, EARL OF LEICESTER,
PIONEER OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT, WHO WAS
KILLED IN THE BATTLE OF EVESHAM ON 4 AUGUST 1265.

Eleanor takes over

On August 3, 1189, Richard Lionheart landed at Portsmouth, England to claim the crown that was his upon his father’s death on July 6th. He’d been in no hurry to sail for England since he knew his new kingdom was in very capable hands, those of his mother Eleanor. The 12th century Annals of Roger de Hoveden described her activities upon regaining her freedom: “Queen Eleanor, the mother of the before-named duke, moved her royal court from city to city, and from castle to castle, just as she thought proper; and sending messengers throughout all the counties of England, ordered that all captives should be liberated from prison and confine-ment, for the good of the soul of Henry, her lord, inasmuch as , in her own person, she had learnt by experience that confinement is distasteful to mankind, and that it is a most delightful refreshment to the spirits to be liberated therefrom.” Making a royal progress, she issued edicts establishing uniform weights and measures, eliminated restrictions Henry had imposed upon monasteries, demanded oaths of fealty to her son (and to her!), and even found time to establish a hospital for the poor. As I have Richard tease her in Devil’s Brood, “I assume that upon the seventh day, you rested?”
Jumping ahead several centuries, on August 3, 1460, King James II of Scotland was killed while besieging Roxburgh Castle. James was enthusiastic about the potential of artillery, and he died when a cannon he’d imported from Flanders exploded as it was being loaded. He was only thirty and had been a successful and popular king, so it is interesting to speculate how Scottish history might have been changed had he not been so hands-on with this new technology.
As an American, I have to mention that on August 3, 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain for the New World.
And on August 3, 1553, Mary Tudor was welcomed warmly into London by the citizens. It is rather sad to consider the initial enthusiasm for her queenship in light of how badly it ended. She would be crowned in October, thus achieving what had been denied the Empress Maude, who was chased out of London before her own coronation.

Rufus and Raimond

On August 2, 1100, King William II of England, more commonly known as William Rufus, was slain while hunting in the New Forest, struck by an arrow in the chest. It was certainly a convenient death for his younger brother Henry, a member of the royal hunting party, who left the king’s body there in the forest and galloped hell-for-leather for Winchester, where he seized the royal treasury and arranged for his coronation ASAP. Historians today tend to see it as a hunting accident, which were not that uncommon. But it can certainly be said that Henry showed no grief for his dead brother; he did not even bother to attend William Rufus’s hasty, rather shabby funeral. Of course he had a crown to claim and Henry never saw sentimentality to be a virtue. Probably the best biography of William II is the one by Frank Barlow, who is also the author of an excellent biography of Thomas Becket.
There was another significant death on an August 2, this one in 1122, that of Raimond de St Gilles VI, Count of Toulouse and second husband of Richard I’s sister Joanna. Raimond is one of the most maligned figures of the Middle Ages, his reputation and his honor utterly destroyed by his enemies, which unfortunately for him, included the Church. He was the most prominent victim of the shameful Albigensian Crusade and a good example of what happens when history is rewritten by the victors. He was painted as a heretic, as a dissolute womanizer, a sinner sure to burn for aye in the hottest flames of Hell, all to justify the invasion of the lands known today as Languedoc. His is a tragic story, for his sin was that he was tolerant, unwilling to burn heretics at the stake. He always denied that he was a Cathar, and this was proved when he was dying and was accepted into the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John. Had he been a Cathar, he’d have summoned one of the priests their enemies called the perfecti and they called the “good men,” who’d have given him their one sacrament, the Consolamentum, which was the only way for Cathars to be admitted to Heaven. Raimond died a Catholic, but he also died an excommunicate, although he’d tried repeatedly to seek absolution for his sins and was always denied it. His son by Joanna sought desperately to have him buried in consecrated ground. While the Church used that as leverage to get him to make outrageous concessions, permission was never granted, and Raimond’s coffin remained unburied, his corpse eventually eaten by rats.
One of the worst war lords of the 12th century, Geoffrey de Mandeville, which my readers may remember from When Christ and His Saints Slept, also died excommunicate, in his case richly deserved, for he’d ravaged England with fire and sword, creating such fear that it was said grass never grew where he’d walked. Yet his sons were allowed to buy him a posthumous pardon so he could receive a Christian burial. But that was denied to Raimond, who received no more justice in death than he’d received in life. And unlike Richard III, there is no Raimond de St Gilles Society dedicated to making the truth known about this decent man. There are a number of books written about the Albigensian Crusade; ironically, France now seeks to attract tourists to “Cathar Country,” where the ruined silhouettes of gutted medieval castles still testify to the hell that had been unleashed upon the people of Languedoc, Catholics and Cathars alike, first the horrors of war and then the horrors of the Inquisition. For those interested in knowing more of this sad story, I highly recommend Joseph Strayer’s The Albigensian Crusade.