Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 19

The damage done by a misplaced comma

Well, here I am again, worrying about all of you in Harper’s path. Stay safe and warm this weekend. How many more days till spring?
This link is to a story that has nothing whatsoever to do with medieval history, but I found it very interesting and so I wanted to share it. Robert Frost’s famous poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, is now part of the public domain; all of his works are as of January 1st. When I was reading about that development, I found this remarkable account of the misplaced comma. We all know how erroneous punctuation can alter the meaning of a sentence. One famous example is “Let’s eat, Grandma” which changes dramatically if you omit the comma, “Let’s eat Grandma.” But in this case, a Dartmouth professor took it upon himself to move a comma in Frost’s poem and altered the sentence entirely. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archiv...

A lost republic, medieval doings, and a city swallowed by the sea

It seems like I am expressing concern for my Facebook friends in the path of winter storms every day. Now it is Harper wreaking havoc as it heads east. Stay safe, guys. Here are some historical musings to take your minds off the bad weather.
On January 16, 27 BC, Octavian was granted the title of Augustus by the Roman Senate, marking the beginning of the Roman Empire.
On January 16, 1245, Henry III’s second son, Edmund, was born. Edmund was a character in Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning, and I became quite fond of him and his French wife, Blanche. The history of kings is rife with troublesome younger brothers like George of Clarence. Edmund was an anomaly, for he was loyal to his own elder brother, Edward I. He was also the founder of the House of Lancaster, but I forgive him for that. 
On January 16th, 1325, the poet Petrach’s beloved Laura was wed to a man named Hughes de Sade; it was Petrach, of course, who would give Laura literary immortality.
On January 16th, 1409, Rene, the Duke of Anjou, King of Naples and titular King of Jerusalem, was born. Rene was the father of Marguerite d’Anjou, the Red Queen of Lancaster. Although he was known as Good King Rene, I’ve always regarded him with a jaundiced eye, for he did little to ease the last years of his unhappy daughter, who was dependent upon a small pension given her by the French king.
And also on January 16th, 1362, a prosperous German city, Rungholt, sank below the waves when a powerful storm surge of the North Sea engulfed the island of Strand. A medieval Atlantis, Rungholt, would give rise to legends like that other “lost city,” with people claiming that they could hear the church bells of Rungholt chiming beneath the waters of the North Sea.

A sad child wedding and those pushy Tudors

I wanted to wish my American Facebook friends good luck with the miserable winter weather currently battering the country from coast to coast, with worse to come this weekend. Now, here is today’s entry for historical happenings on this date.
On January 15th, 1478, a rather sad marriage took place, between the second son of Edward IV, Richard, and Anne Mowbray, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. He was not yet five years old; she was around the same age. The idea of marriage between such young children is something hard for us to fathom today, and their wedding seems even more pathetic because we know that they both died so young, Anne three years later in 1481 and Richard most likely in 1183. Sad.
Those pushy Tudors have crashed today’s party, for on this date in 1535, Henry VIII declared himself the head of the English Church and on January 15th in 1559, his brilliant daughter Elizabeth was crowned as Queen of England.

Dolphins rock

Many of you may have already seen this video, for it quickly and understandably went viral. But for those who missed it, here is a California firefighter surfing when he gets some unexpected company.
https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-con...

Winter weather, the Rubicon, and Sunshine Patriots

I hope all my friends in the US and Europe are able to deal with the nasty winter weather. Millions here are under siege and I was reading some scary stories about heavy snow in Germany and Austria, though I am not sure if other countries are snowbound, too. It is bitterly cold in my corner of the US and I wish I could say “Beam me down, Scotty” and magically land somewhere Down Under, where you’re enjoying high summer. A visit to Australia is already at the top of my Bucket List, but today it sounds even more appealing.
I have no news to report about The Land Beyond the Sea, am working now on the Author’s Note. Once that is done, I will be able to give some thought to Justin’s next adventure; at this point, all I know for sure is that some of the action will take place in France and he’ll get to spend time in Wales again. Meanwhile, here is my Today in History piece. I am cheating a bit and going with a repeat, but it was posted five years ago so I am gambling that no one will remember it!
Apparently, people in bygone times preferred to stay by their home fires during the cold month of January, for it has a number of “blank” history days. January 9th was one such day. For January 10th, I found two events worth mentioning, neither of them medieval, though. On January 10th, 49 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with one legion, thus igniting civil war in Rome, for it was a capital offence for the governor of a province to lead his army beyond his province. When Caesar, the governor of Gaul, crossed the Rubicon River into Italy, his action gave rise to two well-known phrases. To “cross the Rubicon” means there is no going back. And Caesar is said to have uttered the words, “Alea iacta est,” or “The die is cast,” which is repeated even today. He won the civil war, by the way, was elected Dictator of Rome in the following year, although that did not turn out so well for him.
Also on January 10th, this time in 1776, a book was published that can truly be said to have changed the world. On this date, Thomas Paine published his manifesto Common Sense, a 78 page pamphlet calling for immediate independence from Great Britain. It became an instant bestseller and is believed to have exerted enormous influence upon those colonists who were still hesitating, not sure if independence was the right course or not. (John Adams estimated that one-fourth of the colonists were patriots, one-fourth were Tories, and the remainder were perched on the fence, not sure which way to jump.) For many, Common Sense nudged them into the camp for independence. Common Sense played a similar role in the French Revolution. Later, at a time when American morale was flagging badly, Paine again stepped into the breach with his American Crisis, which contained the famous lines, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” heaping scorn upon the “summer soldier and the sunshine patriot.” He would later write The Rights of Man in defense of the French Revolution.

thoughts on football, martyrs, and the Tudor Bluebeard

Playing catch-up again, I am looking back to January 6th. It is Epiphany, of course, which was an important holiday in the MA. And it was the day that the Eagles upset the Bears, bringing joy to Eagles Nation, but I will not dwell on it out of sympathy for my friends who are Bears fans. So…back to history. Harold Godwinson was crowned on this date in 1066, but his reign was to be short-lived; in October, he was slain at the battle of Hastings. As I mentioned recently, Helen Hollick has written a novel about Harold. And on this date in 1169, the French king and the papal legate coaxed Henry and Thomas Becket to meet. Here is a paragraph from that scene on p. 390-391 of Time and Chance.
* * *
The Bishop of Sens had just come into view, and as the crowd parted, Henry saw Thomas Becket. This was their first meeting in more than four years and his immediate, unbidden thought was that those years had not been kind to Thomas. Becket had always been of slender build; now he was gaunt. Fair-skinned by nature, his was now the sickly pallor of the ailing. Henry suddenly believed those stories he’d heard of Becket’s deprivations and denials, no longer dismissed them as self-promotion. The archbishop’s eyes were hollowed, his dark hair well salted with silver, and his black beard had gone white. Only his height was as Henry had remembered. His throat tightened unexpectedly; could this be the man who’d once playfully tussled with him over a crimson cloak?
* * *
But their reconciliation ended in acrimony when Becket again insisted upon doing homage to the English king “saving the honor of God.” Even the French king sided with Henry at Montmirail, asking him reproachfully if he wished to be more than a saint. No, but I do think he had yearnings, conscious or not, for martyrdom.
On January 6, 1367, the future King Richard II was born. And in 1540, Henry VIII wed Anne of Cleves; their marriage would end in six months, probably to their mutual relief. We know that Henry was displeased with Anne and it is likely that she did not find him attractive, either, for the days when he’d been the handsomest prince in Europe were decades past; given Henry’s sordid matrimonial history, Anne must have been thankful that he was resorting to an annulment and not the axe.

Much stranger than fiction

I didn’t get to post this yesterday, but it is definitely worth mentioning. On January 3rd, 1431, Joan of Arc was turned over by the English to the Bishop of Beauvais. Her trial began on the 9th and she was burned at the stake for heresy on May 30th, 1431, at the age of nineteen. Her trial was a farce; the bishop did not even have jurisdiction to try the case. It was politically motivated; the Duke of Bedford had claimed the French throne for his nephew, Henry VI, and by accusing Joan of heresy, the English hoped to cast doubts upon the legitimacy of the French king, Charles VII, who abandoned Joan to her fate. Twenty-five years after her death, the Pope Calixtus III launched an investigation into her sham of a trial. She was proclaimed innocent of heresy and declared a martyr—twenty-five years too late. She was not canonized by the Catholic Church, though, until 1920. She is one of the five patron saints of France, sharing that honor with St Denis, St Martin of Tours, St Louis IX, and St Theresa of Lisieux. Joan is perhaps one of the best examples of real life being more improbable than fiction. No historical novelist would have dared to invent her story!

Back to January 4th. On this date in 1066, Edward the Confessor died, setting the stage for the fateful battle of Hastings, which resulted in the death of King Harold and the seizure of power by William, the Duke of Normandy, known in his own time as William the Bastard and in history as William the Conqueror; I think we can assume that he preferred the latter epithet. Helen Hollick has written a moving novel about this period of English history, titled I am the Chosen King in the US, published in the UK and Down Under as Harold the King.

There was another happening on January 4th in 1903, not in the least medieval, but both bizarre and sad. I was not sure if I should even mention it, for it shows humankind at its worst. But it also shows that we’ve made some progress in how we treat the other denizens of our planet. A circus elephant named Topsy was electrocuted after having been declared dangerous after killing three men; one of them was a sadistic trainer who tried to feed her a lit cigarette. They’d actually planned to hang her until the ASPCA objected. Thomas Edison, of all people, suggested that they electrocute her and he actually filmed it. As you can probably tell, my sympathies are with Topsy. These highly intelligent animals have been exploited by men for centuries; you think they wanted to cross the Alps with Hannibal? (I would still love to know how he managed to pull that off.)
Have a good weekend, everyone. Fly, Eagles, fly!

John takes center stage

Today I thought it would be interesting to chat about one of the most interesting—if unsuccessful—medieval kings, the youngest of Henry and Eleanor’s Devil’s Brood. You can still find histories, even biographies, of King John that declare he was born on December 24, 1167. They are wrong. John was born in 1166. Had he been born in 1167, he could not have been Henry’s, for he and Eleanor were apart when she’d have needed to conceive for a December 1167 birth. Curiously,, while some of John’s biographers get this wrong, none of Eleanor’s do, all correctly placing John’s birth in 1166. How did this confusion develop? A misreading of an entry in the chronicle of Robert de Torigny, abbot of Mont St Michel, erroneously placing it in 1167. So how about John’s Christmas Eve birth? Again, there is no evidence to support this traditional date. Since he was christened John, an entirely new name not found in the family trees of either of his parents, it seems reasonable to assume he was named after the saint whose day it was, St John the Evangelist, which means that he was born on December 27, 1166. Since we know John had a perverse sense of humor, I suspect he’d have been amused to know that something so simple as his birthdate was capable of causing such confusion.

John was Eleanor’s tenth child, her eighth with Henry; one chronicler mentioned a ninth child who was either stillborn or died young, but that has not been verified. Surviving at least ten trips to the birthing chamber is a remarkable accomplishment for any woman, especially one in the Middle Ages. Eleanor was forty-two at the time of John’s birth, and a strong case can be made that she’d just learned of Henry’s liaison with Fair Rosamund Clifford, one that was serious enough for him to have ensconced the girl at Woodstock palace. So how welcome was this fourth son, needed neither as an heir nor a spare, a son who might well have been a living reminder of an unhappy time in her life and her marriage?

No historian can truthfully answer that, of course, although some have tried. Fortunately, historical novelists have greater latitude in such matters and I can say for a certainty that my fictional Eleanor did indeed have ambivalent feelings toward her last child. Is she, then, to blame for John’s problem personality? Well, both Henry and Eleanor made their share of parental mistakes; they failed to instill any sense of brotherly solidarity in their sons, and not only did they have favorites, they compounded that sin by making it abundantly clear; for Henry, it was Hal and then, after his death, John, and for Eleanor, it was always Richard. But I think Henry has to shoulder most of the blame for the man that John became, for he was the primary influence during John’s formative years, Eleanor being held prisoner from the time that John was seven until he was nigh on twenty-three. The last of the Angevin eaglets was undoubtedly clever, capable, undeserving of the mocking sobriquet given by his enemies, “John Softsword.” But for whatever reasons, he seems to have been the most emotionally damaged of the Devil’s Brood, and his kingship would be a failure. He is, however, great fun to write about, so I am already looking forward to his return to center stage in my next Justin de Quincy mystery.

Bloodshed, death, and God's Judgment

I hope the new year is getting off to a good start for my friends Down Under, and that it will be a better, kinder year for all of us, including our battered Mother Earth. Now on to medieval history.

December 30th, 1460 was the date of the battle of Wakefield, in which a Lancastrian force defeated the Yorkists when they rashly ventured out from Sandal Castle. The Duke of York and the Earl of Salisbury were among those who lost their lives. The death that shocked people, though, was that of the Duke of York’s seventeen year old son, Edmund, who was captured after the battle and murdered in cold blood by Lord Clifford. Edmund was the first character that I had to kill, and it was a challenge. I didn’t realize then how much blood there’d eventually be on my hands, but writers always remember our “first.” Even after so many years, when I reread that scene on the bridge at Wakefield, I feel a sense of loss, and from what readers have told me, they do, too. RIP, Edmund, I wish your life had not been cut short so brutally.

Here's an interesting “What if?” query about this battle. The Duke of York’s eldest son, Edward, was not with him at Wakefield, having chosen to go with his cousin, the Earl of Warwick when the Yorkists split up. But what if Edmund had gone with Warwick and Edward with his father? Would the outcome have been the same? Might there have been a King Edmund on the English throne? I don’t think so, for Edward’s successes were due both to his military acumen and his personal charm and charisma. In fact, I think it is possible that if Edward had been at Sandal Castle on that fateful December day, he might have convinced the Yorkists that it would be folly to take the Lancastrians’ bait. I don’t doubt that he’d have seen the danger and even though he was just 18, he was already supremely confident. He was also a brilliant battle commander, as he would prove in just three months, winning the bloodiest battle ever fought on British soil. Historians talk about Richard the Lionheart, Edward I, and Henry V when discussing England’s most notable soldier kings, and justifiably so. But I think Edward IV ought to be included in those discussions. So I am not sure that Wakefield would ever have happened if he’d been with their father instead of Edmund. Readers? What do you think?

On today’s date, December 31th, Leopold V, the Duke of Austria died in 1194, a particularly gruesome death that convinced his contemporaries he was being punished by God for having defied the Church by laying hands upon a crusader king. He had remained defiant, even threatening to kill Richard’s hostages if Richard did not send his niece to Austria to marry Leeopold’s son, one of the many conditions of Richard’s release. Richard had not wanted to do this, but to save his hostages, he yielded. His ten year old niece was on her way to Vienna when word spread of Leopold’s death. She was able to return home, but ironically, given the future that lay ahead of her—held prisoner by John and then John’s son for forty years—it would have been better for her if the marriage had taken place.

The circumstances of Leopold’s death probably gave even the German emperor a few uneasy moments. He’d crushed his ankle when his horse rolled on him, and when it turned black, his doctors warned that only amputation could save his life. But none of them were willing to attempt it, including his own teenage sons. So Leopold himself held an axe against his ankle and ordered his steward to strike it with a mallet. It took three tries to chop the ankle off, and it did not save Leopold. He was lucky, though, that he was able to reconcile with the Church on his deathbed, for he’d been excommunicated for the part he’d played in Richard’s abduction and imprisonment. But when he expressed contrition, his cousin, the Archbishop of Salisbury, absolved him of his sins after he promised to return Richard’s hostages and repay his share of the ransom. Before the archbishop would permit him to be buried in consecrated ground, though, he extracted a vow at graveside from Leopold’s eldest son, that he would honor Leopold’s deathbed promise.

Dogs in need

If you agree with me that dogs should not be kept outside in icy winter weather or during sweltering summer days, please consider signing this petition, too. Thanks.
https://www.change.org/p/pass-a-virgi...