MaryAnn Bernal's Blog, page 86

Researchers Unearth 6th Century Palace from the Legendary Birthplace of King Arthur

Ancient Origins

Researchers working in Cornwall have unearthed the remains of walls from a palace they believe dates to the 6th century. These walls may share a connection with the legendary King Arthur, as they are located on the site of Tintagel Castle, a dwelling that folklore associates with his birthplace

The Telegraph reports that the uncovered structure was likely the home of powerful and wealthy rulers of the ancient British kingdom of Dumnonia. Evidence supporting this idea comes in the form of approximately 150 fragments of pottery and glassware that hail from various locations mostly from the Mediterranean region. Two artifacts the team has uncovered so far are pieces of an amphora and fragments of a Phoenician red-slip bowl or large dish which was thought to have passed around during ancient feasts.

Ryan Smith (trench supervisor) holding a Phoenician red slip water from Western Turkey. ( Emily Whitfield-Wicks )
The excavations are a part of an English Heritage five-year project that is delving into the mysterious story of the famous Cornwall archaeological site from the 5th-7th centuries. The location is best known for the 13th century Tintagel Castle.
The ruins of the upper mainland courtyards of Tintagel Castle, Cornwall. ( Kerry Garratt/CC BY SA 2.0 )Some historical texts state that King Arthur was born at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. This king is often remembered from tales involving his sword Excalibur, the knights of the round table , and his teacher/mentor (or possible enemy) Merlin the magician .

More than a Dozen Mysterious Prehistoric Tunnels in Cornwall, England, Mystify Researchers
Historians Draw Closer to the Tomb of the Legendary King Arthur The Grail Cypher: A radical reassessment of Arthurian history Although many people are enthralled with Arthurian legends, researchers such as Ralph Ellis have argued that :

“The story of King Arthur and his gallant knights that this semi-mythical Walter Kayo eventually crafted is complex, frustrating and fraught with contradictions and impossibilities. In the hands of subsequent Arthurian authors it became a compilation of two histories blended together in such a clumsy manner that it betrays confusion in both its broad outline and finer detail. Very few of the names and events recorded in these chronicles exist in the historical record […]”

Illustration from page 16 of ‘The Boy's King Arthur.’ ( Public Domain )Thus, the legends behind King Arthur have yet to be fully understood as myth or fact (or a combination of the two).  Moreover, there have also been doubts raised recently about the general perception of his birthplace as well. For example, Graham Phillips seems to believe that the king existed, but that a lot of the legends surrounding his life are wrong, including his place of birth, which Phillips says was Shropshire - not South West England.
Regardless of if it was in fact the site of the legendary king’s birth, Tintagel is seen as one of Europe’s most important archaeological sites.
As the Telegraph says: “The remains of the castle, built in the 1230s and 1240s by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III, stand on the site of an early Medieval settlement, where experts believe high-status leaders may have lived and traded with far-off shores, importing exotic goods and trading tin.”
Ruins of the Norman castle at Tintagel. ( CC BY SA 3.0 )Win Scutt, one of English Heritage’s properties curators, is hopeful that more finds are on the horizon for the well-known site. He told the Telegraph: 

“This is the most significant archaeological project at Tintagel since the 1990s. The three-week dig is the first step in a five year research programme to answer some key questions about Tintagel and Cornwall’s past. The discovery of high-status buildings – potentially a royal palace complex – at Tintagel is transforming our understanding of the site. We’re cutting a small window into the site’s history, to guide wider excavations next year. We’ll also be gathering samples for analysis. It’s when these samples are studied in the laboratory that the fun really starts, and we’ll begin to unearth Tintagel’s secrets.”

Jacky Nowakowski, archaeologist at the Cambridge Archaeology Unit and head of the current excavations, shares Scutt’s hope and excitement about recent and future findings at the site. She said :

"It is a great opportunity to shed new light on a familiar yet infinitely complex site where there is still much to learn and to contribute to active research of a major site of international significance in Cornwall. Our excavations are underway now, and will run both this summer and next, giving visitors the chance to see and hear at first hand new discoveries being made and share in the excitement of the excavations.” 

What further mysteries are waiting to be unravelled at the Tintagel archaeological site in Cornwall?
 Excavations at Tintagel Castle  ( Emily Whitfield-Wicks )Top Image: Tintagel Castle archeology dig. Source: Emily Whitfield-Wicks
By Alicia McDermott 

Vikings Brutally Slain in 750 AD May Have Been on a Peaceful Mission

Ancient Origins


When people think of Vikings going on voyages, many imagine a bloodthirsty crew bent on evil and domination, and armed to the teeth for the looting and pillaging of helpless villagers. That may have been true of some Viking missions, but perhaps not all.

Researchers analyzing two apparent Viking ship burials from more than 1,000 years ago in the Baltic Sea have published a new article in the journal Antiquity. The authors speculate that this crew, who died violent deaths, was intent on more a more peaceful mission.
The men aboard the two ships were carefully buried on their ships, says an article about the research in USA Today:

Whoever interred the dead aboard two ships in what is now Salme, Estonia, in about 750 AD went about their work with great care and respect. Many of the 41 bodies were carefully positioned, and valuables were scattered among the remains. Researchers found swords bedecked with gold and jewels and hundreds of elaborate pieces from a chess-like strategy game called Hnefatafl, or The King's Table. They also found two decapitated hawks and the skeleton of a large dog, which had been cut in half. 

They were young, tall men. One stood nearly 6 feet—which was much taller than average for the time. Chemical analysis of their teeth and the design of the rich artifacts they were buried with makes the researchers think the men were from central Sweden, according to archaeologist and co-author T. Douglas Price, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
These elaborate, gilded sword handle parts found aboard the ships show the weapons may have been more for show than for battle. Photo by Reet MaldreThe remains of the men on the larger ship had stab wounds, decapitation signs and the arm bone of one man and another man’s leg bone were cut by a blade. Their fancy weapons may have been more ceremonial than practical war-making implements. Warriors of the Viking era usually used spears and battle axes instead of swords, co-author Jüri Peet told USA Today. Peet, who headed the excavations, is with Estonia’s Tallinn University.

“Game pieces and animals seem impractical for a military expedition but would’ve provided welcome amusement on a diplomatic trip,” USA Today says. “The men may have been on a voyage to forge an alliance or establish kinship ties, Peets says, when unknown parties set upon them.”

But another expert on the Viking era, Jan Bill of the Norway Museum of Cultural History, told USA Today that gaming to pass the time was probably habitual on Viking battle voyages. “Whether this group was on a diplomatic mission, or raiding, or both, I don't think we can decide from the evidence of what was used as grave goods,” Bill is quoted as saying.
Workers laying electrical cables discovered the first ship, the smaller one, on the shore of Saaremaa Island in the Baltic Sea in 2008. Officials called a halt to work, and Peet began excavations.
This modern Google map show Saaremaa Island off Estonia’s coast.In 2010 the larger of the two ships was found. Researchers assumed the men died a-viking—plundering or conquering. USA Today says the evidence provided by the artifacts didn’t jibe. Whatever they were doing, they apparently were involved in a wild battle in which they were overpowered.
If they truly were Viking vessels, they are the oldest known Viking ships found in the region, says an article on World-Archaeology.com. They are about 100 years older than the Osenberg boat of Norway.
Prow of the Osenberg Viking ship in a museum in Oslo, Norway ( Wikimedia Commons photo /Grzegorz Wysocki)Carbon-14 dating of the human and animal remains placed them in life about 1,250 years ago.
The men were buried in a sitting position within the ships. Animal bones from the site showed butchering. “Perhaps they were part of a funerary feast, or supplies the crew had brought along for themselves,” says World Archaeology. “Interestingly, several decapitated goshawks and a sparrowhawk were also found. These birds of prey would have been used for hunting fresh food for the crew as they travelled along the shoreline.”
Usually horse and dog bones are found in boat burials of prominent Vikings, but there were none of those at this one. “These, men were buried far from home, with only the possessions they carried aboard ship with them during their lifetime,” the article states.
Whoever they were and whoever killed them, their remains, the artifacts and the ships are providing researchers with vital information about the early Viking age.
Top image: Some of the skeletons found on one of the two Viking ships. Photo by Jaanus Valt
By Mark Miller

The reluctant ambassador: the life and times of Tudor diplomat Sir Thomas Chaloner

History Extra
Sir Thomas Chaloner aged 28. (Private collection, courtesy of Richard Chaloner, Lord Gisborough. Photograph by Peter Morgan)
Here, writing for History Extra, O'Sullivan introduces you to the reluctant ambassador who longed for his home in England… This story is set in one of the most turbulent periods of English history, when the government's religious and political policies seemed to change from year to year, and ambitious courtiers and diplomats needed to watch their balance on fortune's slippery wheel. Those who fell off could easily end their lives on the block, as did so many of Thomas Chaloner's patrons and colleagues. But he himself was a survivor because, as he once wrote to a friend, he knew how to keep his opinions to himself. In 1541 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, ruler of Spain, the Netherlands and much else, collected a large army to deal once and for all with a pressing problem – the Barbary pirates, who were supported by the Turkish sultan and constituted a permanent hazard for all who sailed in the Mediterranean. Charles did not have the manpower to launch a full-scale attack on Constantinople itself but he reckoned that once his army had landed near the pirates' main base in Algiers, resistance would crumble. Then Algiers would fall and thousands of Christians, enslaved by the pirates, could be rescued. Unfortunately, from the start things went very wrong. Opposition was fiercer than expected, the weather was brutal to troops that had to spend nights in the open, and to cap it all Charles's fleet of war ships and transports, on which his soldiers relied for food and also for an eventual withdrawal, was shattered by a violent storm while at anchor. In less than an hour half the fleet had been sunk, with the loss of 8,000 men. Accompanying Charles on his expedition was a small group of Englishmen, of whom the youngest was the 20-year-old Thomas Chaloner, who was experiencing his first taste of foreign travel. When the storm struck he was on board a galley that soon lost its anchor, along with its neighbours. William Hakluyt, chronicler of Tudor voyages, takes up the story: “Thomas Chaloner escaped most wonderfully with his life. For the galley wherein he was, being either dashed against the rocks or shaken with mighty storms and so cast away, after he had saved himself a long while by swimming, when his strength failed him, his arms & hands being faint and weary, with great difficulty laying hold with his teeth on a cable, which was cast out of the next galley, not without breaking and loss of certain of his teeth, at length [he] recovered himself, and returned home into his country in safety.” Thus it was that Chaloner's career very nearly came to an end before it had properly started. One might remark that it was lucky he could swim – an unusual skill in those days, even for professional sailors. He had other accomplishments too. His father, Roger, a successful London mercer, had seen him through grammar school and Cambridge, and had then found him a place in the household of Thomas Cromwell – a position seen as a stepping stone towards the higher ranks of government service.  By the time of his near drowning Chaloner was already fluent in Latin – essential at university where all the lectures were in Latin. At his college, thought to be St John's, the students were even expected to talk to each other in that language. More unusually, Chaloner also had a grasp of French and Italian, implying that Roger had hired private tutors to teach him these languages, which were not on the school or university curriculum. Something else that was to turn out an asset for him was that he had made friends at university with a certain William Cecil, later Lord Burghley. Many years later Cecil would become Elizabeth I's secretary of state, and the most powerful man in England. After the failure to capture Algiers, Charles V's depleted and demoralised army sailed home in the transports that had survived the storm. Chaloner and the other Englishmen accompanied the emperor to Spain. They were no doubt shocked to learn that during their absence Henry VIII's recently married young wife, Catherine Howard, had been accused of adultery, and was now in the Tower, shortly to be executed.  Soon after Chaloner finally returned home he was able to make his first real step up the ladder of promotion. He was appointed one of the two clerks to the Privy Council, the body that, under the monarch, effectively ran the country. The council dealt with all kinds of matter, from private requests and punishments to issues of national finance, diplomacy and war. The clerks were well paid but expected to work hard for their money. They kept detailed minutes of council meetings, wrote dozens of letters, and were often dispatched far and wide on council business.  
Sir Thomas Chaloner aged 38. (Private collection, courtesy of Richard Chaloner, Lord Gisborough. Photograph by Peter Morgan) Because of his ability to speak Italian and French, Chaloner often found himself sent to meet foreigners – for instance, to deliver funds to bands of mercenaries hired to fight England's wars. As he became more experienced he was trusted with more delicate missions. To take one example, there was the case of Robert Holgate, archbishop of York, who, at the age of 68 had caused some scandal by marrying Barbara Wentworth who was more than 40 years his junior. Then a young man appeared who claimed that the marriage was invalid because he and Barbara had been betrothed when they were both children. Chaloner was sent up to York along with an ecclesiastical lawyer to investigate. After the death of Henry VIII in 1547 the country was run by Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, as protector for the nine-year-old Edward VI. Somerset had an ambitious policy to unite England and Scotland by betrothing Edward to the young Mary, Queen of Scots, and when the Scots objected to this plan he decided to use force. He led an army across the border towards Edinburgh, defeating an ill-trained and out-of-date Scottish force at the battle of Pinkie Cleugh. Chaloner played a major part in Somerset's campaign by organising and paying the various mercenary bands that accompanied the English. As reward he was knighted by Somerset – another important step up the ladder.  By now Chaloner had married a wealthy widow, Joan Leigh, and on the death of his father found himself the head of an extended family that included two younger brothers, two unmarried sisters and various elderly relatives. He had a house in London and lands to look after in different parts of the country, and consequently spent many hours on horseback, either on missions for the council or to oversee his estates in the north of England. Somehow he also found the time to write poetry, and to translate works from Latin – one of these being the well-known satire by Erasmus, In Praise of Folly. This period of his life is fairly well documented because an account book of his income and expenditure has survived. On Edward VI’s early death in 1553 – probably from tuberculosis – he was succeeded as monarch by his Catholic sister Mary. Chaloner composed, but of course did not publish, a poem about Lady Jane Grey in which he berates “cruel and pitiless Mary” for executing her young rival. While many others, such as his friend William Cecil, chose to leave the country during Mary's reign, the cautious Chaloner not only stayed but managed to remain in government service. Mary even sent him to Scotland to meet the regent, Mary of Guise, and complain about Scottish involvement in anti-English rebellion in Northern Ireland. When Elizabeth I succeeded Mary in 1558, Chaloner was sent to the new emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to discuss the possibility that one of his sons, the archduke Ferdinand, might marry the queen. Chaloner came home with a portrait of the young Ferdinand I to present to Elizabeth, and for a short time marriage seemed on the cards. But then it became known that Ferdinand was already secretly married to a German woman, so attention shifted to his brother, the archduke Charles, as a possible suitor.  
A portrait of Queen Elizabeth I from around 1575. (Imagno/Getty Images)  Cecil sent Chaloner to the Netherlands in June 1559 to be a fully-fledged ambassador to Philip II, who was then holding court at Ghent. When Philip decided to return to Spain there was a discussion about whether or not England needed a permanent ambassador at his court in Madrid. Chaloner suggested a few names to Cecil but was horrified to learn that he himself had been picked. He had known for some time that he would hate Spain, “that country of heat and inquisition”. When he finally landed at Bilbao in February 1562 he found that all his fears were justified. His luggage was taken away to be searched for heretical books, and when he complained to Philip, no apology was forthcoming. After a difficult journey he reached Madrid, only to be advised by the previous ambassador to start requesting his recall home straight away. Chaloner proved to be a cautious and careful ambassador but, judging by his letters home, he was also a worrier. He worried about his lack of funds and the high cost of living in Madrid; about his difficulties in obtaining interviews with Philip; and his failure to penetrate the aura of secrecy that hung about the Spanish court. He worried about not receiving his due wage as ambassador, and whether this might be due to its having been stolen en route. An important part of Chaloner’s job was to obtain and send home the latest news from Spain, and also to deliver the latest news from England, and this was sometimes difficult. For example, Chaloner was caused a good deal of embarrassment when in the summer of 1562 Elizabeth took the decision to send military aid to the Huguenots in France who were engaged in a civil war against the French government. William Cecil told Chaloner to deny that any such decision had been taken, which he did – until he heard from other sources that an English army had actually been sent to fight in France, thus completely contradicting what he had told everybody at court. Above all, Chaloner worried about his own health. He put down his “quartan agues” (bouts of fever every few days) and his inability to sleep at night to Spanish weather and Spanish food. During those sleepless nights he occupied himself by composing reams of Latin verse that remained unpublished until several years after his death. Reading his letters to Cecil and his other friends, one would put him down as a dedicated hypochondriac, except for the fact that when he was finally allowed to quit Spain some four years later he had to take to his bed, and died within a few months. His ‘agues’ were probably due to malaria, but according to Andreas Vesalius, Philip's court physician, he also suffered from kidney stones brought on by drinking Spanish wines that had been adulterated with lime or chalk to make them look whiter. A couple of years after Chaloner first arrived in Madrid, relations between England and Spain, not brilliant in the first place, suddenly darkened. This was because when Elizabeth I joined in the French wars of religion it became possible for English sea captains to obtain ‘letters of marque’ allowing them to attack French shipping, or to confiscate cargoes bound for France. This was a lucrative business, and soon there were dozens of these freebooters at large, many of them not considering it necessary to distinguish too closely between French and other foreign ships. The Spanish authorities saw them as pirates, and Philip retaliated by ordering all English ships trading in Spanish waters to be seized, and their crews imprisoned. In most cases these sailors were treated extremely roughly, and had to subsist on a diet of bread and water.  It was Chaloner's duty as ambassador to intercede for these unfortunates. He received information from his contacts up and down Spain as well as numerous messages from the prisoners themselves. He pulled every string he could think of, worrying all the time that he was not doing enough. Always he was up against the rigid Spanish bureaucracy. Officials were never in a hurry to help, especially in cases concerning ‘heretics’. All this did nothing to improve the ambassador's health and peace of mind. Nevertheless, he did succeed in certain cases in achieving the release of sailors who would otherwise have died in prison. A final worry for Chaloner was that he had no heir to carry on his name and look after his estates. His wife, Joan, had died childless many years earlier, and now he was isolated in a foreign land where he was unlikely to meet any eligible women – the ones he did meet being Catholics and therefore for him unmarriageable.  However, before he became an ambassador, Chaloner had as a young widower enjoyed a full social life, and it seems that he was able to persuade a lady whom he had known at that time to visit him in Spain with a view to matrimony. Audrey Frodsham, aged about 35 and unmarried, was from a gentry family of Cheshire. We do not know exactly when she and her servants arrived at Bilbao, but we do know from oblique phrases in Chaloner's letters that she must have left in June 1564, just when Chaloner was embroiled in the issue of the imprisoned sailors.  Audrey's trip is important because by the time she left she must have been pregnant with Chaloner’s future son, another Thomas. Some historians who have written about Chaloner have assumed that Thomas Chaloner junior must have been Chaloner's stepson, but this now seems unlikely [the baby was likely conceived sometime before June 1564]. In any case, when Chaloner did retire home, more than a year after Audrey's visit, he found her and her baby in his house to welcome him. In September 1565 the couple were married, and a month after that Chaloner died, having made a will leaving everything to his son and his widow. As ambassador Chaloner was unlucky because relations between Spain and England were starting to deteriorate during his time in office. Nevertheless, Sir Thomas performed his task with skill and discretion. One could say he was a man who dedicated his life to duty. Dan O'Sullivan is author of The Reluctant Ambassador: The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Chaloner, a Tudor Diplomat (Amberley Publishing, 2016).

The Spanish Armada: England's lucky escape

History Extra

English ships clash with enemy vessels off Gravelines (now northern France) in a theatrical interpretation of the “defeat of the Spanish Armada”. Tudor spin portrayed the events of August 1588 as a glorious English victory but, argues Robert Hutchinson, bad weather and bad tactics had more to do with the Spanish fleet’s failure than Elizabethan derring-do. (National Maritime Museum)
The failure of the Spanish Armada campaign of 1588 changed the course of European history. If the Duke of Parma’s 27,000-strong invasion force had safely crossed the narrow seas from Flanders, the survival of Elizabeth I’s government and Protestant England would have looked doubtful indeed.   If those battle-hardened Spanish troops had landed, as planned, near Margate on the Kent coast, it is likely that they would have been in the poorly defended streets of London within a week, and that the queen and her ministers would have been captured or killed. England would have reverted to the Catholic faith and there may have been no British empire. It was bad luck, bad tactics and bad weather that defeated the Spanish Armada – not the derring-do displayed on the high seas by Elizabeth’s intrepid sea dogs. But it was a near-run thing.  Because of Elizabeth’s parsimony, driven by an embarrassingly empty exchequer, the English ships were starved of gunpowder and ammunition and so failed to land a killer blow on the ‘Great and Most Fortunate Navy’ during nine days of skirmishing up the English Channel in July and August 1588.   Only six Spanish ships out of the 129 that sailed against England were destroyed as a direct result of naval combat. However, a minimum of 50 Armada ships (probably as many as 64) were lost through accident or during the Atlantic storms that scattered the fleet en route to England and as it limped, badly battered, back to northern Spain. More than 13,500 sailors and soldiers did not come home – the vast majority victims not of English cannon fire, but of lack of food and water, virulent disease and incompetent organisation. Thirty years before, when Philip II of Spain had been such an unenthusiastic husband to Mary I, he had observed: “The kingdom of England is and must always remain strong at sea, since upon this the safety of the realm depends.”  Elizabeth knew this full well and gambled that her navy, reinforced by hired armed merchantmen and volunteer ships, could destroy the invasion force at sea. Her warships, she maintained, were the walls of her realm, and they became the first and arguably her last line of defence. Decades of neglect had rendered most of England’s land defences almost useless against an experienced and determined enemy. In March 1587, the counties along the English Channel had just six cannon each. A breach in the coastal fortifications at Bletchington Hill, Sussex, caused 43 years before in a French raid, was still unrepaired.   England had no standing army of fully armed and trained soldiers, other than small garrisons in Berwick on the Scottish borders, and in Dover Castle on the Channel coast. Moreover, Elizabeth’s nation was divided by religious dissent – almost half were still Catholic and fears of them rebelling in support of the Spanish haunted her government.  Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was appointed to command Elizabeth’s armies “in the south parts” to fight not only the invaders but any “rebels and traitors and other offenders and their adherents attempting anything against us, our crown and dignity…” and to “repress and subdue, slay or kill and put to death by all ways and means” any such insurgents “for the conservation of our person and peace”.  Some among Elizabeth’s subjects placed profit ahead of patriotism. In 1587, 12 English merchants – mostly from Bristol – were discovered supplying the Armada “to the hurt of her majesty and undoing of the realm, if not redressed”. Nine cargoes of contraband, valued between £300 and £2,000, contained not just provisions but also ammunition, gunpowder, muskets and ordnance. What happened to these traders (were they Catholics?) is unknown, but in those edgy times, it’s unlikely they enjoyed the queen’s mercy.  Elsewhere, Sir John Gilbert, half-brother to Sir Walter Ralegh, refused permission for his ships to join Sir Francis Drake’s western squadron and allowed them to sail on their planned voyage in March 1588 in defiance of naval orders. If that wasn’t bad enough, Elizabeth’s military advisers  – unaware that Parma planned to land on the Kent coast – decided on Essex as the most likely spot where the Spanish would storm ashore. A contemporary painting of English ships and the Spanish Armada, which, so one Tudor verse had it, bore sailors “that were full of the pox”. (Bridgeman)
 Breaking barriers The Thames estuary had a wide channel leading straight to the heart of the capital, bordered by mud flats that posed a major obstacle to a vessel of any draught. Therefore, defensive plans included the installation of an iron chain across the river’s fairway at Gravesend in Kent, designed by the Italian engineer Fedrigo Giambelli. This boom, supported by 120 ship’s masts (costing £6 each) driven into the riverbed and attached to anchored lighters, was intended to stop enemy vessels penetrating upriver to London. Yet it would do no such thing – for it was broken by the first flood tide. A detailed survey of potential invasion beaches along the English Channel produced an alarming catalogue of vulnerability. In Dorset alone, 11 bays were listed, with comments such as: “Chideock and Charmouth are two beaches to land boats but it must be very fair weather and the wind northerly.” Swanage Bay could “hold 100 ships and [the anchorage is able] to land men with 200 boats and to retire again without danger of low water at any time.” Lacking time, money and resources, Elizabeth’s government could only defend the most dangerous beaches by ramming wooden stakes into the sand and shingle as boat obstacles, or by digging deep trenches above the high water mark. Mud ramparts were thrown up to protect the few cannon available, or troops armed with arquebuses (an early type of musket) or bows and arrows.  Fortifications on the strategically vital Isle of Wight were to be at least four feet (1.22m) high and eight feet (2.44m) thick, with sharpened poles driven into their face and a wide ditch dug in front. But its governor, Sir George Carey, had just four guns and gunpowder enough for only one day’s use.   Portsmouth’s freshly built ramparts protecting its land approaches had been severely criticised by Ralegh and were demolished, much to Elizabeth’s chagrin. New earth walls were built in just four months, bolstered by five stone arrow-head-shaped bastions behind a flooded ditch. Yet, more than half Portsmouth’s garrison were rated “by age and impotency by no way serviceable”, and the Earl of Sussex escaped unhurt when an old iron gun (supposedly one of his best cannon), blew into smithereens. In November 1587, Sussex complained that the town’s seaward tower was “so old and rotten” that he dared not fire one gun to mark the anniversary of the queen’s accession. The network of warning beacons located throughout southern England since at least the early 14th century was overhauled. The iron fire baskets mounted atop a tall wooden structure on earth mounds were set around 15 miles (24km) apart. Kent and Devon had 43 beacon sites, and there were 24 each in Sussex and Hampshire. These were normally manned during the kinder weather of March to October by two “wise, vigilant and discreet” men in 12-hour shifts. Surprise inspections ensured their diligence, and they were prohibited from having dogs with them, for fear of distraction.   It was a tedious and uncomfortable patriotic duty. A new shelter was built near one Kent beacon when a old wooden hut fell down. This was intended to protect the sentinels only from bad weather and had no “seats or place of ease lest they should fall asleep. [They] should stand upright in… a hole [looking] towards the beacons.” Not everyone spent their time scanning the horizon for enemy ships: two watchers at Stanway beacon in Essex preferred catching partridges in a cornfield and were hauled up in court.  An English chart shows the Spanish fleet off the coast of Cornwall. Much of the local militia slunk away when the Armada cleared the county. (National Maritime Museum)
 Malicious firing In July 1586, five men were accused of plotting to maliciously fire the Hampshire beacons “upon a [false] report of the appearance of the Spanish fleet” and in the ensuing tumult, to steal food “to redress the current dearth of corn”; engage in a little light burglary of gentlemen’s houses and liberate imprisoned recusants at Winchester. Most were gaoled but some were sent to London for further interrogation, for fear of a wider conspiracy. Elizabeth’s militia makes the enthusiastic Local Defence Volunteers of ‘Dad’s Army’ during the Nazi invasion scare of 1940 look like a finely honed war machine. A census in 1588 revealed only 100 experienced “martial men” were available for military service and, as some had fought in Henry VIII’s French and Scottish wars of 40 years before, these old sweats were considered hors d’combat.  Infantry and cavalry were drawn from the trained bands and county militia. A thousand unpaid veterans from the English army in the Netherlands were recalled but they soon deserted to hide in the tenements of Kent’s Cinque Ports. Militia officers were noblemen and gentry whose motivation was not only defence of their country, but protection of their own property too. Many living near the coast believed it more prudent to move their households inland than stay and fight on the beaches but were ordered to return “on pain of her majesty’s indignation, besides forfeiture of [their] lands and goods…”  The main army was divided into two groups. The first, under Leicester, with 27,000 infantry and 2,418 cavalry, would engage the enemy once he had landed in force. The second and larger formation, commanded by the queen’s cousin Lord Hunsdon, totalled 28,900 infantry and 4,400 cavalry. They were recruited solely to defend the sacred person of Elizabeth herself, who probably planned to remain in London, with Windsor Castle as a handy bolt hole if the capital fell.   An anonymous correspondent suggested to Elizabeth’s ministers that the best means to resist invasion was “our natural weapon” – the bow and arrow. It had defeated the French at Agincourt in 1415; why not the Spanish in 1588? One can imagine an old buffer, bristling at this threat to hearth and home, insisting that the bow and crossbow were “terrible weapons” which Parma’s mercenaries had not faced before. After further reflection, he concluded that “the most powerful weapon of all against this enemy was the fear of God”. In the event, despite strenuous efforts to buy weapons in Germany, and arquebuses from Holland at 23s 4d (£1.17p) each, many militiamen were armed only with bows and arrows. A large proportion was unarmed and untrained. To avoid the dangers of fifth-columnist recusants in the militia ranks, every man had to swear an oath of loyalty to Elizabeth in front of their muster-masters. Captain Nicholas Dawtrey, sent to train the Hampshire militia, warned that if 3,000 infantry crossed the Solent to defend the Isle of Wight, the Marquis of Winchester would be left “utterly without force of footmen other than a few billmen (with pole arms) to guard and answer all dangerous places”.  However, local people complained about being posted away from home, they and their servants being compelled “to go either to Portsmouth or Wight upon every sudden alarm, whereby their houses, wives and children shall be left without guard and left open by their universal absence to all manner of spoil”.   Hampshire eventually raised 9,088 men but Dawtrey pointed out that “many… [were] very poorly furnished; some lack a head-piece [helmet], some a sword, some one thing or other that is evil, unfit or unseemly about him”. Discipline was also problematic: the commander of the 3,159-strong Dorset militia (1,800 totally untrained) firmly believed they would “sooner kill one another than annoy the enemy”.  When the Armada eventually cleared Cornwall, some of the Cornish militia, ordered to reinforce neighbouring counties, thought they had done more than enough to serve queen and country. Their minds were on the harvest and these reluctant soldiers decided to slink away from their commanders and their colours. The Spanish were now someone else’s problem.   Map Illustration by Martin Sanders.
 Armada propagandaWhy it paid to vilify the perfidious Spanish The Tudor propaganda machine became strident as the Spanish fleet appeared, delivering terrifying warnings of genocide to stiffen a fearful population’s resistance.  Spanish spies reported that Elizabeth’s ministers, “being in great alarm, made the people believe that the Spaniards [are] bringing a shipload of halters in the Armada to hang all Englishmen and another shipload of scourges to whip women”.  As the skirmishes continued in the Channel, foreigners were placed under curfew and had their shops closed up. An Italian, harassed in the streets, maintained it was easier “to find flocks of white crows than one Englishman who loves a foreigner”. A pamphlet entitled A Skeltonical Salutation reassured its readers that fish that consumed the flesh of drowned Spaniards would not be infected by their venereal diseases. The doggerel verse asked whether:  “this year it were not best to forebearOn such fish to feedWhich our coast doth breedBecause they are fedWith carcase deadHere and there in the rocksThat were full of the pox… Our Cods and CongerHave filled their hungerWith the heads and feetOf the Spanish fleetWhich to them were as sweetAs a goose to a fox…” Thomas Deloney’s A Joyful New Ballad described Spanish perfidy: “Our wealth and riches, which we enjoyed long;They do appoint their prey and spoil by cruelty and wrongTo set our houses afire on our headsAnd cursedly to cut our throatsAs we lie in our bedsOur children’s brains to dash against the ground” Another tract was said to have been found “in the chamber of Richard Leigh, a seminary priest lately executed for high treason”. In reality, his identity was stolen for propaganda purposes. The ‘tract’ claimed that English naval supremacy and the omnipotence of England’s Protestant God were undeniable. “The Spaniards did never take or sink any English ship or boat or break any mast or took any one man prisoner.” As a result, Spanish prisoners believed that “in all these fights, Christ showed himself a Lutheran”.  Armada commander Medina Sidonia attracted special vilification. He spent much of his time “lodged in the bottom of his ship for his safety”.  What if the Armada had got through? England’s poorly armed militia and uncompleted defences could have been overwhelmed by Spanish invaders, after landing in Kent with the heavy siege artillery carried by the Armada.  Based on the progress of his 22,000 troops – when they covered 65 miles in just six days after invading Normandy in 1592 – the Duke of Parma could have been in London within a week of coming ashore. As the Spanish anchored off Calais, 4,000 militia based in Dover deserted, possibly because they were unpaid, but more probably through abject fear. The port’s defences were hastily stiffened by importing 800 Dutch musketeers, who promptly mutinied.  The loyalty of the inhabitants of Kent was uncertain. Informers reported that some rejoiced “when any report was [made] of [the Spaniards’] good success and sorrowed for the contrary” while others declared the Spanish “were better than the people of this land”.  As is the case in any invasion planning, the Spanish identified potential collaborators, and enemy leaders to be captured. (Elizabeth was to be detained unharmed and sent to Rome). Those “heretics and schismatics” who faced a sticky end if Spain was victorious included the Earl of Leicester, his brother the Earl of Warwick and brother-in-law the Earl of Huntingdon Lord Burghley, “Secretary Walsingham”, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Lord Hunsdon. These were “the principal devils that rule the court and are the leaders of the [Privy] Council”. The list of “Catholics and friends of his majesty in England” was headed by “the Earl of Surrey, son and heir of the Duke of Norfolk, (actually the Earl of Arundel) now a prisoner in the Tower” and “Lord Vaux of Harrowden, a good Catholic, a prisoner in the Fleet (prison)”.  The four potential collaborators in Norfolk included Sir Henry Bedingfield, “formerly the guardian of Queen Elizabeth the pretended queen of England, during the whole time that his majesty was in England”.  The document reported that “the greater part of Lancashire is Catholic, the common people particularly, with the exception of the Earl of Derby and the town of Liverpool”. Westmorland and Northumberland remained “really faithful to his majesty”. Amphibious landings, however, are the most risky of all military operations, with everything dependent on weather and tides. And the English fleet would have to be destroyed first. Robert Hutchinson is a historian specialising in the Tudor period. He has previously written biographies of Henry VIII and Francis Walsingham.

Welcome to Britannia: Roman Britain in AD 130

History Extra

Hadrian’s Wall dissects the countryside of northern England. By AD 130, the wall’s turf sections were being rebuilt in stone and many adaptations being carried out, a sure sign that trouble was afoot. © Corbis

Britannia lay at the north-westernmost boundaries of an empire so vast that it encompassed “the ocean where the sun god rises to the place where he sinks”. Although an imperial province for more than 80 years, ever since the emperor Claudius, accompanied by elephants, claimed it for Rome, in AD 130 Britannia and her inhabitants remained a byword for a remote land and distant people.
For anyone making the perilous journey across to Britannia’s shores, expectations, as far as we can tell, were low. The natives were considered to be uncultured and generally unpromising, though their plain clothes were of most excellent quality wool and their hunting hounds were deemed to be effective, if unprepossessing in looks. The climate, too, left much to be desired. Here was a place where the rain fell, the sun was seldom seen, and a thick mist was said to rise from the marshes “so that the atmosphere in the country is always gloomy”.
Although the crossing from Gesoriacum (Boulogne) to Rutupiae (Richborough in Kent) was comparatively short (somewhere between six and eight hours), the symbolic distance was immense. For to set foot on a ship bound for Britannia was to venture into Oceanus, that immeasurable expanse of sea, full of monsters and perilous tides which led to a land of unfathomable people.
Although the tentacles of Roman administration via the army had, by AD 130, reached into the furthest corners of the province and the island had been scrupulously measured and recorded, in terms at least of potential revenue, Britannia represented the untamed and unknown.

Tattooed bodiesCensuses may have been carried out for tax purposes, records made of landholdings, distances measured between places, roads built to Roman standards and all rivers and crossing points marked down, but this didn’t mean that the Romans felt any more sympathetic towards the island’s inhabitants. The Britons were regarded as somewhat uncouth, their bodies tattooed with patterns and pictures of all kinds of animals.
Serving officers on Hadrian’s Wall, who referred to Britons disparagingly as Brittunculi or ‘Britlings’, clearly had not progressed very much in their outlook since the days of Cicero who, when writing about his brother on campaign in Britain during Julius Caesar’s expedition there in 54 BC, joked that none of the British were expected to be accomplished in literature or music. The stereotype persisted into the fourth century, when poets were still portraying Britannia with cheeks tattooed, “clothed in the skin of some Caledonian beast”.
By AD 130, many provincials from elsewhere in the empire had made it to the top of Roman society (two successive emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, hailed from Spanish families, the Ulpii and the Aelii) and the Gauls were making vast fortunes in trade, and clawing their way into the senate. There is no record of any Britons doing the same at this period, though many were serving as auxiliary soldiers in far-flung places, such as the cohort of Britons then in Dacia (modern Romania).
British exports tended to be rather unglamorous – tin, lead, hides and slaves. If asked what British products they had bought recently, shoppers on the streets of Rome may have been pushed for an answer. Blankets or rush baskets, perhaps? That said, anyone keen on hunting may have known of – or even possessed – one of their famously ugly but skilful hounds, and the gourmands among them tasted oysters shipped in from Kent.
Having arrived in Britannia, visitors may have had to adjust their literary preconceptions, for by AD 130 the main towns and cities of Britain conformed more or less to a Roman model with some idiosyncratic flourishes. Although houses in both the town and country were generally modest in size – the age of great villa building in Britain had yet to come – the province boasted some magnificent civic architecture.
The gateway to Britannia was the port of Rutupiae on the Kent coast, where passengers alighting on the British shore were greeted by a monumental arch, in gleaming Italian marble, one of the largest in the empire.
The legionary baths at Isca Augusta (Caerleon) also rivalled those anywhere else, while the brand new basilica in the forum at Londinium was the largest north of the Alps. These buildings were all state-sponsored – the British aristocracy did not indulge in the sort of competitive public munificence displayed elsewhere.
In Britannia, London led the way in terms of wealth and fashion, and even modest shops and workshops in the city were being enhanced by reception rooms with painted walls and cement floors. Although the precise civic status of the city in AD 130 is unknown, London was the province’s undoubted epicentre, the place where all major roads passed through or originated. It was the seat of the provincial governor and the imperial procurator whose job it was to oversee the collection of revenues on behalf of the Fiscus (the emperor’s personal treasury).

Trouble aheadIn AD 130, Britannia was an imperial province, which meant that its new governor, Sextus Julius Severus, ruled it on the emperor’s behalf, taking his orders and instructions straight from Hadrian and corresponding directly with him while abroad. Severus, who came from Dalmatia but completed his education in Rome, was said to be one of Hadrian’s best generals and had also proved himself an able administrator. The fact that he had been sent to Britannia at this point may indicate that there was serious trouble there and that Hadrian planned for him either to fight a war or carry out a major reorganisation of the province.
A large number of soldiers were garrisoned in Britannia, and its governorship was one of the two most senior posts available. While no one visited Britannia for the culture, doing a stint in a tough place like this could do no harm to a military or political career.

Hadrian was determined to raise standards of morality. © Alamy 
Many who came to Britannia as governors, procurators and commanding officers were able and affluent men who went on to enjoy remarkable careers. L Minicius Natalis, a slick and wealthy Spaniard, arrived here at about this time. Fresh from winning a four-horse chariot race at the Olympic Games in AD 129, he took up the command of the Legio VI Victrix based in Eboracum (York). Senior cavalry officer M Maenius Agrippa from Camerinum (in the Italian Marches), who was personally known to Julius Severus and Hadrian, was shortly to assume command of the classis Britannia, the British fleet. This was one of the most important of all provincial fleets, with bases at Gesoriacum (Boulogne) and Dubris (Dover), in addition to several (presumed) outposts around the British coast. Agrippa would excel at his new job, later being made procurator of the province.
These newcomers to Britannia would have expected to communicate in Latin but would have needed to get used to the peculiarities of the British accent. While upper-class Brits spoke very correct, textbook Latin “better than the Gauls”, some of their vowel sounds were rather affected.
British Latin also developed its own insular peculiarities – such as the use of the word hospitium to mean house or home, which ultimately derived from the word for an inn or lodging. Their native tongue was Brittonic, a Celtic language, similar to those spoken in Gaul. After the Romans arrived, the British adopted many Latin words into their vocabulary to describe aspects of daily life for which there was no existing equivalent.
Strolling around the streets, the newcomer to AD 130 Britannia would have heard many other languages, such as Gaulish, Greek and Palmyrene – spoken by the thousands of foreign soldiers, slaves and traders now based here. Observant travellers would have noticed everywhere small signs that they were somewhere far from home. They may have remarked upon how keen the British were on cleaning their nails, and how attached they were to personal grooming sets, which included scoops for cleaning out their ears.

Finest fish sauceExcellent supply networks meant that people could obtain imported food and drink in all parts of the province, such as Spanish olive oil, Gallic wine and Lucius Tettius Africanus’s “finest fish sauce from Antibes”. Men such as Tiberinius Celerianus, a merchant shipper from Gaul, clearly felt so at home here that he declared himself boldly to be Londoniensium primus – ‘first of the Londoners’ – on an altar he dedicated at Southwark.
Outside London, one of the most cosmopolitan places in the country was Hadrian’s Wall, base of thousands of Roman troops. Tensions here ran deep. Hostility simmered within and without the borders the Romans had imposed, among the unconquered tribes of Caledonia, among disaffected and uprooted peoples who had moved further north – and among those within the frontier zone itself.
The wall had hacked a brutal and in many ways unimaginative course across the country – one that severed Britons’ ancestral homes in two. Those living north of the frontier would have suddenly found their access to lands or family or markets to the south of it severely restricted.

This coin shows Hadrian inspecting his troops in Britain. © British Museum
Not only were the soldiers and their military installations all too visible in the landscape, but the taxes required to pay for the troops’ upkeep were now being extracted from people whose land had been confiscated to accommodate the garrisons.
If crack soldier and trouble-shooter Julius Severus had to be sent out to Britannia in response to recent serious unrest, then it almost certainly took place up here. The rebuilding of the turf section in stone and construction of new forts on and around the frontier at this period suggests that the situation was tense and unpredictable.
Roman soldiers could be heavy-handed, and many Britons would have felt the force of a centurion’s hobnailed boot. A letter of complaint survives from Vindolanda from a man who was outraged that he, an innocent man from overseas, had been flogged by centurions savagely enough to draw blood (the inference being that if he were a native Briton, that would be a different matter).
In Cumbria, at the wall’s western end, people continued to live in traditional roundhouse enclosures into the fourth century. Some people in the wall’s eastern sector, however, seemed to have succumbed to the blandishments of Roman life, or at least just decided to make the best of it.
By AD 130, villas and settlements similar to those of small towns in the south had begun to appear in the wall’s environs. Some provincials seem to have adopted an idiosyncratic, ‘pick and mix’ attitude to Roman culture. Down at Faverdale in County Durham, some 25 miles south of the wall, one family group continued to live in a roundhouse but had adapted Roman methods of stock-rearing, producing bigger specimens of cattle, sheep and pigs. They had acquired an impressive number of imported Samian ware drinking vessels, while continuing to use handmade pottery of an ancient, Iron Age form. They maintained ancient rituals, such as the careful burial of broken quernstones, but had acquired new ones, including a miniature bathhouse, startlingly painted in red, white, green, yellow, orange, black and pink.
Although containing two heated rooms and a waterproof (opus signinum) floor, it may have struck a visitor used to traditional baths as a little odd, as there was no sort of pool or basin here. Instead, the occupants seemed to have enjoyed intimate shellfish sauna parties – the six people who could comfortably fit into this space snacked on cockles, mussels and oysters as they soaked up the heat. Welcome to Britannia, cAD 130.

The patrons of a tavern enjoy a drink in this second-century AD relief. © Getty

In context: The Roman empire in AD 130In AD 130, Publius Aelius Hadrianus, a complex and energetic man, had been emperor for 14 years. Like his role model, the emperor Augustus, Hadrian adopted a policy of consolidation, defining the boundaries of empire, of which Hadrian’s Wall in Britannia was its most dramatic expression. The wall was begun at his instigation, during a visit to the province in AD 122, following a serious war in the north. In AD 130, Hadrian was also attempting to raise standards of morality and discipline in public life, and was keenly aware of the power of architecture in projecting a political message.
By AD 130, Hadrian’s magnificent 900-room palace at Tivoli was all but completed, as was the newly rebuilt Pantheon in Rome, its massive concrete dome an astonishing feat of engineering. While Rome was still the centre of imperial power, Hadrian was careful not to neglect the provinces and he supported building projects wherever he visited.
Hadrian travelled a great deal. He was particularly attached to Greece, where he spent much of AD 129. That winter he stayed in Antioch, before visiting Palmyra (Syria), Arabia and Judaea the following spring, and arriving in Egypt in summer AD 130 with his wife Vibia Sabina. Here, he was also accompanied by his male lover Antinous, who drowned in the river Nile in October, causing the emperor intense grief.

Ruled Britannia Nine nerve centres of Roman Britain in AD 130
1) Rutupiae (Richborough, Kent)
The port from where Claudius launched his invasion in AD 43, and still the province’s key point of entry. Glistening in Italian marble and adorned with bronzes and sculpture, a gigantic monumental arch represented the accessus Britanniae, the symbolic gateway to Britannia. It aligned with Watling Street, so connected with the network of roads penetrating the whole province.
2) Dubris (Dover)
British base of the classis Britannia (British fleet). Ships were guided into the harbour at the narrow mouth of the river Dour by two lighthouses, one on each of the headlands of the chalk cliffs. Their fire beacons were visible far out to sea – even, on a clear day, as far as Gaul.

This lighthouse guided ships into the harbour at Dover. © Getty
3) Londinium (London)
Britannia’s most important city attracted international trade and a cosmopolitan population. On the boundary of several ancient kingdoms, the city held a pivotal position at the head of a tidal river and at the intersection of key routes into the heart of the province. The provincial governor and procurator were based here.
4) Isca Augusta (Caerleon)
Headquarters of the 2nd Augusta Legion. The fortress occupied a 50-acre site on the right bank of the Usk, at the river’s lowest bridging point before it enters the Severn estuary. It boasted a superb baths complex, 41 metre open-air pool and 6,000-seater amphitheatre. Most legionaries, though, were now stationed further north, deployed on the wall.

The remains of the 6,000-seat amphitheatre at Caerleon. © Alamy
5) Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester)
First settled by an exiled Gallic chief, Calleva was the administrative centre of the Atrebates and the first major town west of London. Standing in an open landscape of pasture, hay meadows and heathland, it lay at the junction of main roads leading to other significant towns in all directions.
6) Viroconium Cornoviorum (Wroxeter, Shropshire)
Capital of the cattle-rearing Cornovii, this town’s brand new forum and basilica were possibly instigated by Hadrian’s visit to Britain in AD 122 and completed and dedicated in AD 130. At this time, plans for baths with a leisure hall were yet to get off the ground.
7) Aquae Sulis (Bath)
This was Britannia’s premiere tourist attraction. The thermal waters were hugely popular, attracting many soldiers on leave and visitors from far and wide. The steaming spring sat in a precinct with classical temple and adjoining baths dedicated to Sulis Minerva – Sulis being a Celtic deity joined with the Roman goddess Minerva.

Tourists flocked to Bath’s famed waters in the second century AD. © Rex Features
8) Banna (Birdoswald, Cumbria)
In AD 130, big changes were afoot at this fort, which sat astride Hadrian’s Wall high on top of an escarpment with magnificent views to the south over the river valley and Cold Fell. The old timber fort was about to be replaced by a large stone one with a rare basilica exercitatoria, or indoor drill hall.
9) Fanum Cocidi [?] (Bewcastle, Cumbria)
Six miles north of Banna, this outpost fort – which may have been called Fanum Cocidi – was manned by a cohort of Dacians (from modern Romania). Their job was to patrol the troubled no man’s land north of the wall.

When in Londinium… From sleeping with their hounds to gambling away their wages, how Roman Britons lived their lives in AD 130
The thrill of the chase At Hadrian’s Wall, hunting was the officers’ most eagerly anticipated pastime. They wrote to each other about their hounds and sent their friends requests for kit: “If you love me, brother, I ask that you send me hunting-nets,” wrote Flavius Cerialis from Vindolanda to his fellow officer Brocchus in the early second century.
Hunting hounds were well looked after. A contemporary writer recommended that they were fondled after a good chase and given a soft warm bed at night where, he advised: “It is best when they sleep with a man so that they become more affectionate and appreciate companionship.”

Two men carry a wild boar in an AD 300 mosaic. Hunting was among Roman army officers’ favourite pastimes. © Alamy
No-frills fashionAnyone coming from the Mediterranean, and especially from places like Egypt and Syria, would have been struck by the plainness of British clothes. Although cloth was dyed – red with imported madder or bedstraw, purple with local lichens, blue with woad, and yellow with weld – there were none of the fancy weaves or brocades to be found further east.
In these damp islands people sported eminently sensible – and excellent quality – medium-weight diamond, herringbone and plain 2/2 twill. While there were those who wore imported damask silks, diamond twill and checks were the distinctively north-west European Celtic look.
A curse be upon you“Lady Nemesis, I give thee a cloak and a pair of Gallic sandals; let him who took them not redeem them (unless) with his own blood.” This curse, written in Latin on a lead tablet in Wales, was typical of hundreds found in Britain. The British did not curse rival lovers as elsewhere in the empire but instead were obsessed with theft and property rights.
Nemesis was a goddess who could distribute both good and bad fortune, success or failure, even life and death. She is often associated with amphitheatres and the Welsh curse quoted above was found at the amphitheatre at Caerleon.

Britons beseeched the gods to punish their enemies on curse tablets like this. © Freia Turland Photography
Beer, dice and knife attacksItalian and Greek wine was available in Britain but most of it came from Gaul, imported in wooden barrels. Soldiers of the ranks enjoyed beer, and snacked on shellfish in the taverns while playing games such as ludus duodecimo scriptorium perhaps, which was a bit like backgammon but played with dice.
Taverns were louche places, where barmaids were notorious for offering more than just drinks. Buried under the clay floor in the back room of an inn at Vercovicium (Housesteads) on Hadrian’s Wall are the carefully concealed bodies of a woman and a man, the latter with the tip of the knife that killed him still wedged between his ribs.

Men play dice in a third-century AD mosaic. © Alamy
Blood sportsAlongside the crocodiles, lions and antelopes shipped to Rome to appear in the arena were bears and stags from Britain and wolfhounds from Ireland. The logistics of capturing the animals and transporting them overseas were considerable and many died en route or arrived in a miserable condition.
In the amphitheatres of Britain there is no record of imported animals but evidence for wolves (in Wales), bulls and bears. Travelling schools of gladiators, sponsored by the state, appeared in Britain while on tour through Gaul, Spain and Germany.
Bronwen Riley is a historian and author who is series editor of the English Heritage Red Guides.

Excavations at British sites are Revolutionizing Prehistoric Studies and Revealing Secrets of the Past

Ancient Origins

You might say British archaeology is in a golden age, especially with excavations and discoveries at two sites that are adding great knowledge of the prehistory of the islands. One site, from about 2500 BC, is on the Orkney Islands off Scotland’s northern coast, and the other, from about 1000 BC, is not far from London.
The excavations at the two sites coincide with a two-week British Festival of Archaeology that wraps up this weekend.
Though they are separated by many years and about 650 miles (1,050 km), the two sites are providing insights into what life was like in the British Isles before there were written language and historians to record the lives of the people.
In the Orkneys are a settlement, monumental stone circle and temple complex called Ness of Brodgar that has been under excavation since 2003. For about 4,500 years, the earth held the secrets of an ancient people who worshiped, farmed and lived there. Over the years archaeologists have been extracting those secrets and now want to share them with the world. (See here for a website about Brodgar.)

The site in England, at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire, was a settlement of roundhouses that burned, perhaps in an attack by hostiles, and fell into the river, where the silt preserved the settlers’ stuff so well that some are calling it Britain’s Pompeii.
A bronze socketed ax was one of many Bronze Age tools found at Must Farm, a site that dates back about 3,000 years and is the finest site of that era ever found in Britain and one of the finest in Europe. Photo by Cambridge Archaeological Unit. And though they are so far removed from each other in time—one site is from the Neolithic (Stone Age), the other from later Bronze Age—the sites hold some similarities. The ancient people of both sites farmed, kept animals, had pottery and tools.
At these sites and at a thousand other places across the width and length of the British Isles, the Council of British Archaeology’s Festival of Archaeology is being celebrated in the last two weeks of July.
“The festival showcases the very best of archaeology, with special events right across the UK, organised and hosted by museums, heritage organisations, national and countryside parks, universities, local societies, and community archaeologists,” says the council’s website.
The festival’s Facebook page announces events about the Dark Ages, the Iron Age, the Roman era and many other historic and prehistoric features and eras of the British Isles.
Before all those eras came was the new Stone Age and its Ness of Brodgar in the Orkneys. The site is in part a temple complex of 21 buildings and covers an area of over 6 acres. It consists of the ruins of housing, remnants of slate roofs, paved walkways, colored facades, decorated stone slabs, and a massive stone wall with foundations. It also includes a large building described as a Neolithic ‘cathedral’ or ‘palace’, inhabited from at least 3,500 BC to the close of the Neolithic period more than 1,500 years later.
Excavations at the Ness of Brodgar on mainland Orkney (genevieveromier photo/ Flickr )The Ness of Brodgar is on the largest island of Orkney, called The Mainland. It includes a henge and stone circle known as The Ring of Brodgar. It is the third largest stone circle in the British Isles after Avebury and Stonehenge. Built in a true circle, the Ring of Brodgar is thought to have been originally composed of 60 individual stones, though presently 27 are intact. The stones themselves are of red sandstone and vary in height from 7-15 feet. The stones are surrounded by a large circular ditch or henge.
Excavations have discovered thousands of artifacts at the Ness of Brodgar, including ceremonial mace heads, polished stone axes, flint knives, a human figurine and miniature thumb pots. Archaeologists have found beautifully crafted stone spatulas, highly-refined colored pottery, and more than 650 pieces of Neolithic art, by far the largest collection ever found in Britain.
Far to the south, about 120 km (75 miles) north of London in Wittlesey is the Must Farm archaeological site, where that possible arson occurred. An archaeologist discovered the site in 1999 when he saw wooden stakes or palisades sticking out of the mud and silt, which preserved them and many other artifacts as well. Scorching and charring of the wood from when the settlement burned also helped to preserve some of the material.
While the entire site is fantastic, with its nine log boats found nearby, five roundhouses and many important artifacts, two of the most important finds were textiles and vitrified foods. Also, beads, likely from the Balkans and the Middle East, showed there was long-distance trade in Britain, where the Bronze Age began about 4,000 to 4,500 years ago.
The purpose of this tiny, finely made pot from Must Farm is unknown. Photo by Cambridge Archaeological Unit.The Must Farm website states: “We’ve found everything from textiles and boxes to wheels and axes. The Must Farm settlement has one of the most complete bronze age assemblages ever discovered in Britain and it is giving us an unprecedented insight into the lives of the people there 3,000 years ago. Two artefact types we haven’t discussed are metalwork and textiles, both of which offer another important layer of detail to the homes we are excavating.”
The British Archaeological Council’s Festival of Archaeology continues through Sunday. For more events, see the Facebook page or council website linked to above.
Featured image: The Ring of Brodgar. Photo source: geography.org.uk
By Mark Miller

CT Scans of Mummy of an Ancient Priest Reveal He Was Stricken with Modern Diseases

Ancient Origins


The mummy of an ancient Egyptian man from 2,200 years ago was recently scanned by researchers. The results proved that the man, who lived during the reign of the Ptolemies, had weak bones and tooth decay – two issues that are generally associated with a more modern way of life.

The man was believed to have been a priest, and his mummy is on display at Israel's national museum. While examining the remains, the researchers used a CT scan to reveal that he suffered from some illnesses during his lifetime. The mummy, nicknamed ''Alex'', was wrapped in strands of linen with a gold mask placed over his skull’s face and was encased in a gold and a black coffin. When he died he was between 30 to 40 years old.
A CT (computerized tomography) scan of a 2,200-year-old Egyptian mummy on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Associated Press PhotoAccording to DailyMail, the researchers saw evidence of severe tooth decay and guessed that the man suffered from excruciating toothaches. During his lifetime, he also evidently avoided manual labor in the sun in favor of focusing on his spiritual well-being. He evidently ate snacks that were full of carbohydrates as well. Thus, it is not too surprising that “Alex” had cavities in his teeth. This was quite common in some social classes in ancient Egypt due to a diet which contained lots of sweets. The man’s diet and lifestyle also made him more susceptible to osteoporosis, which the scans also show.
Top Ten Historical Health and Medical Discoveries of 2015New study sheds light into ancient Egyptian health care system at Deir el-MedinaThis research is a continuation of other international studies that have suggested that people in ancient Egyptian times also suffered from some modern-day diseases. As Galit Bennett, who curated the mummy exhibit, said: “Osteoporosis is a disease that is characteristic of the 20th century, when people don't work so hard. We are glued to screens. We were very surprised that there were people who didn't do physical work and that it affected their bodies like this man here.”

According to the researchers, the man was originally 167 cm (5.6 ft.) tall, but after his mummification, his body shrank to 154 cm (5.1 ft.) The team believes that this decrease in size was caused by the embalming process and the dry climate of Jerusalem. However, the same reasons aided in the excellent preservation of the mummy's bones, teeth, and even remnants of blood vessels.
It is believed that the mummy comes from Akhmim, about 480 km (300 miles) south of present-day Cairo. The inscription on his coffin says that he was a priest. The mummy and coffin were a gift to the Jesuit Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem in the late 1920s by Jesuits in Alexandria, Egypt. The Jesuits loaned it to the Israel Museum.
Another interesting fact about this mummy is that it is the only relic in Israel which has the double “Protective Eye of Horus” - a very meaningful symbol related to Ancient Egypt.
Horus was a key deity in ancient Egypt as a god of the sky and war, and this being was depicted as a man with a falcon head or as a falcon.
Medical Mystery of Usermontu: Why the Discovery of 2,600-Year-Old Knee Screw Left Experts DumbfoundedMummies Found in Chile Did Not Let Harsh Life Conditions Get Them DownThe Egyptian Mummy on display in the Israel Museum. Photo Credit: Israel MuseumThis is not the first time when CT scans have helped to find out more about the health of a person who was mummified millennia ago. As Mark Miller from Ancient Origins reported in September 25, 2015 “Over the years, scientists have found evidence of cancers, heart disease, starvation, ulcers, smallpox, tuberculosis and other infections in ancient remains from all over the world.” Researchers using CT scans have also detected a diseased kidney in an ancient Egyptian mummy. It appeared that a mummy of a man named Irtieru “had a kidney disease called renal tuberculosis that calcified (hardened) the organ.”
Irtieru died in the Third Intermediate Period and his mummy is housed within the Egyptian collection of the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia in Lisbon, and as Mr. Miller wrote “Computer tomography scans of this mummy showed a small dense bean-shaped structure at the left lumbar region. Its anatomical location, morphologic and structural analysis support a diagnosis of end-stage renal tuberculosis. If this diagnosis is correct, this will be the oldest example of kidney tuberculosis, and the first one recorded in an intentionally mummified ancient Egyptian.”
As one can see, health issues related to lifestyle are nothing new. What is interesting for many researchers is to find out just which diseases have passed through the sands of time, connecting modern people to their ancient ancestors. It is also of interest to see how and why these health problems have persisted. Furthermore, research into this area can show which illnesses were found in different social classes and how these may relate to their diet, activities, and social hierarchy.
Top image: The embellished mummy case containing the remains of the priest Iret-hor-iru | Photo credit: Oren Ben Hakoon

By Natalia Klimzcak

The hidden lives of Henry VIII's six wives

History Extra

Of all the contemporary accounts of Henry VIII's wives, perhaps none are more comprehensive than those left by Eustace Chapuys. © Lauren Mackay & Musee de Chateau
1) Catherine of Aragon: from beautiful warrior queen to desolate estranged wifeCatherine of Aragon was the daughter of the power couple of Europe, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and aunt to the powerful Holy Roman emperor Charles V. She was reputedly a blue-eyed, red-haired beauty who captured Henry’s heart and the hearts of her subjects, only to be discarded after 20 years of marriage when Henry met the beguiling Anne Boleyn.
Catherine vehemently resisted attempts by Henry to replace her with Anne as his wife and queen, but she could not do this alone. Catherine needed a legal mind, someone who possessed diplomatic shrewdness, experience and cool reasoning, someone who could argue her cause before the king and maintain cordial relations between Charles V and Henry. That man was Eustace Chapuys, a gifted lawyer and diplomat at Charles’s imperial court
Following a particularly successful mediation between the royal Hapsburg family and the independent Duchy of Savoy, this accomplished Savoyard from the small town of Annecy in what is now south-east France was appointed imperial ambassador to the Tudor court.
While the conflicting accounts of Catherine’s character have been drawn more along the battle lines of the bitter divorce with Henry VIII, it is through Chapuys’ dispatches that she is revealed to us as a fearless warrior queen – who defeated the Scots in battle in 1513 – and a vulnerable, desolate wife.

A portrait of Catherine of Aragon. Chapuys was bowled over by her “sheer kindness and benevolence”. © Art Archive
Catherine’s admiration of Chapuys is evident in her correspondence with Charles: “You could not have chosen a better ambassador, his wisdom encourages and comforts me, and when my councillors through fear hesitate to answer the charges against me, he is always ready to undertake the burden of my defence... I consider him deserving of all your favour.”
Catherine was cast aside by her husband and the court and eventually neglected by her nephew Charles. And so Chapuys became her counsellor, advisor, advocate, life coach and her window to the world.
In 1536, with Catherine clearly ailing after her seven-year battle with Henry, Chapuys rushed to her bedside to once again rally her spirits. He reported on what would be their last meeting: “She was pleased, out of sheer kindness and benevolence, and without any occasion or merit it on my part, to thank me for the many services which, she said, I had rendered her on former occasions, as well as the trouble I had taken in coming down to visit her, at a time too when, if it should please God to take her to Himself, it would at least be a consolation to die as it were in my arms, and not all alone like a beast.”
Catherine died at Kimbolton Caste in Cambridgeshire as Chapuys was returning to London. In his final, intensely personal report he reveals his deep affection for a woman who, in his view, could never be replaced as Queen of England.

2) Anne Boleyn: a beguiling combination of intelligence, insecurity and relentless ambitionAnne Boleyn's elusive personality and contradictory reputation continue to enthrall us, but it is through Chapuys’ dispatches that she emerges as an enticingly unique creature: intelligent, impetuous and ambitious.
Chapuys had loyally served some of the most powerful women in Europe: both governesses of the Low Countries – Margaret of Austria and Mary of Hungary – and Charles V’s wife, the Empress Isabella. He recognised in Anne the same political ingenuity.
Anne was a tempest of life. She was rash and bold and often quarrelled violently with Henry. We have Chapuys to thank for preserving several of the most quoted and evocative of Anne’s outbursts as he deftly captured her moods, her insecurities and growing frustrations as queen-in-waiting: “I see that some fine morning you [Henry]... will cast me off. I have been waiting long, and might in the meanwhile have contracted some advantageous marriage... but alas! Farewell to my time and youth spent to no purpose at all.”
Chapuys’ support of Catherine of Aragon and opposition to Anne Boleyn has so often been construed as a mark of his opposition to Lutheranism and the English Reformation. However it was his commission as ambassador to attempt to reconcile Catherine and Henry and restore Catherine to her rightful place on the throne of England. He could therefore hardly have been a supporter of Anne, whatever her religious leanings.

A woodcut showing Anne Boleyn’s coronation on 1 June 1533. Chapuys refused to believe the charges that led to Anne’s death. © AKG Images
Chapuys also offers us an insight into Anne’s downfall, caused by the machinations of Henry and his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Chapuys and Cromwell had an intense and complex relationship, a mixture of rivalry and mutual admiration, yet Chapuys could not shake from his mind how instrumental Cromwell had been in engineering Anne’s downfall.
Crucially, Chapuys addressed the charge which has long stained Anne’s reputation and that of her brother: the accusation of incest. He refused to believe a word of it, reporting that “no proof of his guilt was produced except that of his having once passed many hours in her company, and other little follies”.
Whatever he felt about Anne’s treatment of Catherine and her daughter, Chapuys believed that the execution of Anne, and the five men condemned with her, was unconscionable - for him they were innocent of the charges.
Although not present at the executions, Chapuys provides one of the vital narratives of the bloody events. His final entry on Anne is a testament to the woman he thought her to be: “No one ever showed more courage or greater readiness to meet death than she did... When orders came from the king to have (her execution) delayed until today, she seemed sorry... since she was well disposed and prepared for death, she should be dispatched immediately.”
His words are heartfelt in their admiration.

3) Jane Seymour: a master of managing the king – without him realising itJane Seymour was a more complex figure than many nowadays believe. Popular perceptions range from either a simple, soft spoken, docile and subservient woman of whom Henry would eventually have tired, or a shrewd and calculating young woman who seized the chance to snare a monarch. Chapuys however recognised her skilfulness in managing Henry without him realising it – the perfect wife.
Chapuys’ first impressions of Jane were of a woman “of middle stature and no great beauty, so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise. She is over 25 years old... not a woman of great wit, but she may have good understanding.”
Chapuys’ observations suggest that, while Jane may not have been of great intellect, she may have been more astute than she let on. Though lacking Anne Boleyn’s legendary sensuality, she nevertheless possessed an easy grace and innocence.

Jane Seymour in c1536. Her easy grace and quiet determination appear to have served her well in Henry’s court. © Bridgeman Art Library
Chapuys keenly appreciated the mutual affection and loyalty that developed between Jane and Mary, the only surviving child of Henry’s marriage with Catherine of Aragon. Jane was sincere in her desire to restore Mary’s position at court.
From Chapuys’ few accounts of Jane, we gain an insight into a quiet, determined woman who could entreat Henry for the lives of Catholic rebels as well as fight to reunite her step-daughter Mary with her father. From Chapuys’ first audience with Jane, his admiration is evident; he had again found a queen he could revere.
“I ended by begging her to take care of the princess’s affairs; which she kindly promised to do, saying that she would work in earnest to deserve the honorable name which I had given her of pacificator, that is, ‘preserver and guardian of peace’.”
Chapuys provides us with a sympathetic image of Jane: mediator, queen and mother of Henry’s only male heir.

4) Anne of Cleves: not so dim, ugly and socially inept as Henry would have us believeChapuys was in Brussels for the first six months of 1540, and missed Henry’s disastrous and brief marriage to Anne of Cleves. Our glimpses of her during this time are few and limited to Henry’s damning observations: dim, ugly and socially inept.
Thankfully, the real Anne becomes more illuminated through Chapuys’ constant stream of dispatches following her divorce from Henry. Anne was reported to be a statuesque, slender, woman, “of middling beauty, with determined and resolute countenance”.

Henry’s assessment of Anne, shown in a Hans Holbein the Younger portrait, may not have been strictly accurate. © Bridgeman Art Library
It was during Christmas 1541 that Chapuys first set eyes on Anne. He wrote that she made a supremely dignified entrance at Hampton Court, where she met her successor as queen, Catherine Howard. “Having entered the room, Lady Anne approached the queen with as much reverence and punctilious ceremony as if she herself were the most insignificant damsel about court.”
Chapuys was well aware of Anne’s reformist inclinations. But on a personal level his reports are generous in their admiration, and he was pleased to see the genuine warmth between her and Henry’s daughter Mary.
Anne was a true survivor. She would outlive Henry and go on to experience her stepdaughter Mary’s reign.

5) Catherine Howard: all she wanted to do was please those around her – but in one critical respect, she failedOf Anne’s successor, Catherine Howard, popular culture has left us an image of a pretty, vapid, ineffectual young woman whose allegedly unbridled sexuality would be her undoing. Chapuys, however, saw her vulnerability and the precarious position into which she was forced. He shifts the focus away from that famous sexuality to more significant aspects of her nature, namely her relationship with Henry, the firm hold her relatives had on her, and her rather endearingly earnest desire to please those around her.
Often dismissed as a queen with little power or political sway, she is viewed as more of a trophy wife admired by her considerably older husband. But this is not the Catherine of Chapuys’ letters. He perceived that Henry’s intention was to mould Catherine into the ideal Tudor queen, something that had eluded him for a number of years.
From her inauguration festivities Chapuys keenly observed her role: “[She] took occasion and courage to beg and entreat the king for the release of Maistre Huyet (Thomas Wyatt) a prisoner in the said Tower, which petition the king granted.”

Catherine Howard was at the mercy of her ambitious family and a king who wished to mould her into the ideal queen. © Bridgeman Art Library
Catherine won the hearts of her subjects, her predecessor, and to an extent Chapuys himself, but he regretted that she and Mary had a fractious relationship – hardly surprising, as Mary was around five years older than her new stepmother.
Within two years Catherine would be executed for adultery with two men, Francis Dereham, with whom she was involved before her marriage to Henry, and Thomas Culpepper, although there is no evidence that the affair went beyond words. Catherine’s last weeks are meticulously recorded by the ambassador, including a peculiar request that the executioner’s block be sent to her room.
“In the same evening she asked to see the block, pretending that she wanted to know how she was to place her head on it. This was granted, and the block being brought in, she herself tried and placed her head on it by way of experiment.”
Even in death, Catherine had not wanted to disappoint.

6) Katherine Parr: a shrewd political operator and a calming foil for Henry's ragesBy the time Henry married his sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr, Chapuys and the rest of Europe were almost indifferent to his penchant for weddings. But by then, Chapuys was beginning to feel his age. He worried constantly that Mary would have no one to promote her claim to the Tudor throne after he was gone. He could not have been more relieved then, upon meeting Katherine Parr for the first time, to find her graceful, a good role model for Mary, and a calming foil for Henry’s increasingly bad temper.
Chapuys was thrilled to report that she was a firm supporter of Mary’s rehabilitation at court; it seemed that she was to pick up where Jane Seymour had left off.
Katherine also displayed a certain political acumen, which was evident in her efforts to maintain good relations with the Holy Roman emperor (still Charles V). Chapuys trusted that Katherine would do all she could to preserve this alliance. From his first real audience with Katherine, the ambassador had a chance to observe Mary and her new stepmother together. He was gratified to see a genuine affection between the two women and thanked Katherine for the “good offices which she had always exercised towards the preservation of friendship between your majesty and the king; and also thanked her for the favour she showed to the Lady Mary”.

A c1545 painting of Katherine Parr, who was one of the few to acknowledge Chapuys’ contribution to the English court over 15 years. © National Portrait Gallery
Katherine warmly assured Chapuys that his gracious words were too kind, but that it was her affection for – and duty to – Mary that influenced her; indeed, she wished she could do more. Chapuys was thoroughly conquered by Katherine’s modest response.
One of Chapuys’ last dispatches brings to life their touching farewell audience. Despite his crippling gout, Chapuys was determined to show Katherine and Mary his respect and devotion, and remained standing despite the severe pain he was in. Katherine could see his discomfort and anxiously insisted that he be seated in her presence.
She was one of the few at Henry’s court who acknowledged Chapuys’ great service to England. Clearly flattered, the ambassador was finally able to leave England (he moved to the now Belgian town of Louvain in 1545, and died 11 years later). At last he felt he had discharged his mission entrusted to him by Catherine of Aragon all those years ago.

Lauren Mackay is a historian based at the University of Newcastle in Australia. She is currently researching her PhD on Thomas and George Boleyn

Thomas Cromwell – The rise and fall of Henry’s henchman

History Extra

Henry VIII was won over by Thomas Cromwell’s ability to rid him of his first wife and secure him a second. Yet an increasingly irascible and paranoid king never fully trusted his ambitious, outspoken chief minister. © Alamy
October 1529: Exit Wolsey, enter CromwellWhen Henry’s VIII’s chief adviser Cardinal Wolsey fell from grace in October 1529 – for failing to secure for the king an annulment from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon – it was expected that his favourite servant, Thomas Cromwell, would fall with him. Cromwell feared this himself and wept bitter tears of regret. But he soon rallied, pronouncing that he would go to the court and “make or marre”.
Acting as an intermediary between his fallen master and the king had all the makings of a thankless task, but Cromwell turned it to his advantage with spectacular success.

A portrait of Cardinal Wolsey. Cromwell was quick to step into the shoes vacated by his illustrious predecessor. (© Bridgeman)
Henry was quick to appreciate the skill of this self-trained lawyer – a man born to a ‘lowly’ family in Putney, c1485 – and  put it to his own use. Cromwell soon secured a seat in parliament and, by the end of 1530, had been appointed a member of the council. Far from being overawed by such a meteoric rise, he was outspoken and persuasive in his opinions, much to the annoyance of his higher-born colleagues.
The similarity between this new kid on the block and the man whom he had effectively replaced could not have been lost on the king. Wolsey and Cromwell shared more than their humble birth: both were highly intelligent, ambitious, audacious and extraordinarily industrious. But Henry had had his fingers burnt with the cardinal and was not about to entrust another adviser with as much power as Wolsey had enjoyed. Cromwell would have to work hard to gain his trust.

1533: The king gets his divorceCromwell is often credited with dreaming up England’s break with Rome as a means of extricating Henry from his first marriage. Cardinal Reginald Pole provides an account of the conversation that passed between the king and his councillor when they first discussed the “grete matier”. Cromwell told his royal master in no uncertain terms that, considering the only real obstacle was the pope, the answer to the conundrum was simple: he must renounce the authority of Rome and make himself head of the English church.
In fact, the idea of rejecting papal authority had already been conceived some years before, but Cromwell undoubtedly gave the campaign fresh impetus. It was largely thanks to his efforts that Henry was finally able to marry Anne Boleyn – derided by Henry’s subjects as ‘the great whore’ – in January 1533.

A portrait believed to be of Anne Boleyn. (© Bridgeman)
Three months later, he forced through the Act in Restraint of Appeals, which became law in April. From now on, no subject of the king – Catherine of Aragon included – could appeal to Rome as a higher authority. Described as “Cromwell’s masterpiece in statute-making”, the famous preamble to the act pronounced that the realm of England was an empire, ruled by the king as supreme head, with complete mastery over the bodies and souls of his subjects. Cromwell had not just got Henry his divorce, he had given him greater powers than any king before him.

1535: Henry’s fixer sets his sights on the churchOn 21 January 1535, Henry appointed Cromwell viceregent in spirituals, or ‘vicar-general’. This gave him considerable new powers over the church. Bolstered by the promotion, and his master’s confidence in him, Cromwell set in train a revolution that would shake England to its core.
He wasted no time in dispatching commissioners across the country to assess the state of each religious house. With typical attention to detail, he even investigated a few himself. The imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys reported: “Wherever the king goes, Cromwell, who accompanies him, goes about visiting the abbeys in the neighbourhood, taking inventories of their lands and revenues.”
Motivated as much by tales of widespread corruption as by the prospect of seizing their immense wealth and landholdings, Cromwell began a programme of systematic dissolution which would see the closure and demolition of more than 600 monasteries. He then went about making an example of those who refused to recognise Henry’s supremacy. Principal among his victims were Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More. When these two stalwarts of the old regime resisted intense pressure from Cromwell to conform, they went to the block.
Cromwell’s favour with the king now seemed unassailable. The Venetian ambassador scathingly remarked that although “this Cromwell was a person of low origin and condition; he is now secretary of state, the king’s prime minister, and has supreme authority”.

1536: Cromwell engineers the downfall of ‘the great whore’Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn had been hard won. But as a royal wife, Anne soon proved a disappointment. She failed to produce the longed-for Tudor prince, and when she miscarried a male foetus on the day of Catherine of Aragon’s funeral in January 1536, things began to unravel rapidly for her. “This king has not spoken 10 times to the concubine… when formerly he could not leave her for an hour,” reported a gleeful Chapuys in February. Worse still, for Anne, was the fact that her royal husband had already found a new favourite to replace her: the virtuous and rather insipid Jane Seymour. Henry wanted rid of Anne and there was only one man who could fix it: the same man who had arranged the marriage in the first place.

When Henry fell for Jane Seymour, shown here, he needed Cromwell to bring down her predecessor. (© Art Archive)
That Cromwell masterminded Anne’s downfall there can be little doubt. He had his own reasons for doing so, besides his natural eagerness to satisfy the king’s wishes. His alliance with the queen had started to disintegrate some time before. Although their passion for reform had originally united them, Anne condemned Cromwell’s tactic of diverting the revenues from the dissolved monasteries to the crown, rather than to charitable causes. In 1535, Cromwell confided to Chapuys that “the lady” had told him “she would like to see his head off his shoulders”.
Cromwell was swift to act. Drawing inspiration from Anne’s flirtatious relationship with her male coterie at court, he gathered ‘evidence’ (flimsy at best) of her adultery with not one but five men, including her own brother. It was one of the most brutal plots in history, resulting in the beheading of the queen and all of her alleged lovers. In the battle for the king’s favour, Cromwell had triumphed once more.

Autumn 1536: Public unrest spooks the kingCromwell emerged from the testing weeks that followed Anne’s execution stronger than ever. “Cromwell rules all,” observed Reginald Pole in June 1536. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed Lord Privy Seal, Baron Cromwell of Wimbledon and was knighted. But Henry’s gratitude did not last for long.
Although he had been content to support Cromwell’s religious reforms when they had served his purpose of divorcing Catherine and marrying Anne, the king had never taken them fully to heart and now became decidedly uneasy about them.

This illustration shows Catholic protestors on the march in 1537. Much of their bile was directed at Cromwell. (© Alamy)
Henry’s unease was increased by a rapidly growing resentment against the new regime among his subjects. This soon broke out into open rebellion. The uprisings, which became known collectively as the Pilgrimage of Grace, spread rapidly across the northern counties, winning support from nobility and commoners alike. They constituted the greatest threat yet to Henry’s authority – and the rebels were in no doubt that Cromwell was to blame.
The fact that a mere commoner could wield such power, and use it to such devastating effect, fanned the flames of their discontent. Lord Darcy, the most prominent nobleman to take part in the rebellion, voiced their hatred when he was captured and interrogated. He told Cromwell to his face: “It is thou that art the very original and chief causer of all this rebellion and mischief.” He also vowed: “Though thou wouldst procure all the noblemen’s heads within the realm to be stricken off, yet shall there one head remain that shall strike off thy head.”
Although Henry stood by Cromwell, his confidence in his reforms had been badly shaken.

1538: Treated like “a dog”No matter how high Cromwell had risen in Henry’s favour, he had never completely won his master’s trust or affection in the way that Cardinal Wolsey had done. This became increasingly apparent during the mid-1530s. As early as May 1535, Chapuys had reported to Holy Roman emperor Charles V that the king had upbraided his minister as “a fool and a man without discretion”.

Eustace Chapuys reported the king’s verbal assaults on his chief minister. (© Bridgeman)
According to another source, Henry would even resort to physical intimidation in order to keep Cromwell firmly in his place. “I would not be in his case for all that ever he hath,” declared George Paulet during his imprisonment for slandering Cromwell in 1538, “for the king beknaveth him twice a week, and sometimes knocks him well about the pate; and yet when he hath been well pommelled about the head, and shaken up, as it were a dog, he will come out into the great chamber, shaking off his bush with as merry a countenance as though he might rule all the roost”.
Although some of this report was pure slander, Cromwell himself once confessed to Chapuys that he had been too afraid to relay an unpalatable piece of news to the king in person, so had sent him a message instead.
It is easy to imagine the increasingly irascible and paranoid Henry, now in his late forties, lashing out at his low-born minister in this way – determined, perhaps, to highlight the gulf in their social status as a means of reinforcing his authority.

Spring 1539: Powerful enemies pull the plug on Cromwell’s reformsAfter enjoying a decade’s ascendancy at court, Cromwell’s luck began to turn. In April 1539, he was struck down by a fever and was confined to his house for several weeks, missing the opening of parliament. His enemies were quick to seize the initiative. The Duke of Norfolk presented a series of convincing arguments against Cromwell’s religious reforms. These were enacted into law as the Act of Six Articles (reaffirming traditional Catholic doctrine on six key issues). This marked the lowest point of Cromwell’s career at court to date.

Stained-glass windows in Worcester Cathedral show the two most powerful men in 1530s England. (© AKG Images)
Cromwell did his best to counter the conservative backlash, but he looked in vain for support from his royal master, who seemed to welcome a return to more traditional religious practices. The king even made friendly overtures towards the staunchly Roman Catholic Charles V. When the emperor’s wife died on 7 June, Henry ordered two days of official mourning.
All of this spelt danger for Cromwell and he knew it. He went on the offensive by securing parliament’s assent for the contentious Statute of Proclamations, which gave decrees issued by the king or council the same legal status as an act of parliament. Cromwell no doubt had in mind further religious reforms, which suggests that he was confident of wresting back his favour with the king. His confidence would prove misplaced.

Winter 1539/40: The relationship turns uglyWhen Henry’s beloved third wife, Jane Seymour, died in October 1537 shortly after giving birth to his longed-for son and heir, the future Edward VI, Cromwell immediately started searching for her successor. Within weeks, he found a lady whom he believed to be the perfect candidate.

Hans Holbein’s flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves. (© Bridgeman)
The 22-year-old Anne, daughter of the Duke of Cleves, had much to recommend her. Her father had expelled papal authority from his realm and was therefore a natural ally for the English king. But Henry’s ambassadors admitted they had heard “no great praise of her beauty”, so it was not until two years later, when a treaty between France and Spain left the king in desperate need of allies, that he instructed Cromwell to begin negotiations. Before he would agree to the betrothal, though, he demanded that the leading German artist Hans Holbein the Younger should be dispatched to Cleves to paint Anne’s likeness. The result was flattering enough to convince him that she would make a pleasant wife, and the marriage treaty was duly signed.
But when Henry met Anne soon after her arrival in England in December 1539, he was bitterly disappointed. “I like her not! I like her not!” he shouted at a dismayed Cromwell when the meeting was over, and ordered his chief minister to get him out of the marriage. Cromwell knew, though, that the treaty was binding, and it was with extreme reluctance that Henry was obliged to “put his neck in the yoke” and marry her on 6 January 1540. He never forgave the man who had got him into this mess.

April 1540: Briefly back in the king’s good booksThe year 1539 had been an ‘annus horribilis’ for Cromwell, and by the dawn of 1540, his standing with the king was at an all-time low. Thanks to his chief minister, Henry was married to a woman whom he found abhorrent and he was the enemy of Catholic Europe – not to mention many of his own subjects.
Cromwell was flailing, and the world knew it. On 10 April, the French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, reported that the minister was “tottering” and cheerfully predicted his imminent downfall. But just when it seemed that Cromwell’s relationship with the king was doomed, the pendulum swung back in his favour.

Thomas Cromwell was a brilliant political operator who became the second most powerful man in England. Yet he was to fall victim to the very kind of ruthless machinations that had propelled him to the top. (© Bridgeman)
Cromwell lashed out at his opponents in the new parliament, which opened on 12 April, passing a series of measures to consolidate his position, including a new taxation bill. Cromwell knew that the bill would swell the royal coffers considerably, and that in forcing it through parliament he was effectively buying back Henry’s goodwill.
It worked. Six days later, the king granted his minister the earldom of Essex, one of the most ancient and distinguished titles in the land. At the same time, he appointed him to the senior court office of lord great chamberlain and gave him extensive monastic lands.
This apparent volte-face on Henry’s part prompted an astonished Marillac to remark that the new Earl of Essex “was in as much credit with the king as ever he was”.

June 1540: When it comes, the end is spectacularCromwell arrived late for a meeting of the Privy Council on 10 June. As he entered the chamber, the captain of the guard came forward and arrested him on charges of treason and heresy. Barely had he time to draw breath before he was conveyed to the Tower. Cromwell’s arrest sent shock waves across the country and was soon reported in the courts of Europe. His fall from grace had been spectacular, even in a court renowned for its swift turns of fortune.
That it happened so soon after he had received a very public reassurance of the king’s favour suggests that it was masterminded not by Henry, but by Cromwell’s arch rivals, the Duke of Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, who had long sought his destruction. Playing upon Henry’s increasing paranoia and volatility, they whispered that Cromwell had “usurped” his authority, confidently predicted the king’s imminent death and planned to marry himself to his master’s eldest daughter, the Lady Mary. Most stinging of all, they claimed that Cromwell had called the king’s virility into question over his failure to consummate the marriage to Anne of Cleves. This was enough to persuade Henry to accede to his chief minster’s arrest.

Hans Holbein the Younger’s famous portrait of Cromwell. Following his arrest in June 1540, Cromwell begged Henry for “mercye, mercye, mercye”, but within a matter of weeks he had been put to death. (© National Portrait Gallery)
Yet even now he retained some affection for his beleaguered minister because he sent him money in the Tower in order to make his imprisonment more comfortable.
A grateful Cromwell wrote a long and impassioned letter, begging his royal master for “mercye mercye mercye”. His plea fell on deaf ears. A bill of attainder, containing a host of trumped up charges, was passed on 29 June and Cromwell was beheaded on 28 July. Having at last secured an annulment from Anne of Cleves (thanks in part to ordering Cromwell to testify from the Tower), Henry married Catherine Howard on the very day of his former minister’s execution. His callousness didn’t fully mask his true feelings. Within a few months, the king was bemoaning the death of “the most faithful servant he had ever had”.
Tracy Borman is a historian and bestselling author. To find out more, visit www.tracyborman.co.uk. 

Archaeology Student Discovers Amphora Full of 200 Silver Roman Coins

Ancient Origins


The archaeological site of Empúries (Ampurias), located in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain, is a unique site in the Iberian Peninsula which contains both the ruins of a Greek city -the colonial enclave of Emporion, founded in 575 BC - and a larger, later Roman city which took over from the intermediate Roman military camps. This special mix of time periods gives the archaeological site a privileged role in the understanding of the evolution of Greek and Roman urban sites at the edge of the Mediterranean thousands of years ago.

According to data provided by Canal Patrimonio (Canal Heritage), an International Archaeology Course is organized for this site each year. Although this activity has been enriching knowledge of the site for the past 70 years, excavations there continue to provide more details on ancient life. For example, a student enrolled in the course during the current campaign has recently made an exciting discovery - an amphora holding two hundred silver coins - denarii (singular ‘denarius’).
In addition, other students coming from Spain, Portugal, and Italy have also discovered a small bronze ladle, known as a 'simpulum' (a large spoon/ladle used to extract wine), the remains of a dozen amphorae that were used to store wine, and various ancient structures.
The recently discovered simpulum (ladle used for extracting wine) can be seen partially uncovered at the top of this photo. ( National Geographic / Archaeology Museum of Catalonia )Guillermo Ortiz, a student of the University Pablo de Olavide in Sevilla discovered the amphora with the Roman denarii. His finding is one that the Archaeology Museum of Catalonia does not hesitate to qualify as a "treasure" due to the number of silver pieces.

Meanwhile, National Geographic explains that the 200 coins were found in good condition within a ceramic amphora that was apparently hidden by its owner in the 1st century BC due to a fire that hit his/her home. The silver coins have been tentatively dated to between the years 115 and 81 BC. They have representations of Rome (a figure and a helmet), animals (elephants) and other symbols (e.g. Victory) depicted on them.
Fieldwork during the current excavations at Ampurias. ( Canal Patrimonio/EFE )The bronze simpulum and the wine amphorae are mostly of Italian origin and correspond to a cellar of a Roman domus (house). Part of this structure had already been excavated, such as some private rooms, a kitchen space, etc. This house apparently belonged to a wealthy family and occupied the southern sector of the so-called Insula 30: a set of buildings that housed the public baths and was located between two main streets in Roman Ampurias.
600 Kilos of 4th Century Roman Bronze Coins Discovered in SpainUnraveling the Origins of the Roman Sword Discovered Off Oak IslandSilver denarii were a benchmark in ancient Rome well into the imperial era, with magistrates being responsible for the minting of the coins. Most of the 200 pieces that were discovered come from central Italy, and since they have a good state of preservation, it is expected more data will be obtained from them after they are better identified and catalogued. Based on documents found in Pompeii and other ancient Roman sites, a person could have lived quite comfortably for some time with the value of the recovered coins.
Roman mosaics in ancient Ampurias. ( Caos30/CC BY SA 4.0 )The results of the excavations from July 2016 will be very important as they provide a look at the initial phases of the Roman settlement of Ampurias – a time when the subsequent amendments made ​​during the Augustan age had yet to take place.
Top Image: The Roman silver coins that were recently discovered in Ampurias, Spain and the amphora in which they were held. Source: Canal Patrimonio/EFE
By Mariló T. A.
This article was first published in Spanish at  https://www.ancient-origins.es  and has been translated with permission.