MaryAnn Bernal's Blog, page 77
November 5, 2016
Kings and Queens in profile: Jane Seymour
History Extra
Jane Seymour. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
Historian Elizabeth Norton tells you everything you need to know about Jane Seymour, queen of England from 1536 to 1537 as the third wife of Henry VIII
Born: In around 1508
Died: 24 October 1537
Ruled: from 1536 to 1537
Family: the daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolfhall in Wiltshire and his wife, Margery Wentworth
Successor: Anne of Cleves, Henry’s fourth wife
Remembered for: being the only wife to provide Henry with a son and male heir
Life: Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife, was born in around 1508. Her kinsman, the courtier Sir Francis Bryan, secured a place for her in the service of Queen Catherine of Aragon. Jane later transferred into the household of Catherine’s successor, Anne Boleyn.
By 1535, Jane was in her late twenties, with few marriage prospects. One contemporary considered her to be “no great beauty, so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise”.
She nonetheless attracted the king’s attention – perhaps when he visited Wolfhall in September 1535. Anne Boleyn blamed her miscarriage, in late January 1536, on the developing relationship, complaining to Henry that she had “caught that abandoned woman Jane sitting on your knees”. The queen and her maid had already come to blows.
Jane's rise: Anne’s failure to bear a son was an opportunity for Jane. When Henry sent her a letter and a purse of gold, she refused them, declaring that “she had no greater riches in the world than her honour, which she would not injure for a thousand deaths”.
Henry was smitten with this show of virtue, henceforth insisting on meeting her only with a chaperone. During April they discussed marriage and, on 20 May 1536 – the day after Anne Boleyn’s execution – the couple were betrothed. They married shortly afterwards.
Jane, who took as her motto “bound to obey and serve”, presented herself as meek and obedient. She was, however, instrumental in bringing Henry’s estranged daughter, princess Mary, back to court.
The new queen held conservative religious beliefs. This became apparent in October 1536 when she threw herself on her knees before the king at Windsor, begging him to restore the abbeys for fear that the rebellion, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, was God’s judgment against him. In response, Henry publicly reminded her of the fate of Anne Boleyn, “enough to frighten a woman who is not very secure”.
Jane's fall: Without a son, Jane was vulnerable, and the postponement of her coronation was ominous. Finally, in March 1537, her pregnancy was announced. Henry was solicitous to his wife, resolving to stay close to her and ordering fat quails from Calais when she desired to eat them.
Jane endured a labour of two days and three nights before bearing a son at Hampton Court on 12 October, to great rejoicing. She was well enough to appear at the christening on 15 October, lying in an antechamber, wrapped in furs.
However, she soon sickened, with her attendants blamed for suffering “her to take great cold and to eat things that her fantasy in sickness called for”. In reality, she was probably suffering from puerperal, or childbed, fever. She died on 24 October.
Jane Seymour, as the only one of Henry VIII’s wives to die as queen, received a royal funeral at Windsor. She was later joined there by the king, who requested burial beside the mother of his only surviving son. Her child succeeded as Edward VI, but died at the age of 15.
Jane Seymour. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
Historian Elizabeth Norton tells you everything you need to know about Jane Seymour, queen of England from 1536 to 1537 as the third wife of Henry VIII
Born: In around 1508
Died: 24 October 1537
Ruled: from 1536 to 1537
Family: the daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolfhall in Wiltshire and his wife, Margery Wentworth
Successor: Anne of Cleves, Henry’s fourth wife
Remembered for: being the only wife to provide Henry with a son and male heir
Life: Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife, was born in around 1508. Her kinsman, the courtier Sir Francis Bryan, secured a place for her in the service of Queen Catherine of Aragon. Jane later transferred into the household of Catherine’s successor, Anne Boleyn.
By 1535, Jane was in her late twenties, with few marriage prospects. One contemporary considered her to be “no great beauty, so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise”.
She nonetheless attracted the king’s attention – perhaps when he visited Wolfhall in September 1535. Anne Boleyn blamed her miscarriage, in late January 1536, on the developing relationship, complaining to Henry that she had “caught that abandoned woman Jane sitting on your knees”. The queen and her maid had already come to blows.
Jane's rise: Anne’s failure to bear a son was an opportunity for Jane. When Henry sent her a letter and a purse of gold, she refused them, declaring that “she had no greater riches in the world than her honour, which she would not injure for a thousand deaths”.
Henry was smitten with this show of virtue, henceforth insisting on meeting her only with a chaperone. During April they discussed marriage and, on 20 May 1536 – the day after Anne Boleyn’s execution – the couple were betrothed. They married shortly afterwards.
Jane, who took as her motto “bound to obey and serve”, presented herself as meek and obedient. She was, however, instrumental in bringing Henry’s estranged daughter, princess Mary, back to court.
The new queen held conservative religious beliefs. This became apparent in October 1536 when she threw herself on her knees before the king at Windsor, begging him to restore the abbeys for fear that the rebellion, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, was God’s judgment against him. In response, Henry publicly reminded her of the fate of Anne Boleyn, “enough to frighten a woman who is not very secure”.
Jane's fall: Without a son, Jane was vulnerable, and the postponement of her coronation was ominous. Finally, in March 1537, her pregnancy was announced. Henry was solicitous to his wife, resolving to stay close to her and ordering fat quails from Calais when she desired to eat them.
Jane endured a labour of two days and three nights before bearing a son at Hampton Court on 12 October, to great rejoicing. She was well enough to appear at the christening on 15 October, lying in an antechamber, wrapped in furs.
However, she soon sickened, with her attendants blamed for suffering “her to take great cold and to eat things that her fantasy in sickness called for”. In reality, she was probably suffering from puerperal, or childbed, fever. She died on 24 October.
Jane Seymour, as the only one of Henry VIII’s wives to die as queen, received a royal funeral at Windsor. She was later joined there by the king, who requested burial beside the mother of his only surviving son. Her child succeeded as Edward VI, but died at the age of 15.
November 4, 2016
10 things you (probably) didn't know about Ancient Egypt
History Extra
Fresco on the Tomb of Iti showing the transportation of wheat by donkey. Donkeys were more commonly used by the Ancient Egyptians than camels. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
1) They did not ride camelsThe camel was not used regularly in Egypt until the very end of the dynastic age. Instead, the Egyptians used donkeys as beasts of burden, and boats as a highly convenient means of transport. The River Nile flowed through the centre of their fertile land, creating a natural highway (and sewer!). The current helped those who needed to row from south to north, while the wind made life easy for those who wished to sail in the opposite direction. The river was linked to settlements, quarries and building sites by canals. Huge wooden barges were used to transport grain and heavy stone blocks; light papyrus boats ferried people about their daily business. And every day, high above the river, the sun god Ra was believed to sail across the sky in his solar boat. 2) Not everyone was mummifiedThe mummy – an eviscerated, dried and bandaged corpse – has become a defining Egyptian artefact. Yet mummification was an expensive and time-consuming process, reserved for the more wealthy members of society. The vast majority of Egypt’s dead were buried in simple pits in the desert. So why did the elite feel the need to mummify their dead? They believed that it was possible to live again after death, but only if the body retained a recognisable human form. Ironically, this could have been achieved quite easily by burying the dead in direct contact with the hot and sterile desert sand; a natural desiccation would then have occurred. But the elite wanted to be buried in coffins within tombs, and this meant that their corpses, no longer in direct contact with the sand, started to rot. The twin requirements of elaborate burial equipment plus a recognisable body led to the science of artificial mummification. 3) The living shared food with the deadThe tomb was designed as an eternal home for the mummified body and the ka spirit that lived beside it. An accessible tomb-chapel allowed families, well-wishers and priests to visit the deceased and leave the regular offerings that the ka required, while a hidden burial chamber protected the mummy from harm. Within the tomb-chapel, food and drink were offered on a regular basis. Having been spiritually consumed by the ka, they were then physically consumed by the living. During the ‘feast of the valley’, an annual festival of death and renewal, many families spent the night in the tomb-chapels of their ancestors. The hours of darkness were spent drinking and feasting by torchlight as the living celebrated their reunion with the dead.
Food offerings to the dead. From a decorative detail from the Sarcophagus of Irinimenpu. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images) 4) Egyptian women had equal rights with menIn Egypt, men and women of equivalent social status were treated as equals in the eyes of the law. This meant that women could own, earn, buy, sell and inherit property. They could live unprotected by male guardians and, if widowed or divorced, could raise their own children. They could bring cases before, and be punished by, the law courts. And they were expected to deputise for an absent husband in matters of business. Everyone in Ancient Egypt was expected to marry, with husbands and wives being allocated complementary but opposite roles within the marriage. The wife, the ‘mistress of the house’, was responsible for all internal, domestic matters. She raised the children and ran the household while her husband, the dominant partner in the marriage, played the external, wage-earning role. 5) Scribes rarely wrote in hieroglyphs Hieroglyphic writing – a script consisting of many hundreds of intricate images – was beautiful to look at, but time-consuming to create. It was therefore reserved for the most important texts; the writings decorating tomb and temple walls, and texts recording royal achievements. As they went about their daily business, Egypt’s scribes routinely used hieratic – a simplified or shorthand form of hieroglyphic writing. Towards the end of the dynastic period they used demotic, an even more simplified version of hieratic. All three scripts were used to write the same ancient Egyptian language. Few of the ancients would have been able to read either hieroglyphs or hieratic: it is estimated that no more than 10 per cent (and perhaps considerably less) of the population was literate. 
Legal text on parchment, written in hieratic: a list of witnesses during the settlement of a quarrel, 1000 BC. (Photo by DEA / G Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images) 6) The king of Egypt could be a womanIdeally the king of Egypt would be the son of the previous king. But this was not always possible, and the coronation ceremony had the power to convert the most unlikely candidate into an unassailable king. On at least three occasions women took the throne, ruling in their own right as female kings and using the full king’s titulary. The most successful of these female rulers, Hatshepsut, ruled Egypt for more than 20 prosperous years. In the English language, where ‘king’ is gender-specific, we might classify Sobeknefru, Hatshepsut and Tausret as queens regnant. In Egyptian, however, the phrase that we conventionally translate as ‘queen’ literally means ‘king’s wife’, and is entirely inappropriate for these women. 7) Few Egyptian men married their sistersSome of Egypt’s kings married their sisters or half-sisters. These incestuous marriages ensured that the queen was trained in her duties from birth, and that she remained entirely loyal to her husband and their children. They provided appropriate husbands for princesses who might otherwise remain unwed, while restricting the number of potential claimants for the throne. They even provided a link with the gods, several of whom (like Isis and Osiris) enjoyed incestuous unions. However, brother-sister marriages were never compulsory, and some of Egypt’s most prominent queens – including Nefertiti – were of non-royal birth. Incestuous marriages were not common outside the royal family until the very end of the dynastic age. The restricted Egyptian kingship terminology (‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’, ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ being the only terms used), and the tendency to apply these words loosely so that ‘sister’ could with equal validity describe an actual sister, a wife or a lover, has led to a lot of confusion over this issue. 8) Not all pharaohs built pyramidsAlmost all the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (c2686–2125 BC) and Middle Kingdom (c2055–1650 BC) built pyramid-tombs in Egypt’s northern deserts. These highly conspicuous monuments linked the kings with the sun god Ra while replicating the mound of creation that emerged from the waters of chaos at the beginning of time. But by the start of the New Kingdom (c1550 BC) pyramid building was out of fashion. Kings would now build two entirely separate funerary monuments. Their mummies would be buried in hidden rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at the southern city of Thebes, while a highly visible memorial temple, situated on the border between the cultivated land (home of the living), and the sterile desert (home of the dead), would serve as the focus of the royal mortuary cult. Following the collapse of the New Kingdom, subsequent kings were buried in tombs in northern Egypt: some of their burials have never been discovered. 9) The Great Pyramid was not built by slavesThe classical historian Herodotus believed that the Great Pyramid had been built by 100,000 slaves. His image of men, women and children desperately toiling in the harshest of conditions has proved remarkably popular with modern film producers. It is, however, wrong. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Great Pyramid was in fact built by a workforce of 5,000 permanent, salaried employees and up to 20,000 temporary workers. These workers were free men, summoned under the corvée system of national service to put in a three- or four-month shift on the building site before returning home. They were housed in a temporary camp near the pyramid, where they received payment in the form of food, drink, medical attention and, for those who died on duty, burial in the nearby cemetery. 
Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, which was not, as many believe, built by slaves. (Photo by MyLoupe/UIG via Getty Images) 10) Cleopatra many not have been beautifulCleopatra VII, last queen of ancient Egypt, won the hearts of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of Rome’s most important men. Surely, then, she must have been an outstanding beauty? Her coins suggest that this was probably not the case. All show her in profile with a prominent nose, pronounced chin and deep-set eyes. Of course, Cleopatra’s coins reflect the skills of their makers, and it is entirely possible that the queen did not want to appear too feminine on the tokens that represented her sovereignty within and outside Egypt. Unfortunately we have no eyewitness description of the queen. However the classical historian Plutarch – who never actually met Cleopatra – tells us that her charm lay in her demeanour, and in her beautiful voice. Joyce Tyldesley, senior lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester, is the author of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt (Allen Lane 2010) and Tutankhamen’s Curse: the developing history of an Egyptian king (Profile 2012).
Fresco on the Tomb of Iti showing the transportation of wheat by donkey. Donkeys were more commonly used by the Ancient Egyptians than camels. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
1) They did not ride camelsThe camel was not used regularly in Egypt until the very end of the dynastic age. Instead, the Egyptians used donkeys as beasts of burden, and boats as a highly convenient means of transport. The River Nile flowed through the centre of their fertile land, creating a natural highway (and sewer!). The current helped those who needed to row from south to north, while the wind made life easy for those who wished to sail in the opposite direction. The river was linked to settlements, quarries and building sites by canals. Huge wooden barges were used to transport grain and heavy stone blocks; light papyrus boats ferried people about their daily business. And every day, high above the river, the sun god Ra was believed to sail across the sky in his solar boat. 2) Not everyone was mummifiedThe mummy – an eviscerated, dried and bandaged corpse – has become a defining Egyptian artefact. Yet mummification was an expensive and time-consuming process, reserved for the more wealthy members of society. The vast majority of Egypt’s dead were buried in simple pits in the desert. So why did the elite feel the need to mummify their dead? They believed that it was possible to live again after death, but only if the body retained a recognisable human form. Ironically, this could have been achieved quite easily by burying the dead in direct contact with the hot and sterile desert sand; a natural desiccation would then have occurred. But the elite wanted to be buried in coffins within tombs, and this meant that their corpses, no longer in direct contact with the sand, started to rot. The twin requirements of elaborate burial equipment plus a recognisable body led to the science of artificial mummification. 3) The living shared food with the deadThe tomb was designed as an eternal home for the mummified body and the ka spirit that lived beside it. An accessible tomb-chapel allowed families, well-wishers and priests to visit the deceased and leave the regular offerings that the ka required, while a hidden burial chamber protected the mummy from harm. Within the tomb-chapel, food and drink were offered on a regular basis. Having been spiritually consumed by the ka, they were then physically consumed by the living. During the ‘feast of the valley’, an annual festival of death and renewal, many families spent the night in the tomb-chapels of their ancestors. The hours of darkness were spent drinking and feasting by torchlight as the living celebrated their reunion with the dead.
Food offerings to the dead. From a decorative detail from the Sarcophagus of Irinimenpu. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images) 4) Egyptian women had equal rights with menIn Egypt, men and women of equivalent social status were treated as equals in the eyes of the law. This meant that women could own, earn, buy, sell and inherit property. They could live unprotected by male guardians and, if widowed or divorced, could raise their own children. They could bring cases before, and be punished by, the law courts. And they were expected to deputise for an absent husband in matters of business. Everyone in Ancient Egypt was expected to marry, with husbands and wives being allocated complementary but opposite roles within the marriage. The wife, the ‘mistress of the house’, was responsible for all internal, domestic matters. She raised the children and ran the household while her husband, the dominant partner in the marriage, played the external, wage-earning role. 5) Scribes rarely wrote in hieroglyphs Hieroglyphic writing – a script consisting of many hundreds of intricate images – was beautiful to look at, but time-consuming to create. It was therefore reserved for the most important texts; the writings decorating tomb and temple walls, and texts recording royal achievements. As they went about their daily business, Egypt’s scribes routinely used hieratic – a simplified or shorthand form of hieroglyphic writing. Towards the end of the dynastic period they used demotic, an even more simplified version of hieratic. All three scripts were used to write the same ancient Egyptian language. Few of the ancients would have been able to read either hieroglyphs or hieratic: it is estimated that no more than 10 per cent (and perhaps considerably less) of the population was literate. Legal text on parchment, written in hieratic: a list of witnesses during the settlement of a quarrel, 1000 BC. (Photo by DEA / G Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images) 6) The king of Egypt could be a womanIdeally the king of Egypt would be the son of the previous king. But this was not always possible, and the coronation ceremony had the power to convert the most unlikely candidate into an unassailable king. On at least three occasions women took the throne, ruling in their own right as female kings and using the full king’s titulary. The most successful of these female rulers, Hatshepsut, ruled Egypt for more than 20 prosperous years. In the English language, where ‘king’ is gender-specific, we might classify Sobeknefru, Hatshepsut and Tausret as queens regnant. In Egyptian, however, the phrase that we conventionally translate as ‘queen’ literally means ‘king’s wife’, and is entirely inappropriate for these women. 7) Few Egyptian men married their sistersSome of Egypt’s kings married their sisters or half-sisters. These incestuous marriages ensured that the queen was trained in her duties from birth, and that she remained entirely loyal to her husband and their children. They provided appropriate husbands for princesses who might otherwise remain unwed, while restricting the number of potential claimants for the throne. They even provided a link with the gods, several of whom (like Isis and Osiris) enjoyed incestuous unions. However, brother-sister marriages were never compulsory, and some of Egypt’s most prominent queens – including Nefertiti – were of non-royal birth. Incestuous marriages were not common outside the royal family until the very end of the dynastic age. The restricted Egyptian kingship terminology (‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’, ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ being the only terms used), and the tendency to apply these words loosely so that ‘sister’ could with equal validity describe an actual sister, a wife or a lover, has led to a lot of confusion over this issue. 8) Not all pharaohs built pyramidsAlmost all the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (c2686–2125 BC) and Middle Kingdom (c2055–1650 BC) built pyramid-tombs in Egypt’s northern deserts. These highly conspicuous monuments linked the kings with the sun god Ra while replicating the mound of creation that emerged from the waters of chaos at the beginning of time. But by the start of the New Kingdom (c1550 BC) pyramid building was out of fashion. Kings would now build two entirely separate funerary monuments. Their mummies would be buried in hidden rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at the southern city of Thebes, while a highly visible memorial temple, situated on the border between the cultivated land (home of the living), and the sterile desert (home of the dead), would serve as the focus of the royal mortuary cult. Following the collapse of the New Kingdom, subsequent kings were buried in tombs in northern Egypt: some of their burials have never been discovered. 9) The Great Pyramid was not built by slavesThe classical historian Herodotus believed that the Great Pyramid had been built by 100,000 slaves. His image of men, women and children desperately toiling in the harshest of conditions has proved remarkably popular with modern film producers. It is, however, wrong. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Great Pyramid was in fact built by a workforce of 5,000 permanent, salaried employees and up to 20,000 temporary workers. These workers were free men, summoned under the corvée system of national service to put in a three- or four-month shift on the building site before returning home. They were housed in a temporary camp near the pyramid, where they received payment in the form of food, drink, medical attention and, for those who died on duty, burial in the nearby cemetery. Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, which was not, as many believe, built by slaves. (Photo by MyLoupe/UIG via Getty Images) 10) Cleopatra many not have been beautifulCleopatra VII, last queen of ancient Egypt, won the hearts of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of Rome’s most important men. Surely, then, she must have been an outstanding beauty? Her coins suggest that this was probably not the case. All show her in profile with a prominent nose, pronounced chin and deep-set eyes. Of course, Cleopatra’s coins reflect the skills of their makers, and it is entirely possible that the queen did not want to appear too feminine on the tokens that represented her sovereignty within and outside Egypt. Unfortunately we have no eyewitness description of the queen. However the classical historian Plutarch – who never actually met Cleopatra – tells us that her charm lay in her demeanour, and in her beautiful voice. Joyce Tyldesley, senior lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester, is the author of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt (Allen Lane 2010) and Tutankhamen’s Curse: the developing history of an Egyptian king (Profile 2012).
November 3, 2016
Two Mysterious Cavities Found Inside Great Pyramid May Be Secret Rooms
Ancient Origins
A team of researchers that have used cutting edge technology to scan the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt have discovered two previously unknown cavities inside the world-famous monument. Are they secret rooms or passages that have long been rumored to lie within?
The research team with the Scan Pyramid project applied a combination of infrared thermography, muon radiography imaging and elements of 3D reconstruction of the Great Pyramid. The results revealed two anomalies inside the construction that have been described as “cavities”.
The Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of two anomalies in Cairo on Thursday. The millennia-old pyramid has three known chambers, but researchers have speculated for many decades that there is much more to discover inside the 146-meter tall pyramid of King Khufu. According to Seeker, the researchers are able to confirm the existence of a 'void' hidden behind the northern side at the upper part of the entrance gate. The void may be a corridor which runs inside the structure. The second cavity was discovered on the northeast flank of the pyramid.
Does the Great Pyramid contain hidden chambers? Source: BigStockPhotoAccording to the statement by Scan Pyramids, muons are "similar to X-rays, which can penetrate the body and allow bone imaging" and "can go through hundreds of meters of stone before being absorbed. Judiciously placed detectors -- for example inside a pyramid, below a potential, unknown chamber -- can then record particle tracks and discern cavities from denser regions." The newly discovered spaces inside the pyramid may be the long expected lost element of the pyramid.
The work by the French researchers from the Scan Pyramids project has been made in collaboration with famous archeologist and former head of the Ministry of Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass. The project had initially been led by Nicholas Reeves, who used radar scans to reveal possible unknown chambers in the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. However, that discovery was negated by Dr Hawass and other researchers, so Reeves didn't receive permission to excavate inside the tomb. Dr Hawass’ previous opinions about the scans make his appearance in the project rather surprising. As National Geographic wrote in May 6, 2016: ''After claiming that radar has never led to a single discovery in Egypt, Dr Hawass said, “We have to stop this media business, because there is nothing to publish. There is nothing to publish today or yesterday.''
Previously, but without the company of Dr Hawass, the same team examined the Bent Pyramid in Dahshur. The study became a huge success. As Natalia Klimczak from Ancient Origins reported in May 10, 2016:
A 3-D cutaway showing the inside of the Pyramid of Sneferu. Source:
Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, HIP Institute and the Faculty of Engineering (Cairo University)
The study is based on three modern technologies: infrared thermography, 3D scans with lasers, and cosmic-ray detectors. All of them have allowed the researchers to take better look inside the pyramids. Using the infrared thermography technique, the researchers measured the infrared energy emitted from the structures. The results of their testing were used to estimate the temperature distribution inside. Then, the team used lasers to bounce narrow pulses of light off the interiors of the Bent Pyramid. The last part of the research was locating cosmic particles, muons , within the structure, using detector plates.
Muons are formed at the moment when cosmic rays hit the Earth’s atmosphere. The particles rain down from the atmosphere, pass through empty spaces, and they can be absorbed or deflected by harder surfaces. They don't affect the human body, but if special detector plates are used, they can be tracked.
Kunihiro Morishima, from the Institute for Advanced Research of Nagoya University, Japan, placed 80 plates in the lower chamber of the Bent pyramid. They covered an area of about 10 square feet (0.93 sq. meters) and stayed there for 40 days. Following an analysis of these plates, the researchers were able to create 3D images of the pyramid, which revealed the shape of all of the chambers inside the pyramid.''
The size, shape and exact position of the newly-discovered cavities are now under investigation. To that end, the Scan Pyramids project has requested an extension of one year to complete the project.
Top image: A 3D cutaway view of the Great Pyramid of Giza revealing its interior chambers. Experts confirmed the existence of the mysterious cavities on Saturday after scanning the millennia-old monument with radiography equipment. Credit: Operation Scan Pyramids
By Natalia Klimzcak
A team of researchers that have used cutting edge technology to scan the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt have discovered two previously unknown cavities inside the world-famous monument. Are they secret rooms or passages that have long been rumored to lie within?
The research team with the Scan Pyramid project applied a combination of infrared thermography, muon radiography imaging and elements of 3D reconstruction of the Great Pyramid. The results revealed two anomalies inside the construction that have been described as “cavities”.
The Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of two anomalies in Cairo on Thursday. The millennia-old pyramid has three known chambers, but researchers have speculated for many decades that there is much more to discover inside the 146-meter tall pyramid of King Khufu. According to Seeker, the researchers are able to confirm the existence of a 'void' hidden behind the northern side at the upper part of the entrance gate. The void may be a corridor which runs inside the structure. The second cavity was discovered on the northeast flank of the pyramid.
Does the Great Pyramid contain hidden chambers? Source: BigStockPhotoAccording to the statement by Scan Pyramids, muons are "similar to X-rays, which can penetrate the body and allow bone imaging" and "can go through hundreds of meters of stone before being absorbed. Judiciously placed detectors -- for example inside a pyramid, below a potential, unknown chamber -- can then record particle tracks and discern cavities from denser regions." The newly discovered spaces inside the pyramid may be the long expected lost element of the pyramid.The work by the French researchers from the Scan Pyramids project has been made in collaboration with famous archeologist and former head of the Ministry of Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass. The project had initially been led by Nicholas Reeves, who used radar scans to reveal possible unknown chambers in the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. However, that discovery was negated by Dr Hawass and other researchers, so Reeves didn't receive permission to excavate inside the tomb. Dr Hawass’ previous opinions about the scans make his appearance in the project rather surprising. As National Geographic wrote in May 6, 2016: ''After claiming that radar has never led to a single discovery in Egypt, Dr Hawass said, “We have to stop this media business, because there is nothing to publish. There is nothing to publish today or yesterday.''
Previously, but without the company of Dr Hawass, the same team examined the Bent Pyramid in Dahshur. The study became a huge success. As Natalia Klimczak from Ancient Origins reported in May 10, 2016:
''A team of researchers has presented the results of an analysis focused on the internal structure of the Bent Pyramid of pharaoh Sneferu (Snefru), a 4,500-year-old monument named after its sloping upper half.”
A 3-D cutaway showing the inside of the Pyramid of Sneferu. Source:
Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, HIP Institute and the Faculty of Engineering (Cairo University)
The study is based on three modern technologies: infrared thermography, 3D scans with lasers, and cosmic-ray detectors. All of them have allowed the researchers to take better look inside the pyramids. Using the infrared thermography technique, the researchers measured the infrared energy emitted from the structures. The results of their testing were used to estimate the temperature distribution inside. Then, the team used lasers to bounce narrow pulses of light off the interiors of the Bent Pyramid. The last part of the research was locating cosmic particles, muons , within the structure, using detector plates.
Muons are formed at the moment when cosmic rays hit the Earth’s atmosphere. The particles rain down from the atmosphere, pass through empty spaces, and they can be absorbed or deflected by harder surfaces. They don't affect the human body, but if special detector plates are used, they can be tracked.
Kunihiro Morishima, from the Institute for Advanced Research of Nagoya University, Japan, placed 80 plates in the lower chamber of the Bent pyramid. They covered an area of about 10 square feet (0.93 sq. meters) and stayed there for 40 days. Following an analysis of these plates, the researchers were able to create 3D images of the pyramid, which revealed the shape of all of the chambers inside the pyramid.''
The size, shape and exact position of the newly-discovered cavities are now under investigation. To that end, the Scan Pyramids project has requested an extension of one year to complete the project.
Top image: A 3D cutaway view of the Great Pyramid of Giza revealing its interior chambers. Experts confirmed the existence of the mysterious cavities on Saturday after scanning the millennia-old monument with radiography equipment. Credit: Operation Scan Pyramids
By Natalia Klimzcak
November 2, 2016
All Souls' Day
November 2
The origins of All Souls' Day (Day of the Dead) in European folklore and folk belief are related to customs of ancestor veneration practiced worldwide, such as the Chinese Ghost Festival or the Latin American Day of the Dead. The Roman custom was that of the Lemuria.
The theological basis for the feast is the doctrine that the souls which,on departing from the body, are not perfectly cleansed from venial sins, or have not fully atoned for past transgressions, are debarred from the Beatific Vision, and that the faithful on earth can help them by prayers, alms deeds, and especially by the sacrifice of the Mass.
November 1, 2016
All Saints' Day
November 1All Saints' Day
The origins of the holiday commemorating all the saints of the church are obscure, but by the mid-eighth century, November 1st was the day to honor all known and unknown saints in the Catholic Church. In 837, its general observance was ordered by Pope Gregory IV. The date may have been selected for its coincidence with pagan observations of the harvest, including the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain and the ancient Finnish celebration of Kekri.
October 31, 2016
All Hallows' Eve
October 31
Historian Nicholas Rogers on the origin of All Hallows' Eve: while some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, whose original spelling was Samuin. The name is derived from Old Irish and means roughly "summer's end". A similar festival was held by the ancient Britons and is known as Calan Gaeaf.
The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half", and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year".
The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through. The family's ancestors were honored and invited home while harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks.
October 30, 2016
Book Launch - Before They Buried Thom Sloan by Lydia North
This is book six in The Spirits of Maine Series; ghost stories set in Maine. It is highly recommended that you begin with book one of the series to fully understand everything that happens in this story.
At 3:00 A.M. there is a knock at the door. A troubled young man is searching for a missing girl. He asks Eric Rivard to help. This search will be complicated by angry spirits that rival the ghost in ‘Waiting for Harvey’.
If you’re a fan of the Spirits of Maine Series you are in for a treat with this story!
Amazon link
About the AuthorLydia North is the pen name of Maine Author Kim Scott Kim Scott was born in Charleston, South Carolina and grew up in Scarborough, Maine. She presently resides in Southern Maine. She is the author of The Ruth Chernock Series (Regarding Ruth, In Ruth's Memory, On Grace's Shoulders and Pink Sky & Mourning) and The Manning Family Series (What Happened to Alex Manning? and Shuttering the Manning House). Under the pen name of Lydia North she wrote The Spirits of Maine Series.
Margaret Tudor: The forgotten Tudor
History Extra
Bernard van Orley’s portrait of Margaret Tudor, whose marriage to James IV of Scotland would result in her falling out spectacularly with her younger brother. © Bridgeman Art Library
The crowds of Scots who gathered to meet their new queen as she approached Edinburgh in the summer of 1503 were understandably excited. While some of this enthusiasm may have been the product of drink generously supplied for the occasion, there was also a sense of optimism. Scotland wanted a queen. Its king, James IV, already had seven illegitimate children and needed a legitimate heir.
Now around 30, James also appreciated the generous dowry and diplomatic advantage his wife would bring. An English princess was arriving to seal a treaty of ‘perpetual peace’ between the two kingdoms and to provide the dynamic, ambitious king with the partner who would help him enhance Scotland’s prestige.
The girl was Margaret Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and still only 13 years old. But she had been thoroughly trained for her new role and was determined to prove that she was equal to its demands.
Historians have tended to be dismissive of Margaret’s character and abilities. She is almost forgotten compared with other members of her famous family, yet we know a considerable amount about her, for Margaret was a prolific letter writer. Her extensive correspondence reveals her turbulent life in Scotland and the fraught relationship with her brother Henry VIII.
The homesick daughterTo Henry VII, August 1503
"God send me comfort that I and mine that be left here with me be well entreated… I wish I were with your Grace now and many times more… I pray God I may find it well for my welfare hereafter. Our Lord have you in his keeping. Written with the hand of your humble daughter, Margaret".
Henry VII, shown here in a c1505 painting, used his 13-year-old daughter as a pawn in a treaty of ‘perpetual peace’ between England and Scotland. © Bridgeman
Margaret’s letter to her father, Henry VII, betrays her homesickness and insecurities as she faced the reality of her new situation. Her response to her arrival in Scotland is hardly surprising: her beloved mother had died six months earlier and, in early July, she bid farewell to her father, knowing that she would probably never see him again. The journey north, lasting over three weeks, was exhausting.
Henry VII was determined to demonstrate, through his daughter’s progress into Scotland, the power and success of his dynasty. Margaret was constantly on show, meeting local dignitaries, attending banquets, changing dresses and jewels before she entered the towns along her way. Slim and red-headed, she cut a striking figure in her splendid gowns.
She crossed into Scotland on 1 August, and met her husband at Dalkeith Castle a few days later.
James IV’s visit was ostensibly a surprise, but had been carefully arranged. A charming womaniser, the king knew how to put his bride at her ease, though Margaret’s letter suggests that she did not fully appreciate this. Yet she rode pillion behind him into Edinburgh, to the great approbation of the populace, and James guided her through official functions with his arm around her waist.
The couple wore matching outfits of white damask for their glittering marriage at Holyrood Abbey. James spent extravagantly on preparing accommodation for his queen and on the wedding festivities: a quarter of his annual income went on wine alone. And he shaved his beard after the wedding, at his wife’s behest.
Margaret still felt, however, that he did not spend enough time with her, preferring to talk military matters with the Earl of Surrey, who had escorted her to Scotland and whose dictatorial manner she resented. She was clearly worried about the long-term treatment she and
her servants would receive.
The furious sisterTo Henry VIII, May 1513
"We cannot believe that of your mind or by your command we are so unkindly dealt with in our father’s legacy… Our husband knows it is witholden for his sake and will recompense us… We are ashamed therewith and wish God word had never been thereof. It is not worth such estimation as in your divers letters of the same and we lack nothing; our husband is ever the longer the better to us, as God knows".
James IV’s death in battle in 1513 left Margaret – shown in a 17th-century painting – feeling vulnerable and alone. © Bridgeman
These words, penned by an angry Margaret to her brother Henry VIII a decade after her arrival in Scotland, show that her fears about her new life north of the border were to prove unfounded. She swiftly settled into her position as Scotland’s queen, helped by the attention lavished on her by James IV. Clothed in rich furs and gowns and showered with jewels, she did, indeed, lack nothing.
And if James was by no means faithful (Margaret would not have known that his favourite mistress, Janet Kennedy, was pregnant with their third child at the time of her wedding), he was a considerate husband, easing her into the roles of consort and mother. She did not conceive until she was 16 and then produced a prince. But the child, like several others before the birth of the future James V, in 1512, did not survive.
The queen presided with her husband over a cultured court. James IV’s reign saw a flowering of literature and the arts in Scotland and he and his wife shared a love of music, dancing and masques.
Margaret must soon have realised that she had married a capable, popular ruler. James was a polymath whose interests ranged from naval matters to dentistry, and he was committed to being seen as a key player in Europe.
But his policies were to bring him into conflict with his young brother-in-law in England and deepen a rift between Margaret and Henry which may have had its origins in a reported childish spat when she, as a queen, briefly took precedence over him. Henry refused to pay Margaret the money and possessions left to her by both her father and brother, Prince Arthur. She was furious at this insult. But there was worse to come.
The desperate widowTo Henry VIII, November 1514
"My party-adversary continues in their malice and proceeds in their parliament, usurping the king’s authority, as (if) I and my lords were of no reputation, reputing us as rebels, wherefore I beseech that you would make haste with your army by sea and land. Brother, all the welfare of me and my children rests in your hands".
Eighteen months later, Margaret’s life was completely changed. Relations between England and Scotland, increasingly volatile, collapsed as Henry VIII declared war on France and the French king, Louis XII, requested the aid of his Scottish allies.
The decision by James IV to invade England was not, however, taken lightly. Margaret’s opposition to the move has been overstated – her earlier letter suggests strong support for her husband and she was already in the early stages of another pregnancy. Yet tragedy awaited. James engaged the English at the battle of Flodden in September 1513, on a remote hillside in Northumberland. His army outnumbered the English, and boasted the latest military technology but James had no experience of commanding a large force. The wiliness of his opponent, combined with treacherous marshy terrain, resulted in terrible slaughter. Ten thousand Scots perished, among them the king himself. Margaret was left a widow at the age of 23.
The shock to the queen was immense but Margaret acted with resolution, removing the toddler James V to the safety of Stirling Castle where he was crowned on 21 September. She was named as regent in her husband’s will, with one important proviso: she must not remarry.
But Scotland was fiercely patriarchal and Margaret was an Englishwoman. Exercising power was always going to be difficult. She gave birth to another son in April 1514, but in August she made a serious misjudgment: she married again. Her new husband, the Earl of Angus (right), was a member of a powerful family with a history of dividing Scottish politics.
Margaret’s need for strong male support cost her the regency and heralded a prolonged period of faction-fighting during her son’s troubled minority. Desperate to hold on to power and to her children, Margaret appealed to her brother for help. None was forthcoming.
The aggrieved motherAn attack on the Duke of Albany, 1516
"The Duke of Albany, by reason of his might and power, did take from me the king and duke, my said tender children. He removed and put me from out of my said castle [Stirling] being by enfeoffment paid for by the king my father of most blessed memory … and by his crafty and subtle ways made me signify in writing to the Pope’s Holiness and to my dearest brother the King of England and the King of France that I of my own mooting and free will did renounce my said office of tutrix and governess".
A painting of Margaret Tudor with a figure thought to be the Duke of Albany. Margaret was enraged when Albany, ruling Scotland as regent, seized her sons. © SCRAN
By the time the embittered Margaret wrote this official denunciation of the Duke of Albany, she had been forced to flee into England where she gave birth to a final child, her daughter by Angus, Lady Margaret Douglas. She wrote to Albany, the regent of Scotland who had replaced her, to announce the child’s arrival: “So it is that, by the grace of Almighty God, I am delivered, and have a Christian soul, being a young lady.” Her letter was sent in October 1515, from Harbottle Castle in Northumberland.
Margaret’s words reveal the depth of her anguish. John Stewart, Duke of Albany, was cousin to James IV and next in line to the Scottish throne after James V. He had been born and raised in France, and knew little of Scotland.
Initially, Margaret found Albany charming, but her position was further undermined when Henry VIII tried to have her sons kidnapped and brought to England. Determined to rule Scotland justly, Albany realised that he must gain control of the royal children. When Margaret refused, he besieged Stirling Castle and the queen was forced to submit. In a dramatic gesture intended to reinforce her son’s authority as king, she made little James V hand over the keys. Margaret had all the Tudor flair for a public occasion.
By September 1515, she decided that flight was the only option. Heavily pregnant, she rode for miles to the English border with Angus, leaving her jewels and wardrobe in Scotland. It was the last time her second husband would offer her any support.
The long recovery after a difficult labour was brightened by the arrival of new dresses sent from London but saddened by the death in December of her younger son. Margaret’s world had fallen apart.
The estranged wifeTo Henry VIII, 14 July 1524
"Also, my dearest brother, I have seen your writing touching my lord of Angus, which, as your Grace writes, is in your realm, and that ye purpose to send him here shortly, and that ye find him right wise… and that he is well minded of me and beareth me great love and favour. As yet he hath not shown, since his departing out of Scotland, that he desireth my good will and favour, neither by writing nor word… I trust, my dearest brother, that your Grace will not desire me to do nothing that may be hurt to me your sister, nor that may be occasion to hold me from the king my son".
Henry VIII treated his sister well but wanted her to return to Scotland. © Bridgeman
The queen stayed in England, in the company of her brother and sister, Mary, until 1517. The three had not been together for 13 years. But though Henry VIII treated Margaret well, he did not want her to stay, believing that her place was in Scotland.
It was typical of Henry’s muddled Scottish policy and his underlying misgivings about his sister that his preference for influencing Scottish politics was to work through the Anglophile Earl of Angus, Margaret’s husband. Unfortunately, the couple were now estranged and their relationship, despite a brief reconciliation in 1519, went from bad to worse. Angus took up with a former sweetheart and helped himself to the rents from Margaret’s lands, leaving the queen strapped for money and furious at his behaviour.
Taking his daughter Lady Margaret Douglas with him, the earl, who had fallen out with Albany, fled to France and then to England, where Lady Margaret was brought up at court. Feisty and attractive, she never really knew her mother, though her uncle proved an affectionate guardian.
In 1524, however, Queen Margaret’s time appeared to have come again. Albany returned to France and the queen and her supporters declared the 12-year-old James V of age to rule. Assuming the regency again, Margaret, who wanted a divorce, was not about to share power with Angus, and fired the guns of Edinburgh Castle on him when he appeared with armed men.
Her success was short-lived. At the end of 1525 Angus tricked fellow politicians and assumed full control of the king. For three years the boy chafed under the restrictions of his hated stepfather, while his mother outraged Henry VIII by pursuing her campaign for divorce.
The ageing matriarchTo Henry VIII, 12 May 1541
"Here has been great displeasure for the death of the prince and his brother, both with the king and the queen. I have done great diligence to put my dearest son and the queen his wife in comfort. I pray your grace to hold me excused that I write not at length… I can get no leisure".
James V and his wife Mary of Guise. © Bridgeman
Margaret’s marriage to Angus was annulled by the pope in 1527, the year Henry VIII began divorce proceedings against Catherine of Aragon. The following Easter, James V broke free from the domination of the Douglases and Angus fled again to England.
Margaret was elated, as she had fallen in love with a member of her household, Henry Stewart, and, at the age of 39, wanted to marry again. Her son gave permission but extracted a high price. He would not tolerate Margaret’s further meddling in Scottish politics. The queen felt sidelined and increasingly aggrieved, the more so as her third marriage was as unsuccessful as the union with Angus. Henry Stewart exploited her financially and was unfaithful.
Relief and a sense of fulfilment came from an unexpected source, Mary of Guise, James V’s second wife. This attractive and clever French noblewoman paid due attention to Margaret and the ‘old queen’ spent more time at court. In 1541 tragedy struck when Margaret’s two grandsons died within days of each other, leaving their parents devastated. Her support at this desperate time was greatly appreciated.
But Margaret’s own life was drawing to a close. In October, 1541, she suffered a stroke at Methven Castle, outside Perth, and died before her son could reach her. She was buried at St John’s Abbey in the city, alongside other Scottish rulers.
During the Reformation, Margaret’s tomb was desecrated and her skeleton burned – probably because she was English and Catholic. Like her first husband, James, she has no monument. But she would, no doubt, have been pleased that it was their great-grandson, James VI and I, who united the crowns of England and Scotland in 1603.
Linda Porter’s book about the rivalry between Tudors and Stuarts, Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots, is out now in paperback (Macmillan)
Bernard van Orley’s portrait of Margaret Tudor, whose marriage to James IV of Scotland would result in her falling out spectacularly with her younger brother. © Bridgeman Art Library The crowds of Scots who gathered to meet their new queen as she approached Edinburgh in the summer of 1503 were understandably excited. While some of this enthusiasm may have been the product of drink generously supplied for the occasion, there was also a sense of optimism. Scotland wanted a queen. Its king, James IV, already had seven illegitimate children and needed a legitimate heir.
Now around 30, James also appreciated the generous dowry and diplomatic advantage his wife would bring. An English princess was arriving to seal a treaty of ‘perpetual peace’ between the two kingdoms and to provide the dynamic, ambitious king with the partner who would help him enhance Scotland’s prestige.
The girl was Margaret Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and still only 13 years old. But she had been thoroughly trained for her new role and was determined to prove that she was equal to its demands.
Historians have tended to be dismissive of Margaret’s character and abilities. She is almost forgotten compared with other members of her famous family, yet we know a considerable amount about her, for Margaret was a prolific letter writer. Her extensive correspondence reveals her turbulent life in Scotland and the fraught relationship with her brother Henry VIII.
The homesick daughterTo Henry VII, August 1503
"God send me comfort that I and mine that be left here with me be well entreated… I wish I were with your Grace now and many times more… I pray God I may find it well for my welfare hereafter. Our Lord have you in his keeping. Written with the hand of your humble daughter, Margaret".
Henry VII, shown here in a c1505 painting, used his 13-year-old daughter as a pawn in a treaty of ‘perpetual peace’ between England and Scotland. © Bridgeman
Margaret’s letter to her father, Henry VII, betrays her homesickness and insecurities as she faced the reality of her new situation. Her response to her arrival in Scotland is hardly surprising: her beloved mother had died six months earlier and, in early July, she bid farewell to her father, knowing that she would probably never see him again. The journey north, lasting over three weeks, was exhausting.
Henry VII was determined to demonstrate, through his daughter’s progress into Scotland, the power and success of his dynasty. Margaret was constantly on show, meeting local dignitaries, attending banquets, changing dresses and jewels before she entered the towns along her way. Slim and red-headed, she cut a striking figure in her splendid gowns.
She crossed into Scotland on 1 August, and met her husband at Dalkeith Castle a few days later.
James IV’s visit was ostensibly a surprise, but had been carefully arranged. A charming womaniser, the king knew how to put his bride at her ease, though Margaret’s letter suggests that she did not fully appreciate this. Yet she rode pillion behind him into Edinburgh, to the great approbation of the populace, and James guided her through official functions with his arm around her waist.
The couple wore matching outfits of white damask for their glittering marriage at Holyrood Abbey. James spent extravagantly on preparing accommodation for his queen and on the wedding festivities: a quarter of his annual income went on wine alone. And he shaved his beard after the wedding, at his wife’s behest.
Margaret still felt, however, that he did not spend enough time with her, preferring to talk military matters with the Earl of Surrey, who had escorted her to Scotland and whose dictatorial manner she resented. She was clearly worried about the long-term treatment she and
her servants would receive.
The furious sisterTo Henry VIII, May 1513
"We cannot believe that of your mind or by your command we are so unkindly dealt with in our father’s legacy… Our husband knows it is witholden for his sake and will recompense us… We are ashamed therewith and wish God word had never been thereof. It is not worth such estimation as in your divers letters of the same and we lack nothing; our husband is ever the longer the better to us, as God knows".
James IV’s death in battle in 1513 left Margaret – shown in a 17th-century painting – feeling vulnerable and alone. © Bridgeman
These words, penned by an angry Margaret to her brother Henry VIII a decade after her arrival in Scotland, show that her fears about her new life north of the border were to prove unfounded. She swiftly settled into her position as Scotland’s queen, helped by the attention lavished on her by James IV. Clothed in rich furs and gowns and showered with jewels, she did, indeed, lack nothing.
And if James was by no means faithful (Margaret would not have known that his favourite mistress, Janet Kennedy, was pregnant with their third child at the time of her wedding), he was a considerate husband, easing her into the roles of consort and mother. She did not conceive until she was 16 and then produced a prince. But the child, like several others before the birth of the future James V, in 1512, did not survive.
The queen presided with her husband over a cultured court. James IV’s reign saw a flowering of literature and the arts in Scotland and he and his wife shared a love of music, dancing and masques.
Margaret must soon have realised that she had married a capable, popular ruler. James was a polymath whose interests ranged from naval matters to dentistry, and he was committed to being seen as a key player in Europe.
But his policies were to bring him into conflict with his young brother-in-law in England and deepen a rift between Margaret and Henry which may have had its origins in a reported childish spat when she, as a queen, briefly took precedence over him. Henry refused to pay Margaret the money and possessions left to her by both her father and brother, Prince Arthur. She was furious at this insult. But there was worse to come.
The desperate widowTo Henry VIII, November 1514
"My party-adversary continues in their malice and proceeds in their parliament, usurping the king’s authority, as (if) I and my lords were of no reputation, reputing us as rebels, wherefore I beseech that you would make haste with your army by sea and land. Brother, all the welfare of me and my children rests in your hands".
Eighteen months later, Margaret’s life was completely changed. Relations between England and Scotland, increasingly volatile, collapsed as Henry VIII declared war on France and the French king, Louis XII, requested the aid of his Scottish allies.
The decision by James IV to invade England was not, however, taken lightly. Margaret’s opposition to the move has been overstated – her earlier letter suggests strong support for her husband and she was already in the early stages of another pregnancy. Yet tragedy awaited. James engaged the English at the battle of Flodden in September 1513, on a remote hillside in Northumberland. His army outnumbered the English, and boasted the latest military technology but James had no experience of commanding a large force. The wiliness of his opponent, combined with treacherous marshy terrain, resulted in terrible slaughter. Ten thousand Scots perished, among them the king himself. Margaret was left a widow at the age of 23.
The shock to the queen was immense but Margaret acted with resolution, removing the toddler James V to the safety of Stirling Castle where he was crowned on 21 September. She was named as regent in her husband’s will, with one important proviso: she must not remarry.
But Scotland was fiercely patriarchal and Margaret was an Englishwoman. Exercising power was always going to be difficult. She gave birth to another son in April 1514, but in August she made a serious misjudgment: she married again. Her new husband, the Earl of Angus (right), was a member of a powerful family with a history of dividing Scottish politics.
Margaret’s need for strong male support cost her the regency and heralded a prolonged period of faction-fighting during her son’s troubled minority. Desperate to hold on to power and to her children, Margaret appealed to her brother for help. None was forthcoming.
The aggrieved motherAn attack on the Duke of Albany, 1516
"The Duke of Albany, by reason of his might and power, did take from me the king and duke, my said tender children. He removed and put me from out of my said castle [Stirling] being by enfeoffment paid for by the king my father of most blessed memory … and by his crafty and subtle ways made me signify in writing to the Pope’s Holiness and to my dearest brother the King of England and the King of France that I of my own mooting and free will did renounce my said office of tutrix and governess".
A painting of Margaret Tudor with a figure thought to be the Duke of Albany. Margaret was enraged when Albany, ruling Scotland as regent, seized her sons. © SCRAN
By the time the embittered Margaret wrote this official denunciation of the Duke of Albany, she had been forced to flee into England where she gave birth to a final child, her daughter by Angus, Lady Margaret Douglas. She wrote to Albany, the regent of Scotland who had replaced her, to announce the child’s arrival: “So it is that, by the grace of Almighty God, I am delivered, and have a Christian soul, being a young lady.” Her letter was sent in October 1515, from Harbottle Castle in Northumberland.
Margaret’s words reveal the depth of her anguish. John Stewart, Duke of Albany, was cousin to James IV and next in line to the Scottish throne after James V. He had been born and raised in France, and knew little of Scotland.
Initially, Margaret found Albany charming, but her position was further undermined when Henry VIII tried to have her sons kidnapped and brought to England. Determined to rule Scotland justly, Albany realised that he must gain control of the royal children. When Margaret refused, he besieged Stirling Castle and the queen was forced to submit. In a dramatic gesture intended to reinforce her son’s authority as king, she made little James V hand over the keys. Margaret had all the Tudor flair for a public occasion.
By September 1515, she decided that flight was the only option. Heavily pregnant, she rode for miles to the English border with Angus, leaving her jewels and wardrobe in Scotland. It was the last time her second husband would offer her any support.
The long recovery after a difficult labour was brightened by the arrival of new dresses sent from London but saddened by the death in December of her younger son. Margaret’s world had fallen apart.
The estranged wifeTo Henry VIII, 14 July 1524
"Also, my dearest brother, I have seen your writing touching my lord of Angus, which, as your Grace writes, is in your realm, and that ye purpose to send him here shortly, and that ye find him right wise… and that he is well minded of me and beareth me great love and favour. As yet he hath not shown, since his departing out of Scotland, that he desireth my good will and favour, neither by writing nor word… I trust, my dearest brother, that your Grace will not desire me to do nothing that may be hurt to me your sister, nor that may be occasion to hold me from the king my son".
Henry VIII treated his sister well but wanted her to return to Scotland. © Bridgeman
The queen stayed in England, in the company of her brother and sister, Mary, until 1517. The three had not been together for 13 years. But though Henry VIII treated Margaret well, he did not want her to stay, believing that her place was in Scotland.
It was typical of Henry’s muddled Scottish policy and his underlying misgivings about his sister that his preference for influencing Scottish politics was to work through the Anglophile Earl of Angus, Margaret’s husband. Unfortunately, the couple were now estranged and their relationship, despite a brief reconciliation in 1519, went from bad to worse. Angus took up with a former sweetheart and helped himself to the rents from Margaret’s lands, leaving the queen strapped for money and furious at his behaviour.
Taking his daughter Lady Margaret Douglas with him, the earl, who had fallen out with Albany, fled to France and then to England, where Lady Margaret was brought up at court. Feisty and attractive, she never really knew her mother, though her uncle proved an affectionate guardian.
In 1524, however, Queen Margaret’s time appeared to have come again. Albany returned to France and the queen and her supporters declared the 12-year-old James V of age to rule. Assuming the regency again, Margaret, who wanted a divorce, was not about to share power with Angus, and fired the guns of Edinburgh Castle on him when he appeared with armed men.
Her success was short-lived. At the end of 1525 Angus tricked fellow politicians and assumed full control of the king. For three years the boy chafed under the restrictions of his hated stepfather, while his mother outraged Henry VIII by pursuing her campaign for divorce.
The ageing matriarchTo Henry VIII, 12 May 1541
"Here has been great displeasure for the death of the prince and his brother, both with the king and the queen. I have done great diligence to put my dearest son and the queen his wife in comfort. I pray your grace to hold me excused that I write not at length… I can get no leisure".
James V and his wife Mary of Guise. © Bridgeman
Margaret’s marriage to Angus was annulled by the pope in 1527, the year Henry VIII began divorce proceedings against Catherine of Aragon. The following Easter, James V broke free from the domination of the Douglases and Angus fled again to England.
Margaret was elated, as she had fallen in love with a member of her household, Henry Stewart, and, at the age of 39, wanted to marry again. Her son gave permission but extracted a high price. He would not tolerate Margaret’s further meddling in Scottish politics. The queen felt sidelined and increasingly aggrieved, the more so as her third marriage was as unsuccessful as the union with Angus. Henry Stewart exploited her financially and was unfaithful.
Relief and a sense of fulfilment came from an unexpected source, Mary of Guise, James V’s second wife. This attractive and clever French noblewoman paid due attention to Margaret and the ‘old queen’ spent more time at court. In 1541 tragedy struck when Margaret’s two grandsons died within days of each other, leaving their parents devastated. Her support at this desperate time was greatly appreciated.
But Margaret’s own life was drawing to a close. In October, 1541, she suffered a stroke at Methven Castle, outside Perth, and died before her son could reach her. She was buried at St John’s Abbey in the city, alongside other Scottish rulers.
During the Reformation, Margaret’s tomb was desecrated and her skeleton burned – probably because she was English and Catholic. Like her first husband, James, she has no monument. But she would, no doubt, have been pleased that it was their great-grandson, James VI and I, who united the crowns of England and Scotland in 1603.
Linda Porter’s book about the rivalry between Tudors and Stuarts, Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots, is out now in paperback (Macmillan)
October 29, 2016
The real King Arthur and his Lancelot: Henry the Young King and William Marshal
History Extra
Lancelot fights for Guinevere in a medieval illumination. Was William Marshal also ensnared in a dangerous love triangle? © Topfoto
The legends of King Arthur, his leading warrior the mighty Lancelot and the tragic love triangle they formed with Queen Guinevere, retain their allure, though more than eight centuries have passed since they were first popularised. These tales remain touchstones of the Middle Ages, evoking romanticised images of a distant era, replete with knightly daring and courtly gallantry. Yet, for all our fascination with Arthurian myths, one probable inspiration for these stories has been all but forgotten.
In the late 12th century – just as medieval Europe was falling under the spell of early Arthurian ‘Romance’ literature – a real king was feted as the ultimate paragon of chivalry. He too was served by a faithful retainer, one renowned as the greatest knight of his generation. And, like Arthur and Lancelot, their story ended in tragedy amid accusations of adultery and betrayal.
Though history seldom remembers him now, Henry the Young King seemed assured of a glittering future when he was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey on 14 June 1170. Just 15 years old, Henry was already tall and incredibly handsome – the golden child of his generation. As the eldest surviving son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, he stood to inherit medieval Europe’s most powerful realm, the Angevin empire, with lands stretching from the borders of Scotland in the north to the foothills of the Pyrenees in the south.
But though Young Henry had undergone the sacred and transformative ritual of coronation – becoming a king in name – he was denied real power for the remainder of his career. Crowned during the lifetime of his virile and overbearing father (in the vain hope of securing a peaceful succession), the Young King was expected to wait patiently in the wings, serving as an associate monarch.
Vexed kingAs it was, Henry II (or the ‘Old King’, as he came to be known) lived for another 19 years, stubbornly refusing to apportion any region of the Angevin realm to his primary heir and, not surprisingly, Young Henry soon became vexed by this state of affairs.
The situation would have unsettled any ruling dynasty, but because Young Henry happened to belong to the most dysfunctional royal family in English history, it proved to be utterly ruinous. Thwarted by an imperious father on the one hand, yet encouraged to assert his rights by a scheming mother on the other, the Young King also had to contest with a viper’s brood of power-hungry siblings, including Richard the Lionheart and the future King John. In many respects Young Henry’s career proved to be a tragic waste. He led two failed rebellions against his father and ultimately suffered a squalid and agonising death in 1183, having contracted dysentery.
Historians have traditionally offered a withering assessment of his career, typically portraying him as a feckless dandy – the young, extravagant playboy who, once denied the chance to rule in his own right, frittered away his time in pursuit of vacuous chivalric glory. Dismissed as “shallow, vain, careless, empty-headed, incompetent, improvident and irresponsible”, the Young King remains a misunderstood and often overlooked figure.
A closer and more impartial study of Henry’s life reveals that this view is overly simplistic, at times even misrepresentative, and deeply shaded by hindsight. In fact, the best contemporary evidence indicates that the Young King was an able and politically engaged member of the Angevin dynasty, renowned in his own lifetime as a champion of the warrior class. This status brought Henry real political influence and marked him out as a model for contemporary authors of chivalric literature and Arthurian myth.
The course of Young Henry’s career and his connection to the cult of chivalry were heavily influenced by his close association with William Marshal – a man later described by the archbishop of Canterbury as “the greatest knight in all the world”. Born the younger son of a minor Anglo-Norman noble, William trained as a warrior and rose through the ranks, serving at the right hand of five English monarchs in the course of his long and eventful career.
Like Henry, Marshal was said to have been a fine figure of a man, but he was built first and foremost for war. Possessed with extraordinary physical endurance and vitality, and imbued with the raw strength to deliver shattering sword blows that resounded like a blacksmith’s hammer, he also became a peerless horseman, able to manoeuvre his mount with deft agility. These gifts, when married to an insatiable appetite for advancement, fuelled William’s meteoric rise. Later in life he would become Earl of Pembroke and regent of the realm. But in 1170 Marshal was still in his early 20s and a household knight serving in Eleanor of Aquitaine’s retinue.
A medieval woodcut shows men jousting, a highly perilous pastime at which William Marshal excelled. © Alamy
After Henry the Young King’s coronation, Marshal was appointed as the boy’s tutor-in-arms – a promotion that was probably engineered by Queen Eleanor so that she could maintain a degree of contact with, and influence over, her eldest son. William soon became Young Henry’s leading retainer and close confidant. The pair developed a warm friendship and together they set out in the 1170s to make their mark on the world.
By this time, western Europe was in the grip of a craze for knightly tournaments. These contests were light years away from the mannered jousts of the later Middle Ages, being riotous, chaotic affairs, tantamount to large-scale war games played out by teams of mounted knights across great swathes of territory, often more than 30 miles wide.
They were not without their risks. There is no evidence that warriors used blunted weaponry – relying instead upon their armour to protect them from severe injury – and the gravest danger came from being unhorsed and trampled under-hoof in the midst of a heated melee. Henry’s younger brother Geoffrey died from wounds sustained in this manner and one of William Marshal’s sons would suffer a similar fate. But the great value of these events was that they offered noblemen the perfect opportunity to demonstrate their knightly qualities to their peers, enabling them to earn renown within a society obsessed with chivalric culture. Tournaments came to feature heavily in Arthurian Romances, with Lancelot depicted as the leading champion.
Feckless youths?The most persistent accusation levelled by historians against the Young King and his knight William Marshal is that they wastefully immersed themselves in the world of the chivalric tournament. However, while it is true that they became leading devotees of the tourney circuit, this was hardly the all-consuming focus of their careers – their participation being chiefly confined to an intense, four-year period, between 1176 and 1180. Nor is it the case that these years were squandered. In fact, the successes they enjoyed on the tournament field transformed the prospects of both men.
Serving as the captain of Young Henry’s tournament team, William Marshal shot to fame using a combination of martial skill, steely resolve and canny tactics to score a tide of victories. William was rightly revered for his prowess, but there were also important practical and financial gains to be made. Most tournaments revolved around attempts to capture opposing knights, either by battering them into submission or by seizing control of their horses (one of William’s favourite tricks). Prisoners would then have to pay a ransom and perhaps also forfeit their equipment in return for release. Marshal bested some 500 warriors in these years and thus accrued a significant personal fortune. By 1180 he was in position to support a small retinue of knights of his own and had achieved such celebrity that he was on familiar terms with counts, dukes and kings.
Henry the Young King is crowned in 1170. © Bridgeman
Exalted standingHenry the Young King also stood to gain from his close involvement in the tournament circuit. As the patron of a leading team Henry participated in events but was generally shielded from the worst of the fracas by his retainers. For a man of his exalted social standing, there was less emphasis on individual prowess and more upon the chivalric quality of largesse – and in this regard, Henry was unmatched. At a time when leading nobles were judged on the size and splendour of their retinues, the Young King assembled one of the most impressive military households in all of Europe.
As a result, contemporaries compared Henry to Alexander the Great and Arthur, the great heroes of old, and hailed him as a ‘father of chivalry’ – a cult figure, worthy of reverence. Such ostentation came at a crippling cost but this display of status was not simply an exercise in idle frivolity, as most historians have assumed.
Tourneys were games of prowess, but they were played by many of the most powerful men in Europe – barons and magnates driven by a deepening fixation with knightly ideals. This lent Young Henry’s renown a potent edge because it inevitably brought with it a measure of influence beyond the confines of the tournament field. As a teenager, Henry had sought power through rebellion. In the late 1170s he made his name and affirmed his regal status in a different arena. These achievements could not be ignored by the Old King. Historians have often suggested that Henry II viewed his son’s lavish tournament career as merely wasteful and trivial. But by 1179 his attitude was unquestionably more positive.
On 1 November that year, the frail teenager Philip II was crowned and anointed as the next king of France in the royal city of Rheims. All of western Europe’s leading dynasties and noble houses attended this grand ceremony and to top it all a massive tournament was organised to celebrate Philip’s investiture. That autumn the close correlation between practical power and chivalric spectacle was laid bare.
With the creation of a new French king, the chess board of politics was about to be reordered and naturally all the key players were angling for influence and advantage. Leading figures such as Philip, Count of Flanders and Duke Hugh of Burgundy – both tournament enthusiasts – were present, eager to establish themselves as the young French monarch’s preferred mentor.
Henry II looked to his eldest son to represent the Angevin house, and so Young Henry went to Rheims alongside his illustrious champion, William Marshal.
Young Henry duly played a starring role in the coronation, carrying Philip’s crown in affirmation of his close connection to the new French monarch. After a round of feasting, Henry and William moved on to a large area of open terrain east of Paris, at Lagny-sur-Marne for the greatest tournament of the 12th century. There, as leading knights among some 3,000 participants, Young Henry and William revelled in a glorious festival of pageantry, awash with the colour of hundreds of unfurled banners. That day, according to one chronicler, “the entire field of combat was swarming with [warriors]”, so that “not an inch of ground could be seen”. It was a spectacle the likes of which had “never [been] seen before or since” – and Young Henry and William Marshal were its stars.
The contest at Lagny marked the apogee of William Marshal’s tournament career and the Young King’s dedication to the cult of chivalry. Having resuscitated his reputation, Young Henry sought to make a more direct re-entry into the world of power politics by snatching the duchy of Aquitaine from his brother Richard the Lionheart. But then, a shocking rumour reached his ears. One of his warriors was bedding Queen Marguerite, his wife. The man accused of this heinous crime was none other than William Marshal.
The effigy of William Marshal at London’s Temple Church. © Bridgeman
Passionate affairIt is impossible to know whether there was any substance to this allegation. It appears to have been levelled by a disaffected faction in the Young King’s entourage and possibly prompted by jealously of Marshal’s glittering career. It is perhaps no coincidence that it was precisely in this period that the famed author of Arthurian literature, Chrétien de Troyes, composed his first story about Lancelot and his passionate affair with Queen Guinevere.
In all probability Young Henry did not believe William to be guilty or else he would have enacted a more severe punishment than mere exile. As it was, the shame surrounding Marshal was sufficient to require his banishment from court in late 1182. When the Young King began his second rebellion against his father in 1183 he did so without his leading knight and advisor by his side and the subsequent civil war did not go in his favour. Facing the combined might of the Old King and the Lionheart, Young Henry eventually relented and recalled William to his side.
Tragically, William Marshal only arrived in time to witness his lord’s descent into ill health, for the Young King contracted dysentery and died in agony at Martel, near Limoges in France, on 11 June 1183. On his deathbed Henry reportedly turned to “his most intimate friend” and bid William to carry his regal cloak to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in payment of his “debts to God”. It was a charge that William duly fulfilled.
Young King Henry received scourging press from most late 12th-century chroniclers. For these historians, writing during the reigns of the Old King and his successors, Henry was easy game – a wayward princeling who died young and left no great court historians to sing his praises. In their accounts he became little more than a mutinous traitor who “befouled the whole world with his treasons”.
Only a few of Young Henry’s closest contemporaries offered a more immediate impression of his achievements and character. The most heartfelt memorial was offered by the Young King’s own chaplain, who wrote that “it was a blow to all chivalry when he passed away in the very glow of youth” and concluded that “when Henry died heaven was hungry, so all the world went begging”.
The lives of the “great knight” and England’s heirWilliam Marshal
1147: Born as the younger son of a minor Anglo-Norman noble, John Marshal, and grows up in England’s West Country.
1170: William is appointed as Henry the Young King’s tutor-in-arms.
1179: He is permitted to raise his own banner and attends the great tournament at Lagny-sur-Marne.
1182: Accused of betraying Henry and bedding his wife, William is forced into exile.
1183: Returns to Young Henry’s side shortly before his death. William later sets out for the Holy Land to redeem Henry’s crusading vow.
1186: Comes back to Europe, enters King Henry II’s household and starts to accrue lands and wealth.
1189: Marriage to the heiress Isabel of Clare (arranged by Richard the Lionheart) brings William the lordship of Striguil (Chepstow). The couple have no less than 10 children.
1190–94: Serves as co-justiciar of England during King Richard I’s absence on crusade and period in captivity.
1215: William helps to negotiate the terms of Magna Carta and he appears as the first named nobleman in the document.
1216: After King John’s death, William supports the child Henry III’s claim to the crown and is appointed as ‘guardian of the realm’, thus becoming regent of England.
1217: Despite being 70 years old, William fights in the frontline at the battle of Lincoln and defeats the combined forces of the baronial rebels and the French.
1219: William resigns as regent, dies in peace shortly thereafter and is buried in London’s Temple Church.
Henry the Young King
1155: Born to King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. As eldest surviving son he is heir-apparent to the Angevin empire. His younger brother is Richard the Lionheart.
1160: Though barely five, Henry is married to the French king’s two-year-old daughter, Marguerite; both were rumoured to have bawled throughout the ceremony.
1170: Crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey during his father’s lifetime, but expected to serve as an associate monarch.
1173–74: Leads first rebellion against Henry II, in alliance with Louis VII of France and Philip of Flanders, but is thwarted by his father.
1176: Starts to frequent the northern French tournament circuit alongside William Marshal, quickly earning a reputation for lavish largesse.
1179: Attends Philip II of France’s coronation and the grand tournament at Lagny-sur-Marne.
1183: Second rebellion against Henry II’s regime leads to war in Aquitaine. Henry the Young King contracts dysentery and dies in agony at Martel, west central France.
Dr Thomas Asbridge is reader in medieval history at Queen Mary, University of London. In 2014, he presented the BBC Two documentary The Greatest Knight: William the Marshal.
Lancelot fights for Guinevere in a medieval illumination. Was William Marshal also ensnared in a dangerous love triangle? © Topfoto The legends of King Arthur, his leading warrior the mighty Lancelot and the tragic love triangle they formed with Queen Guinevere, retain their allure, though more than eight centuries have passed since they were first popularised. These tales remain touchstones of the Middle Ages, evoking romanticised images of a distant era, replete with knightly daring and courtly gallantry. Yet, for all our fascination with Arthurian myths, one probable inspiration for these stories has been all but forgotten.
In the late 12th century – just as medieval Europe was falling under the spell of early Arthurian ‘Romance’ literature – a real king was feted as the ultimate paragon of chivalry. He too was served by a faithful retainer, one renowned as the greatest knight of his generation. And, like Arthur and Lancelot, their story ended in tragedy amid accusations of adultery and betrayal.
Though history seldom remembers him now, Henry the Young King seemed assured of a glittering future when he was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey on 14 June 1170. Just 15 years old, Henry was already tall and incredibly handsome – the golden child of his generation. As the eldest surviving son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, he stood to inherit medieval Europe’s most powerful realm, the Angevin empire, with lands stretching from the borders of Scotland in the north to the foothills of the Pyrenees in the south.
But though Young Henry had undergone the sacred and transformative ritual of coronation – becoming a king in name – he was denied real power for the remainder of his career. Crowned during the lifetime of his virile and overbearing father (in the vain hope of securing a peaceful succession), the Young King was expected to wait patiently in the wings, serving as an associate monarch.
Vexed kingAs it was, Henry II (or the ‘Old King’, as he came to be known) lived for another 19 years, stubbornly refusing to apportion any region of the Angevin realm to his primary heir and, not surprisingly, Young Henry soon became vexed by this state of affairs.
The situation would have unsettled any ruling dynasty, but because Young Henry happened to belong to the most dysfunctional royal family in English history, it proved to be utterly ruinous. Thwarted by an imperious father on the one hand, yet encouraged to assert his rights by a scheming mother on the other, the Young King also had to contest with a viper’s brood of power-hungry siblings, including Richard the Lionheart and the future King John. In many respects Young Henry’s career proved to be a tragic waste. He led two failed rebellions against his father and ultimately suffered a squalid and agonising death in 1183, having contracted dysentery.
Historians have traditionally offered a withering assessment of his career, typically portraying him as a feckless dandy – the young, extravagant playboy who, once denied the chance to rule in his own right, frittered away his time in pursuit of vacuous chivalric glory. Dismissed as “shallow, vain, careless, empty-headed, incompetent, improvident and irresponsible”, the Young King remains a misunderstood and often overlooked figure.
A closer and more impartial study of Henry’s life reveals that this view is overly simplistic, at times even misrepresentative, and deeply shaded by hindsight. In fact, the best contemporary evidence indicates that the Young King was an able and politically engaged member of the Angevin dynasty, renowned in his own lifetime as a champion of the warrior class. This status brought Henry real political influence and marked him out as a model for contemporary authors of chivalric literature and Arthurian myth.
The course of Young Henry’s career and his connection to the cult of chivalry were heavily influenced by his close association with William Marshal – a man later described by the archbishop of Canterbury as “the greatest knight in all the world”. Born the younger son of a minor Anglo-Norman noble, William trained as a warrior and rose through the ranks, serving at the right hand of five English monarchs in the course of his long and eventful career.
Like Henry, Marshal was said to have been a fine figure of a man, but he was built first and foremost for war. Possessed with extraordinary physical endurance and vitality, and imbued with the raw strength to deliver shattering sword blows that resounded like a blacksmith’s hammer, he also became a peerless horseman, able to manoeuvre his mount with deft agility. These gifts, when married to an insatiable appetite for advancement, fuelled William’s meteoric rise. Later in life he would become Earl of Pembroke and regent of the realm. But in 1170 Marshal was still in his early 20s and a household knight serving in Eleanor of Aquitaine’s retinue.
A medieval woodcut shows men jousting, a highly perilous pastime at which William Marshal excelled. © Alamy
After Henry the Young King’s coronation, Marshal was appointed as the boy’s tutor-in-arms – a promotion that was probably engineered by Queen Eleanor so that she could maintain a degree of contact with, and influence over, her eldest son. William soon became Young Henry’s leading retainer and close confidant. The pair developed a warm friendship and together they set out in the 1170s to make their mark on the world.
By this time, western Europe was in the grip of a craze for knightly tournaments. These contests were light years away from the mannered jousts of the later Middle Ages, being riotous, chaotic affairs, tantamount to large-scale war games played out by teams of mounted knights across great swathes of territory, often more than 30 miles wide.
They were not without their risks. There is no evidence that warriors used blunted weaponry – relying instead upon their armour to protect them from severe injury – and the gravest danger came from being unhorsed and trampled under-hoof in the midst of a heated melee. Henry’s younger brother Geoffrey died from wounds sustained in this manner and one of William Marshal’s sons would suffer a similar fate. But the great value of these events was that they offered noblemen the perfect opportunity to demonstrate their knightly qualities to their peers, enabling them to earn renown within a society obsessed with chivalric culture. Tournaments came to feature heavily in Arthurian Romances, with Lancelot depicted as the leading champion.
Feckless youths?The most persistent accusation levelled by historians against the Young King and his knight William Marshal is that they wastefully immersed themselves in the world of the chivalric tournament. However, while it is true that they became leading devotees of the tourney circuit, this was hardly the all-consuming focus of their careers – their participation being chiefly confined to an intense, four-year period, between 1176 and 1180. Nor is it the case that these years were squandered. In fact, the successes they enjoyed on the tournament field transformed the prospects of both men.
Serving as the captain of Young Henry’s tournament team, William Marshal shot to fame using a combination of martial skill, steely resolve and canny tactics to score a tide of victories. William was rightly revered for his prowess, but there were also important practical and financial gains to be made. Most tournaments revolved around attempts to capture opposing knights, either by battering them into submission or by seizing control of their horses (one of William’s favourite tricks). Prisoners would then have to pay a ransom and perhaps also forfeit their equipment in return for release. Marshal bested some 500 warriors in these years and thus accrued a significant personal fortune. By 1180 he was in position to support a small retinue of knights of his own and had achieved such celebrity that he was on familiar terms with counts, dukes and kings.
Henry the Young King is crowned in 1170. © Bridgeman
Exalted standingHenry the Young King also stood to gain from his close involvement in the tournament circuit. As the patron of a leading team Henry participated in events but was generally shielded from the worst of the fracas by his retainers. For a man of his exalted social standing, there was less emphasis on individual prowess and more upon the chivalric quality of largesse – and in this regard, Henry was unmatched. At a time when leading nobles were judged on the size and splendour of their retinues, the Young King assembled one of the most impressive military households in all of Europe.
As a result, contemporaries compared Henry to Alexander the Great and Arthur, the great heroes of old, and hailed him as a ‘father of chivalry’ – a cult figure, worthy of reverence. Such ostentation came at a crippling cost but this display of status was not simply an exercise in idle frivolity, as most historians have assumed.
Tourneys were games of prowess, but they were played by many of the most powerful men in Europe – barons and magnates driven by a deepening fixation with knightly ideals. This lent Young Henry’s renown a potent edge because it inevitably brought with it a measure of influence beyond the confines of the tournament field. As a teenager, Henry had sought power through rebellion. In the late 1170s he made his name and affirmed his regal status in a different arena. These achievements could not be ignored by the Old King. Historians have often suggested that Henry II viewed his son’s lavish tournament career as merely wasteful and trivial. But by 1179 his attitude was unquestionably more positive.
On 1 November that year, the frail teenager Philip II was crowned and anointed as the next king of France in the royal city of Rheims. All of western Europe’s leading dynasties and noble houses attended this grand ceremony and to top it all a massive tournament was organised to celebrate Philip’s investiture. That autumn the close correlation between practical power and chivalric spectacle was laid bare.
With the creation of a new French king, the chess board of politics was about to be reordered and naturally all the key players were angling for influence and advantage. Leading figures such as Philip, Count of Flanders and Duke Hugh of Burgundy – both tournament enthusiasts – were present, eager to establish themselves as the young French monarch’s preferred mentor.
Henry II looked to his eldest son to represent the Angevin house, and so Young Henry went to Rheims alongside his illustrious champion, William Marshal.
Young Henry duly played a starring role in the coronation, carrying Philip’s crown in affirmation of his close connection to the new French monarch. After a round of feasting, Henry and William moved on to a large area of open terrain east of Paris, at Lagny-sur-Marne for the greatest tournament of the 12th century. There, as leading knights among some 3,000 participants, Young Henry and William revelled in a glorious festival of pageantry, awash with the colour of hundreds of unfurled banners. That day, according to one chronicler, “the entire field of combat was swarming with [warriors]”, so that “not an inch of ground could be seen”. It was a spectacle the likes of which had “never [been] seen before or since” – and Young Henry and William Marshal were its stars.
The contest at Lagny marked the apogee of William Marshal’s tournament career and the Young King’s dedication to the cult of chivalry. Having resuscitated his reputation, Young Henry sought to make a more direct re-entry into the world of power politics by snatching the duchy of Aquitaine from his brother Richard the Lionheart. But then, a shocking rumour reached his ears. One of his warriors was bedding Queen Marguerite, his wife. The man accused of this heinous crime was none other than William Marshal.
The effigy of William Marshal at London’s Temple Church. © Bridgeman
Passionate affairIt is impossible to know whether there was any substance to this allegation. It appears to have been levelled by a disaffected faction in the Young King’s entourage and possibly prompted by jealously of Marshal’s glittering career. It is perhaps no coincidence that it was precisely in this period that the famed author of Arthurian literature, Chrétien de Troyes, composed his first story about Lancelot and his passionate affair with Queen Guinevere.
In all probability Young Henry did not believe William to be guilty or else he would have enacted a more severe punishment than mere exile. As it was, the shame surrounding Marshal was sufficient to require his banishment from court in late 1182. When the Young King began his second rebellion against his father in 1183 he did so without his leading knight and advisor by his side and the subsequent civil war did not go in his favour. Facing the combined might of the Old King and the Lionheart, Young Henry eventually relented and recalled William to his side.
Tragically, William Marshal only arrived in time to witness his lord’s descent into ill health, for the Young King contracted dysentery and died in agony at Martel, near Limoges in France, on 11 June 1183. On his deathbed Henry reportedly turned to “his most intimate friend” and bid William to carry his regal cloak to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in payment of his “debts to God”. It was a charge that William duly fulfilled.
Young King Henry received scourging press from most late 12th-century chroniclers. For these historians, writing during the reigns of the Old King and his successors, Henry was easy game – a wayward princeling who died young and left no great court historians to sing his praises. In their accounts he became little more than a mutinous traitor who “befouled the whole world with his treasons”.
Only a few of Young Henry’s closest contemporaries offered a more immediate impression of his achievements and character. The most heartfelt memorial was offered by the Young King’s own chaplain, who wrote that “it was a blow to all chivalry when he passed away in the very glow of youth” and concluded that “when Henry died heaven was hungry, so all the world went begging”.
The lives of the “great knight” and England’s heirWilliam Marshal
1147: Born as the younger son of a minor Anglo-Norman noble, John Marshal, and grows up in England’s West Country.
1170: William is appointed as Henry the Young King’s tutor-in-arms.
1179: He is permitted to raise his own banner and attends the great tournament at Lagny-sur-Marne.
1182: Accused of betraying Henry and bedding his wife, William is forced into exile.
1183: Returns to Young Henry’s side shortly before his death. William later sets out for the Holy Land to redeem Henry’s crusading vow.
1186: Comes back to Europe, enters King Henry II’s household and starts to accrue lands and wealth.
1189: Marriage to the heiress Isabel of Clare (arranged by Richard the Lionheart) brings William the lordship of Striguil (Chepstow). The couple have no less than 10 children.
1190–94: Serves as co-justiciar of England during King Richard I’s absence on crusade and period in captivity.
1215: William helps to negotiate the terms of Magna Carta and he appears as the first named nobleman in the document.
1216: After King John’s death, William supports the child Henry III’s claim to the crown and is appointed as ‘guardian of the realm’, thus becoming regent of England.
1217: Despite being 70 years old, William fights in the frontline at the battle of Lincoln and defeats the combined forces of the baronial rebels and the French.
1219: William resigns as regent, dies in peace shortly thereafter and is buried in London’s Temple Church.
Henry the Young King
1155: Born to King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. As eldest surviving son he is heir-apparent to the Angevin empire. His younger brother is Richard the Lionheart.
1160: Though barely five, Henry is married to the French king’s two-year-old daughter, Marguerite; both were rumoured to have bawled throughout the ceremony.
1170: Crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey during his father’s lifetime, but expected to serve as an associate monarch.
1173–74: Leads first rebellion against Henry II, in alliance with Louis VII of France and Philip of Flanders, but is thwarted by his father.
1176: Starts to frequent the northern French tournament circuit alongside William Marshal, quickly earning a reputation for lavish largesse.
1179: Attends Philip II of France’s coronation and the grand tournament at Lagny-sur-Marne.
1183: Second rebellion against Henry II’s regime leads to war in Aquitaine. Henry the Young King contracts dysentery and dies in agony at Martel, west central France.
Dr Thomas Asbridge is reader in medieval history at Queen Mary, University of London. In 2014, he presented the BBC Two documentary The Greatest Knight: William the Marshal.
October 28, 2016
The real reason Jane Austen never married
History Extra
Jane Austen c1754. Unlike her literary heroines, Jane never took her own trip down the aisle. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
Jane Austen’s present-day popularity derives chiefly from the fact her heroines, although two centuries old, act as romantic beacons for the modern age. With a universal message of marrying for love rather than money, they provide examples, albeit fictional, of women choosing husbands due to strings of the heart and not of the purse.
If the old adage ‘write what you know’ is applied to Austen’s writing, then she should have had one of the happiest marriages in the history of matrimony. But here lies the paradox. One of the supreme purveyors of romantic love in English literature, and the creator of numerous blissful couplings in print, never took her own trip down the aisle.
The whitewashing of her public persona began almost immediately after her death in 1817 with the autobiographical note her brother, Henry, wrote to preface the publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. This meant that the question as to why this was so never really entered the equation. The mere fact that Jane did not find a Mr Darcy in real life and so lived – it seemed – as a virtuous Christian ‘spinster’ was enough to satisfy Victorian curiosity.
By the middle of the 20th century, however, this somewhat distorted view of the now much admired and studied author began to be challenged. Literary critic QD Leavis protested in 1942, for example, against the “conventional account of Miss Austen as prim, demure, sedate, prudish and so on, the typical Victorian maiden lady”. Her essay was just one of many that would bring into question and then rewrite the received biography. And with this rewriting came the desire to know exactly why Jane Austen had remained single.
Lesbian love?The most contentious hypothesis puts forward the assumption Jane Austen did not marry for the simple reason her sexuality was orientated towards other women. In other words, she was a lesbian. The evidence, however, is simply not there to support this.
We know of the early romance with Tom Lefroy, who would later become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, which was called off not by Jane due to any burgeoning doubt about her own sexuality, but by his family due to the penniless status of the would-be lovers. And this was the age, lest we forget, at least for the middling classes and above, when marrying for money was a fact of life and the yardstick by which all potential partners – male and female – were measured.
Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy as Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy in the 2007 film 'Becoming Jane'. (AF archive/Alamy Stock Photo)
There was also the mystery seaside rendezvous, where it is said Jane fell in love with a young clergyman and he with her. Their infatuation blossomed over several weeks during one of the Austen family’s regular summer breaks while they lived in Bath, and the lovers made arrangements to meet the following year. Sadly, when the time came for their reunion, news arrived saying that the clergyman had died during the intervening period. In 2009 Dr Andrew Norman named this clergyman as Samuel Blackall, but claims Blackall did not die but rather went on to marry someone else.
And then, of course, there was an actual proposal of marriage and acceptance of it. While Jane and her sister, Cassandra, were staying with friends, the Bigg sisters, at their residence, Manydown, Hants, in December 1802, their younger brother, Harris Bigg-Wither (the additional surname having been adopted for males of the family during the late 18th century) took it upon himself to integrate the families further by one evening proposing to Jane. Although he was six years younger than her she accepted, but after what can only have been a dark night of the soul rescinded it the following morning and hastily bid a retreat by carriage back to Steventon and then to Bath.
It could be argued that if there were any hint of lesbianism in Jane’s make-up then surely she would simply have not accepted the offer in the first place, or else would not have changed her mind (enjoying the financial security the marriage brought, while at the same time free to pursue those other erstwhile activities). The reality is that any relations Jane did have with the same sex were either genuine friendships, or else those normally shared with relatives.
Another theory was later put forward; that of an incestuous relationship. This ‘sisterly love’ theory, which suggested a sexual bond between Jane and her sister, Cassandra, came into public consciousness in 1995, the same year as Colin Firth’s shirt-drenched Darcy became lodged there; the former through a review essay by Terry Castle.
Castle’s piece, which appeared in the London Review of Books, was a critique of the latest edition of Jane Austen’s collected letters. In the essay Castle pondered on the closeness of the sisters to the point where she mused about the true nature of their relationship and what had transpired between the sheets of the double bed she believed the sisters shared throughout their lives.
It was of course Cassandra, in one of the greatest acts of literary vandalism in history, who burnt the majority of her sister’s enormous correspondence to her, thus depriving posterity of an insight into a more authentic character study of Jane, other than the whitewashed, virginal one that prevailed. The burning of Jane’s letters also gave rise to endless speculation as to what exactly they contained.
Handwritten letter from Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)
Whether it was ever Castle’s intention to call into question the sisters’ sexual orientation – she later stated it was not – there was seemingly enough in the review to warrant a sub-editor on the periodical (with one-eye on circulation, no doubt) to title the review “Was Jane Austen Gay?” and then emblazon the headline on the front cover.
The ensuing fallout from the article – which included a media maelstrom – made at least one thing certain: not the bedtime habits of the Austen sisters, but the reverence held for Jane by various devotees (or ‘Janeites’, as they are called) around the globe. Indeed, many fans were outraged at the mere suggestion that Austen could have been anything other than a heterosexual, virginal singleton.
The final nail in the coffin of this theory seemed to come with the disclosure of an invoice. The whole episode had revolved around Castle’s assumption that the two women slept together in one double bed, but this assumption was completely shattered by a piece of paper that showed that Mr Austen, on his daughters reaching adolescence, had ordered a single bed for each of them.
And let us not forget, either, that Cassandra herself was engaged to be married, before her fiancé died in 1797, leaving her bereft but determined to embrace spinsterhood out of respect for him and not through any sexual orientation towards other women.
Another relationshipWith that contentious theory hopefully put to bed (no pun intended), we can come to the real reason, I believe, Jane Austen did not marry. It was because she already had developed a deep, lifelong relationship with her art – writing – and believed there was a good chance any gentleman she uttered the words ‘I do’ to would insist on that artistic expression ceasing forthwith.
Jane Austen began writing at the age of 12 and did not stop until ill health forced it upon her, shortly before her death, at the age of 41. In between there were seemingly fallow years – in Bath – and even barren ones – in Southampton – but this did not mean she ceased in the development of her craft. There were voluminous letters to be written, so as to keep her wit and observations sharp, and large amounts of books devoured from circulating libraries or those of friends and relatives to stimulate her mind in readiness for an incredible six-year outpouring of literary creativity once ensconced at the cottage in Chawton.
Jane Austen's house, Chawton, Hampshire. (Photo by Peter Thompson/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
This ‘revelation’ and the whole mass of evidence that is slowly being recognised as supporting this theory is, in its own way, possibly even more contentious than any questions about Jane’s sexuality. Why? Because this suggests that she was not only a literary genius but a forward-thinking woman, an independent mind, an astute business person and a feminist pioneer – one who can easily take her place alongside such luminaries as Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft – rolled into one.
And this at a time when women were supposed to love, honour and obey their husbands, and the only way for the majority of women – including Austen – to obtain financial security was to marry into it. Because God help them if they tried to make a living independently, say through the pen, as she chose to do! In hindsight, then, it is perhaps no wonder Jane’s brother, Henry, sought to soften the image of his sister, knowing a true portrait would most likely cause outrage in certain sections of the Regency, and then later Victorian, public.
Possibly Tom Lefroy would have encouraged Jane’s writing aspirations, as might the mysterious seaside suitor, but she was certain that Harris Bigg-Wither would not and ultimately, in my mind, at least, that is why she declined his proposal. But let us consider for a moment the pressure that would have been on Jane throughout that December night in 1802 at Manydown. Her family, although not poor, were not well off, and the marriage would have brought security for all of them, or at least the females within it: Jane, Cassandra and their mother.
I believe it was with a pragmatic mind that Jane accepted Bigg-Wither’s proposal. And then throughout the night, either within her solitary thoughts or in discussion with her sister, she pondered on what she might be losing herself, and changed her mind. It might have been the dutiful daughter who accepted the proposal, but it was the aspiring writer (and true artist) who descended the stairs the following morning, took Harris to one side, and declared she had made a mistake and the marriage was off.
With this knowledge of Jane’s literary aspirations, it is perhaps no surprise that on her return to Bath she subsequently revised Northanger Abbey (or rather Susan, as it was originally titled) and successfully sought a publishing deal for it, which saw her achieve the goal of finally being paid for her writing. The fact that, for whatever reason, the publishing firm chose not to publish the work merely taught Jane a lesson about the industry and made her more determined to see her work in print, if not bearing her own name, certainly on her own terms.
A print from an edition of Jane Austen's 'Northanger Abbey'. George Routledge and Sons, London. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)
To this end, after revising Sense & Sensibility and once settled at Chawton, Jane used her own money to publish the book and saw a handsome return on her investment. And although she sold the rights to her next published novel, Pride & Prejudice, she quickly realised a mistake had been made and so subsequent books reverted back to this initial ‘business model’.
The fact that Jane Austen remained single all her life, while her literary heroines enjoyed both romantic wedded bliss and financial security, is one of English literature’s greatest ironies. The simple fact is, though, that even if Jane had herself experienced a happy marriage with a husband only too obliging for her to continue writing, with the prospect of possibly a large family to bring up Jane may not have had the time to write to the extent she did and so develop her incredible talent that is so revered today.
So, to reiterate, by not marrying, Jane allowed herself the time and space to develop her talent unhindered by domestic duties or conjugal obligations. She sacrificed financial security and matrimonial happiness in order to retain the freedom to write and develop as a true artist. It is perhaps because of that choice Jane Austen is considered one of the greatest literary talents of all time.
David Lassman is a former director of the International Jane Austen Festival. He has recently written an Austen-related feature film entitled Encounter, due for release in 2017, and is currently working on an autobiographical book entitled How I Became Jane Austen’s Press Agent, charting his time as PR & media consultant for the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. Lassman’s views on Austen have been sought by media organisations such as CNN, BBC and the New York Times, and he has made many radio and television appearances, including the 2008 documentary Crazy About Jane; BBC’s The One Show and Good Morning America.
Jane Austen c1754. Unlike her literary heroines, Jane never took her own trip down the aisle. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images) Jane Austen’s present-day popularity derives chiefly from the fact her heroines, although two centuries old, act as romantic beacons for the modern age. With a universal message of marrying for love rather than money, they provide examples, albeit fictional, of women choosing husbands due to strings of the heart and not of the purse.
If the old adage ‘write what you know’ is applied to Austen’s writing, then she should have had one of the happiest marriages in the history of matrimony. But here lies the paradox. One of the supreme purveyors of romantic love in English literature, and the creator of numerous blissful couplings in print, never took her own trip down the aisle.
The whitewashing of her public persona began almost immediately after her death in 1817 with the autobiographical note her brother, Henry, wrote to preface the publication of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. This meant that the question as to why this was so never really entered the equation. The mere fact that Jane did not find a Mr Darcy in real life and so lived – it seemed – as a virtuous Christian ‘spinster’ was enough to satisfy Victorian curiosity.
By the middle of the 20th century, however, this somewhat distorted view of the now much admired and studied author began to be challenged. Literary critic QD Leavis protested in 1942, for example, against the “conventional account of Miss Austen as prim, demure, sedate, prudish and so on, the typical Victorian maiden lady”. Her essay was just one of many that would bring into question and then rewrite the received biography. And with this rewriting came the desire to know exactly why Jane Austen had remained single.
Lesbian love?The most contentious hypothesis puts forward the assumption Jane Austen did not marry for the simple reason her sexuality was orientated towards other women. In other words, she was a lesbian. The evidence, however, is simply not there to support this.
We know of the early romance with Tom Lefroy, who would later become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, which was called off not by Jane due to any burgeoning doubt about her own sexuality, but by his family due to the penniless status of the would-be lovers. And this was the age, lest we forget, at least for the middling classes and above, when marrying for money was a fact of life and the yardstick by which all potential partners – male and female – were measured.
Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy as Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy in the 2007 film 'Becoming Jane'. (AF archive/Alamy Stock Photo)
There was also the mystery seaside rendezvous, where it is said Jane fell in love with a young clergyman and he with her. Their infatuation blossomed over several weeks during one of the Austen family’s regular summer breaks while they lived in Bath, and the lovers made arrangements to meet the following year. Sadly, when the time came for their reunion, news arrived saying that the clergyman had died during the intervening period. In 2009 Dr Andrew Norman named this clergyman as Samuel Blackall, but claims Blackall did not die but rather went on to marry someone else.
And then, of course, there was an actual proposal of marriage and acceptance of it. While Jane and her sister, Cassandra, were staying with friends, the Bigg sisters, at their residence, Manydown, Hants, in December 1802, their younger brother, Harris Bigg-Wither (the additional surname having been adopted for males of the family during the late 18th century) took it upon himself to integrate the families further by one evening proposing to Jane. Although he was six years younger than her she accepted, but after what can only have been a dark night of the soul rescinded it the following morning and hastily bid a retreat by carriage back to Steventon and then to Bath.
It could be argued that if there were any hint of lesbianism in Jane’s make-up then surely she would simply have not accepted the offer in the first place, or else would not have changed her mind (enjoying the financial security the marriage brought, while at the same time free to pursue those other erstwhile activities). The reality is that any relations Jane did have with the same sex were either genuine friendships, or else those normally shared with relatives.
Another theory was later put forward; that of an incestuous relationship. This ‘sisterly love’ theory, which suggested a sexual bond between Jane and her sister, Cassandra, came into public consciousness in 1995, the same year as Colin Firth’s shirt-drenched Darcy became lodged there; the former through a review essay by Terry Castle.
Castle’s piece, which appeared in the London Review of Books, was a critique of the latest edition of Jane Austen’s collected letters. In the essay Castle pondered on the closeness of the sisters to the point where she mused about the true nature of their relationship and what had transpired between the sheets of the double bed she believed the sisters shared throughout their lives.
It was of course Cassandra, in one of the greatest acts of literary vandalism in history, who burnt the majority of her sister’s enormous correspondence to her, thus depriving posterity of an insight into a more authentic character study of Jane, other than the whitewashed, virginal one that prevailed. The burning of Jane’s letters also gave rise to endless speculation as to what exactly they contained.
Handwritten letter from Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)
Whether it was ever Castle’s intention to call into question the sisters’ sexual orientation – she later stated it was not – there was seemingly enough in the review to warrant a sub-editor on the periodical (with one-eye on circulation, no doubt) to title the review “Was Jane Austen Gay?” and then emblazon the headline on the front cover.
The ensuing fallout from the article – which included a media maelstrom – made at least one thing certain: not the bedtime habits of the Austen sisters, but the reverence held for Jane by various devotees (or ‘Janeites’, as they are called) around the globe. Indeed, many fans were outraged at the mere suggestion that Austen could have been anything other than a heterosexual, virginal singleton.
The final nail in the coffin of this theory seemed to come with the disclosure of an invoice. The whole episode had revolved around Castle’s assumption that the two women slept together in one double bed, but this assumption was completely shattered by a piece of paper that showed that Mr Austen, on his daughters reaching adolescence, had ordered a single bed for each of them.
And let us not forget, either, that Cassandra herself was engaged to be married, before her fiancé died in 1797, leaving her bereft but determined to embrace spinsterhood out of respect for him and not through any sexual orientation towards other women.
Another relationshipWith that contentious theory hopefully put to bed (no pun intended), we can come to the real reason, I believe, Jane Austen did not marry. It was because she already had developed a deep, lifelong relationship with her art – writing – and believed there was a good chance any gentleman she uttered the words ‘I do’ to would insist on that artistic expression ceasing forthwith.
Jane Austen began writing at the age of 12 and did not stop until ill health forced it upon her, shortly before her death, at the age of 41. In between there were seemingly fallow years – in Bath – and even barren ones – in Southampton – but this did not mean she ceased in the development of her craft. There were voluminous letters to be written, so as to keep her wit and observations sharp, and large amounts of books devoured from circulating libraries or those of friends and relatives to stimulate her mind in readiness for an incredible six-year outpouring of literary creativity once ensconced at the cottage in Chawton.
Jane Austen's house, Chawton, Hampshire. (Photo by Peter Thompson/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
This ‘revelation’ and the whole mass of evidence that is slowly being recognised as supporting this theory is, in its own way, possibly even more contentious than any questions about Jane’s sexuality. Why? Because this suggests that she was not only a literary genius but a forward-thinking woman, an independent mind, an astute business person and a feminist pioneer – one who can easily take her place alongside such luminaries as Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft – rolled into one.
And this at a time when women were supposed to love, honour and obey their husbands, and the only way for the majority of women – including Austen – to obtain financial security was to marry into it. Because God help them if they tried to make a living independently, say through the pen, as she chose to do! In hindsight, then, it is perhaps no wonder Jane’s brother, Henry, sought to soften the image of his sister, knowing a true portrait would most likely cause outrage in certain sections of the Regency, and then later Victorian, public.
Possibly Tom Lefroy would have encouraged Jane’s writing aspirations, as might the mysterious seaside suitor, but she was certain that Harris Bigg-Wither would not and ultimately, in my mind, at least, that is why she declined his proposal. But let us consider for a moment the pressure that would have been on Jane throughout that December night in 1802 at Manydown. Her family, although not poor, were not well off, and the marriage would have brought security for all of them, or at least the females within it: Jane, Cassandra and their mother.
I believe it was with a pragmatic mind that Jane accepted Bigg-Wither’s proposal. And then throughout the night, either within her solitary thoughts or in discussion with her sister, she pondered on what she might be losing herself, and changed her mind. It might have been the dutiful daughter who accepted the proposal, but it was the aspiring writer (and true artist) who descended the stairs the following morning, took Harris to one side, and declared she had made a mistake and the marriage was off.
With this knowledge of Jane’s literary aspirations, it is perhaps no surprise that on her return to Bath she subsequently revised Northanger Abbey (or rather Susan, as it was originally titled) and successfully sought a publishing deal for it, which saw her achieve the goal of finally being paid for her writing. The fact that, for whatever reason, the publishing firm chose not to publish the work merely taught Jane a lesson about the industry and made her more determined to see her work in print, if not bearing her own name, certainly on her own terms.
A print from an edition of Jane Austen's 'Northanger Abbey'. George Routledge and Sons, London. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)
To this end, after revising Sense & Sensibility and once settled at Chawton, Jane used her own money to publish the book and saw a handsome return on her investment. And although she sold the rights to her next published novel, Pride & Prejudice, she quickly realised a mistake had been made and so subsequent books reverted back to this initial ‘business model’.
The fact that Jane Austen remained single all her life, while her literary heroines enjoyed both romantic wedded bliss and financial security, is one of English literature’s greatest ironies. The simple fact is, though, that even if Jane had herself experienced a happy marriage with a husband only too obliging for her to continue writing, with the prospect of possibly a large family to bring up Jane may not have had the time to write to the extent she did and so develop her incredible talent that is so revered today.
So, to reiterate, by not marrying, Jane allowed herself the time and space to develop her talent unhindered by domestic duties or conjugal obligations. She sacrificed financial security and matrimonial happiness in order to retain the freedom to write and develop as a true artist. It is perhaps because of that choice Jane Austen is considered one of the greatest literary talents of all time.
David Lassman is a former director of the International Jane Austen Festival. He has recently written an Austen-related feature film entitled Encounter, due for release in 2017, and is currently working on an autobiographical book entitled How I Became Jane Austen’s Press Agent, charting his time as PR & media consultant for the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. Lassman’s views on Austen have been sought by media organisations such as CNN, BBC and the New York Times, and he has made many radio and television appearances, including the 2008 documentary Crazy About Jane; BBC’s The One Show and Good Morning America.
