MaryAnn Bernal's Blog, page 89
July 16, 2016
Britain’s prehistoric stone circles
History Extra
Stonehenge. © Dreamstime
Stonehenge is, for many of us, the one place that represents Britain’s prehistory. The celebrated stone circle standing proud on Salisbury Plain with its trademark lintel-topped sarsens has been an enduring source of fascination for millennia. The first monument there, a circular ditch and bank, was dug in c2900 BC, and a timber or stone circle erected inside it. Then, much later, in c2400 BC, the first monoliths of local rock were brought in. Over the course of the next several hundred years, stones were put up, taken down, moved around, added to, and then finally re-erected to the shape we see today.
Stonehenge is undeniably a stone circle, but it’s not a henge, even though it has lent its name to the group of monuments that go under that title. The concept of the ‘henge’ was introduced by a man called Thomas Kendrick in 1932 and technically, a henge is a circular earthen bank with a ditch inside it and one or more entrances through the bank. At Stonehenge, there is a circular bank, but it is inside a ditch, so these elements are the wrong way round. Nevertheless, stone circles and henges do appear to be connected parts of a tradition that developed in Britain from around 3000 to 2000 BC – in other words, during the later Neolithic period (when agriculture began here) and moving into the earlier Bronze Age (when we see the first use of metals, from about 2400 BC).
Stone circles are often positioned within henges, sometimes in replacement for earlier timber circles, so there is a link between the two types of monument, though it’s not an absolutely clear one, as Richard Bradley explains: “Henges and stone circles are separate things that often coalesce. You’ve got plenty of stone circles that don’t have henges, and plenty of henges that don’t have stone circles. They each can pursue an independent existence but they are both different expressions of a more basic idea that special places ought to be circular, which seems quite natural to us, but large parts of Europe don’t have circular monuments in prehistory.”
10 facts about Stonehenge It’s possible that the tradition has its origins in northern Britain, perhaps in Orkney, and spread south from there. Stone circles number 1,000 across the country, while there are
around 120 henges known. Given the large size of some of these places, the construction of these monuments would have required a considerable number of people to build them. They indicate a “massive control of labour” in the view of Richard Bradley, and what’s particularly odd is that we don’t know where these labourers lived. Their monuments survive, but their houses (rare exceptions aside, particularly in Orkney) are lost to us, so in the later Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age, these henges and stones circles seem to have been the prime concerns of the people who built them.
What we do know is people were coming from a distance to these places. Settlements are not always found in their immediate vicinity. Combined with finds of exotic objects in and around the circles, the evidence from isotope analysis of the bones of animals eaten at these sites points to the fact that people were travelling to get to them. “I think we can start to talk about pilgrimage,” says Richard Bradley. What were they coming to do? Well, eating seems to have been a big thing. Feasting, particularly on pork, is attested by excavated remains of animal bones.
Similarly, archaeological finds indicate that burial and commemoration of the dead also appears to have been going on. There was the deliberate deposition of unusual objects in the ground. Also, the observation of basic astronomical events would appear to have been practised, as many of the monuments have alignments that lend themselves to the solstices. Those are the main things that we can talk about with any sense of certainty, but of course that hasn’t stopped archaeologists and others from coming up with a multitude of theories about the purpose of these places.
Stonehenge: a prehistoric tourist trap What’s interesting is that their role seems to shift over time, notes Richard Bradley: “There’s a gradual change from public buildings – big houses I call them – where we see wooden structures with a lot of animal bone and a lot of debris, to stone settings usually with cremation burials. Then there’s a very last phase of use at stone circles which is perhaps more northern than southern. They were used all over again in the late Bronze Age (1200–800 BC) as cremation cemeteries and cremation pyres.”
So these circular monuments have had a long life and no doubt have meant different things to different people. That’s an attribute they maintain to this day, as anyone passing Stonehenge on a solstice will be able to confirm.
Places to visit
1) The Hurlers, CornwallWhere you can see how stone circles sat within ritual landscapesOne of the interesting points about henges and stone circles is that they don’t exist in isolation. They are often surrounded by burial mounds, to create wider ritual landscapes. At The Hurlers, on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, there are three well-preserved stone circles arranged over open ground in a line, a grouping which is unusual in itself.
As with many of these sites, we don’t have definite dates for their construction, but they are assumed to be late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. Not far away at Rillaton was an early Bronze Age burial mound, which was dug into in the 19th century. It turned out to be one of the richest early Bronze Age burials discovered.
A skeleton was found along with a fabulous gold cup, the Rillaton Cup, and numerous other objects. Curiously this cup found its way into the royal household where it was used to store the collar studs of King George V, before it was passed on to the British Museum, where it can still be seen today.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
2) Stanton Drew, Bath & NE SomersetWhere stones replaced timber circlesIn and around this small village south of Bristol, there are three stone circles grouped together, along with a three-stone cove (a cove being a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of stones) in a pub garden, plus some bits of avenues of paired stones leading into the circles. It adds up to one of the largest collections of prehistoric standing stones in the country.
There doesn’t seem to have been a substantial earthwork here, but geophysical survey
has suggested that the stones replaced timber structures, one of which is probably the biggest timber setting that we know of from the Neolithic. The process of replacing timber with stone is repeated elsewhere across the country and might be associated with the idea of moving away from the use of public places linked with the living to more private sites of the dead. Interestingly, the stones used here come from a number of different local sources, so it may be that different groups of people were contributing labour and materials.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
3) The Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, OrkneyWhere the tradition of henge building may have begunOrkney is a paradise for Neolithic enthusiasts, so much so that a large part of it has been designated as a World Heritage Site. Aside from the astonishingly well-preserved Neolithic village at Skara Brae and the magnificently atmospheric chambered tomb of Maes Howe, there’s a stunning pair of stone circles – the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness – opposing each other across an isthmus. The sharp, sometimes triangular, standing stones are set in breathtaking scenery and are worth visiting for that alone.
Their significance in this story is great. The radiocarbon dates from excavated material at the Stones of Stenness suggest that it’s towards the beginnings of both the henge and stone circle traditions. The site is also associated with a style of pottery – grooved ware - that seems to originate in Orkney and travel south with henges and stone circles. As Richard Bradley notes: “The odds are that the henge idea originates in the north and the west.” Even more interesting however is that these henges and circles lie within a much larger Neolithic landscape including several Neolithic settlements (they survive here because the paucity of timber meant that house construction was in stone rather than wood).
The late Neolithic village of Barnhouse is completely contemporary with the nearby Stones of Stenness, and another settlement near the Ring of Brodgar is under excavation now. It’s very unusual to see settlements so close to these types of monuments and the fact that the evidence survives in Orkney adds an extra dimension to the stone circles and henges here.
Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk
4) Avebury, WiltshireWhere you can consider how a henge might have altered realityOne of the largest, and most famous, henge and stone circles in Britain, Avebury has one major circle, with a horseshoe-shaped cove setting inside it, and two further circles as well. There is also likely evidence of a timber circle. It had two avenues of paired stones, one of which leads to another stone circle known as The Sanctuary. The dating is not good but the site was probably created around 2400 BC.
The henge is a very substantial earthwork and there’s a great day to be had wandering around the place, being towered over by the great lumpen stones in their settings.
It’s an excellent place to consider just how much labour the creation of some of these sites would have consumed, and of course to ponder why they were built. The huge size of the henge earthworks here might get you thinking about one of Richard Bradley’s theories:
“These earthworks of henges are great screens: they make a completely excluded space, you can’t see in if you’re not a participant and you can’t see out if you are a participant. One of the things that’s very odd with henges is the internal ditch. One argument is that it’s a defence in reverse to stop something powerful escaping. Another is that in most societies, in social anthropology, rites of passage involve a phase of seclusion where the norms of normal existence are explicitly reversed, and I do wonder if we’re talking about something like that.”
The village of Avebury is not an inversion of reality – though it is partly encompassed by the stone circle – and there you’ll find the Alexander Keiller Museum, which displays finds from excavations at this World Heritage Site.
Visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk
5) Arbor, Low DerbyshireWhere the prehistoric builders seem to be leading you on a journeyThis is a large henge monument boasting a substantial bank and ditch with two entrances, inside which is a circle of some 50 white limestone slabs, now lying on their sides, and a central horseshoe-shaped cove. The setting is in the high moorland of the Peak District, and Richard Bradley describes how Arbor Low might be designed with the power of the Peaks in mind: “It has one narrow entrance and one wide one. If you go in through the narrow entrance, you enter from a fairly undifferentiated landscape; then if you go across the monument you get to the wide entrance on the other side which affords you a spectacular view of a large part of the Peak District.” Whether that’s a journey the prehistoric builders wanted you to take, we cannot know, but it’s interesting to speculate on the mental voyage that might have lain behind this apparently leading layout.
The henge is, in the view of Richard Bradley, later than the stone circle, and he suspects that the recumbent position of the stones is due to later Christian iconoclasm rather than incompetence on the part of the prehistoric builders in setting them originally.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
6) Gors Fawr, PembrokeshireWhere you can think about how stones were transportedThis is a very small stone circle, which is nevertheless impressive and handily just beside the road. Its location is interesting as it sits just below the Preseli Mountains, which is where the famous bluestones of Stonehenge come from. Gors Fawr is also made of bluestones and while you’re looking at this site, you might well be drawn to dwelling on the much-discussed question of how the 80 or so stones were moved the 150 miles or so east, from this part of Pembrokeshire to Wiltshire.
Henges and stone circles tend to be sited in places that were easily accessible, often in river valleys. Richard Bradley notes that this “may be metaphysical but it’s probably more to do with access”, as waterways would have served as useful transport arteries for people, and perhaps stones, in prehistory.
Visit www.megalithic.co.uk
7) Castlerigg, CumbriaWhere the circular landscape perhaps inspired the buildersThis is a very well-preserved stone circle, probably of an early date, with a peculiar inner enclosure that has never been convincingly explained, and no surrounding henge. It occupies a spectacular location, completely surrounded by a circular landscape of Lake District hills. Richard Bradley thinks this is significant: “Henges and early stone circles tend to be located in basins so that you have the optical illusion that you’ve got a circle which is built within a circle taken from nature.”
Castlerigg stands at one of the entrances to the uplands of the Lake District and it’s noteworthy this area was the biggest supplier of stone axes in Neolithic Britain, which, along with the circular landscape theory, might go some way to explaining the location of this stone circle. It certainly makes it one of the most photogenic of monuments to visit today.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
8) Cairnpapple, West LothianWhere you can track the changing purpose of a circular monumentThis henge is similar to Arbor Low, in that it’s on a hill and has a narrow and wide entrance, providing the same effect of a dramatic view from the wide entrance. The place has a long history – there was some sort of stone setting before 3000 BC – and the interior is complicated. Along with the henge, it had either a stone or timber circle, and it also had a cove. What is interesting is that increasingly the interior was taken up by a burial cairn. It was begun in the early Bronze Age and, as time went by, it got bigger and bigger until it occupied quite a lot of the interior, changing it from an open area to something that’s congested.
Richard Bradley sees that as an indication that here “people are taking over and appropriating a monument that was originally conceived as communal”. This is something that seems to happen elsewhere too, perhaps in association with the arrival of metal technology. If you visit today, you can see the henge, and the burial chamber of the cairn (it has been removed), which is now displayed under a concrete dome (summer opening only). Guided tours are offered and you’ll also get good views over central Scotland, assuming you’ve come on a day when the weather is kind.
Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk
9) Tomnaverie, AberdeenshireWhere a stone circle has been raised up once moreThis is a stone circle that Richard Bradley excavated, and it’s one of the rare places where we have a good date. It’s a rubble platform on a low hilltop, which was enclosed by a stone circle about 2300 BC. There is no henge and it’s got a tremendous all-round view, with an illusion of an entrance on the south-west side. It’s illusory as it is blocked by a huge stone. This false entrance is aligned exactly on a mountaintop some 20 miles away. The circle was reused in the late Bronze Age as a cremation site.
In the early part of the 20th century, the site was threatened by quarrying. Alexander Keiller, who went on to dig at Avebury, stopped its destruction, but not before the quarry workers had taken most of the stones out of their sockets and laid them flat. Following Richard Bradley’s excavations, the stones were refitted back into their sockets. Apparently it was quite obvious which hole each stone should go in as they had a very snug fit.
Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk
Richard Bradley is professor of archaeology at Reading University and author of The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland (Cambridge UP, 2007).
Stonehenge. © Dreamstime Stonehenge is, for many of us, the one place that represents Britain’s prehistory. The celebrated stone circle standing proud on Salisbury Plain with its trademark lintel-topped sarsens has been an enduring source of fascination for millennia. The first monument there, a circular ditch and bank, was dug in c2900 BC, and a timber or stone circle erected inside it. Then, much later, in c2400 BC, the first monoliths of local rock were brought in. Over the course of the next several hundred years, stones were put up, taken down, moved around, added to, and then finally re-erected to the shape we see today.
Stonehenge is undeniably a stone circle, but it’s not a henge, even though it has lent its name to the group of monuments that go under that title. The concept of the ‘henge’ was introduced by a man called Thomas Kendrick in 1932 and technically, a henge is a circular earthen bank with a ditch inside it and one or more entrances through the bank. At Stonehenge, there is a circular bank, but it is inside a ditch, so these elements are the wrong way round. Nevertheless, stone circles and henges do appear to be connected parts of a tradition that developed in Britain from around 3000 to 2000 BC – in other words, during the later Neolithic period (when agriculture began here) and moving into the earlier Bronze Age (when we see the first use of metals, from about 2400 BC).
Stone circles are often positioned within henges, sometimes in replacement for earlier timber circles, so there is a link between the two types of monument, though it’s not an absolutely clear one, as Richard Bradley explains: “Henges and stone circles are separate things that often coalesce. You’ve got plenty of stone circles that don’t have henges, and plenty of henges that don’t have stone circles. They each can pursue an independent existence but they are both different expressions of a more basic idea that special places ought to be circular, which seems quite natural to us, but large parts of Europe don’t have circular monuments in prehistory.”
10 facts about Stonehenge It’s possible that the tradition has its origins in northern Britain, perhaps in Orkney, and spread south from there. Stone circles number 1,000 across the country, while there are
around 120 henges known. Given the large size of some of these places, the construction of these monuments would have required a considerable number of people to build them. They indicate a “massive control of labour” in the view of Richard Bradley, and what’s particularly odd is that we don’t know where these labourers lived. Their monuments survive, but their houses (rare exceptions aside, particularly in Orkney) are lost to us, so in the later Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age, these henges and stones circles seem to have been the prime concerns of the people who built them.
What we do know is people were coming from a distance to these places. Settlements are not always found in their immediate vicinity. Combined with finds of exotic objects in and around the circles, the evidence from isotope analysis of the bones of animals eaten at these sites points to the fact that people were travelling to get to them. “I think we can start to talk about pilgrimage,” says Richard Bradley. What were they coming to do? Well, eating seems to have been a big thing. Feasting, particularly on pork, is attested by excavated remains of animal bones.
Similarly, archaeological finds indicate that burial and commemoration of the dead also appears to have been going on. There was the deliberate deposition of unusual objects in the ground. Also, the observation of basic astronomical events would appear to have been practised, as many of the monuments have alignments that lend themselves to the solstices. Those are the main things that we can talk about with any sense of certainty, but of course that hasn’t stopped archaeologists and others from coming up with a multitude of theories about the purpose of these places.
Stonehenge: a prehistoric tourist trap What’s interesting is that their role seems to shift over time, notes Richard Bradley: “There’s a gradual change from public buildings – big houses I call them – where we see wooden structures with a lot of animal bone and a lot of debris, to stone settings usually with cremation burials. Then there’s a very last phase of use at stone circles which is perhaps more northern than southern. They were used all over again in the late Bronze Age (1200–800 BC) as cremation cemeteries and cremation pyres.”
So these circular monuments have had a long life and no doubt have meant different things to different people. That’s an attribute they maintain to this day, as anyone passing Stonehenge on a solstice will be able to confirm.
Places to visit
1) The Hurlers, CornwallWhere you can see how stone circles sat within ritual landscapesOne of the interesting points about henges and stone circles is that they don’t exist in isolation. They are often surrounded by burial mounds, to create wider ritual landscapes. At The Hurlers, on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, there are three well-preserved stone circles arranged over open ground in a line, a grouping which is unusual in itself.
As with many of these sites, we don’t have definite dates for their construction, but they are assumed to be late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. Not far away at Rillaton was an early Bronze Age burial mound, which was dug into in the 19th century. It turned out to be one of the richest early Bronze Age burials discovered.
A skeleton was found along with a fabulous gold cup, the Rillaton Cup, and numerous other objects. Curiously this cup found its way into the royal household where it was used to store the collar studs of King George V, before it was passed on to the British Museum, where it can still be seen today.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
2) Stanton Drew, Bath & NE SomersetWhere stones replaced timber circlesIn and around this small village south of Bristol, there are three stone circles grouped together, along with a three-stone cove (a cove being a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of stones) in a pub garden, plus some bits of avenues of paired stones leading into the circles. It adds up to one of the largest collections of prehistoric standing stones in the country.
There doesn’t seem to have been a substantial earthwork here, but geophysical survey
has suggested that the stones replaced timber structures, one of which is probably the biggest timber setting that we know of from the Neolithic. The process of replacing timber with stone is repeated elsewhere across the country and might be associated with the idea of moving away from the use of public places linked with the living to more private sites of the dead. Interestingly, the stones used here come from a number of different local sources, so it may be that different groups of people were contributing labour and materials.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
3) The Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, OrkneyWhere the tradition of henge building may have begunOrkney is a paradise for Neolithic enthusiasts, so much so that a large part of it has been designated as a World Heritage Site. Aside from the astonishingly well-preserved Neolithic village at Skara Brae and the magnificently atmospheric chambered tomb of Maes Howe, there’s a stunning pair of stone circles – the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness – opposing each other across an isthmus. The sharp, sometimes triangular, standing stones are set in breathtaking scenery and are worth visiting for that alone.
Their significance in this story is great. The radiocarbon dates from excavated material at the Stones of Stenness suggest that it’s towards the beginnings of both the henge and stone circle traditions. The site is also associated with a style of pottery – grooved ware - that seems to originate in Orkney and travel south with henges and stone circles. As Richard Bradley notes: “The odds are that the henge idea originates in the north and the west.” Even more interesting however is that these henges and circles lie within a much larger Neolithic landscape including several Neolithic settlements (they survive here because the paucity of timber meant that house construction was in stone rather than wood).
The late Neolithic village of Barnhouse is completely contemporary with the nearby Stones of Stenness, and another settlement near the Ring of Brodgar is under excavation now. It’s very unusual to see settlements so close to these types of monuments and the fact that the evidence survives in Orkney adds an extra dimension to the stone circles and henges here.
Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk
4) Avebury, WiltshireWhere you can consider how a henge might have altered realityOne of the largest, and most famous, henge and stone circles in Britain, Avebury has one major circle, with a horseshoe-shaped cove setting inside it, and two further circles as well. There is also likely evidence of a timber circle. It had two avenues of paired stones, one of which leads to another stone circle known as The Sanctuary. The dating is not good but the site was probably created around 2400 BC.
The henge is a very substantial earthwork and there’s a great day to be had wandering around the place, being towered over by the great lumpen stones in their settings.
It’s an excellent place to consider just how much labour the creation of some of these sites would have consumed, and of course to ponder why they were built. The huge size of the henge earthworks here might get you thinking about one of Richard Bradley’s theories:
“These earthworks of henges are great screens: they make a completely excluded space, you can’t see in if you’re not a participant and you can’t see out if you are a participant. One of the things that’s very odd with henges is the internal ditch. One argument is that it’s a defence in reverse to stop something powerful escaping. Another is that in most societies, in social anthropology, rites of passage involve a phase of seclusion where the norms of normal existence are explicitly reversed, and I do wonder if we’re talking about something like that.”
The village of Avebury is not an inversion of reality – though it is partly encompassed by the stone circle – and there you’ll find the Alexander Keiller Museum, which displays finds from excavations at this World Heritage Site.
Visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk
5) Arbor, Low DerbyshireWhere the prehistoric builders seem to be leading you on a journeyThis is a large henge monument boasting a substantial bank and ditch with two entrances, inside which is a circle of some 50 white limestone slabs, now lying on their sides, and a central horseshoe-shaped cove. The setting is in the high moorland of the Peak District, and Richard Bradley describes how Arbor Low might be designed with the power of the Peaks in mind: “It has one narrow entrance and one wide one. If you go in through the narrow entrance, you enter from a fairly undifferentiated landscape; then if you go across the monument you get to the wide entrance on the other side which affords you a spectacular view of a large part of the Peak District.” Whether that’s a journey the prehistoric builders wanted you to take, we cannot know, but it’s interesting to speculate on the mental voyage that might have lain behind this apparently leading layout.
The henge is, in the view of Richard Bradley, later than the stone circle, and he suspects that the recumbent position of the stones is due to later Christian iconoclasm rather than incompetence on the part of the prehistoric builders in setting them originally.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
6) Gors Fawr, PembrokeshireWhere you can think about how stones were transportedThis is a very small stone circle, which is nevertheless impressive and handily just beside the road. Its location is interesting as it sits just below the Preseli Mountains, which is where the famous bluestones of Stonehenge come from. Gors Fawr is also made of bluestones and while you’re looking at this site, you might well be drawn to dwelling on the much-discussed question of how the 80 or so stones were moved the 150 miles or so east, from this part of Pembrokeshire to Wiltshire.
Henges and stone circles tend to be sited in places that were easily accessible, often in river valleys. Richard Bradley notes that this “may be metaphysical but it’s probably more to do with access”, as waterways would have served as useful transport arteries for people, and perhaps stones, in prehistory.
Visit www.megalithic.co.uk
7) Castlerigg, CumbriaWhere the circular landscape perhaps inspired the buildersThis is a very well-preserved stone circle, probably of an early date, with a peculiar inner enclosure that has never been convincingly explained, and no surrounding henge. It occupies a spectacular location, completely surrounded by a circular landscape of Lake District hills. Richard Bradley thinks this is significant: “Henges and early stone circles tend to be located in basins so that you have the optical illusion that you’ve got a circle which is built within a circle taken from nature.”
Castlerigg stands at one of the entrances to the uplands of the Lake District and it’s noteworthy this area was the biggest supplier of stone axes in Neolithic Britain, which, along with the circular landscape theory, might go some way to explaining the location of this stone circle. It certainly makes it one of the most photogenic of monuments to visit today.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk
8) Cairnpapple, West LothianWhere you can track the changing purpose of a circular monumentThis henge is similar to Arbor Low, in that it’s on a hill and has a narrow and wide entrance, providing the same effect of a dramatic view from the wide entrance. The place has a long history – there was some sort of stone setting before 3000 BC – and the interior is complicated. Along with the henge, it had either a stone or timber circle, and it also had a cove. What is interesting is that increasingly the interior was taken up by a burial cairn. It was begun in the early Bronze Age and, as time went by, it got bigger and bigger until it occupied quite a lot of the interior, changing it from an open area to something that’s congested.
Richard Bradley sees that as an indication that here “people are taking over and appropriating a monument that was originally conceived as communal”. This is something that seems to happen elsewhere too, perhaps in association with the arrival of metal technology. If you visit today, you can see the henge, and the burial chamber of the cairn (it has been removed), which is now displayed under a concrete dome (summer opening only). Guided tours are offered and you’ll also get good views over central Scotland, assuming you’ve come on a day when the weather is kind.
Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk
9) Tomnaverie, AberdeenshireWhere a stone circle has been raised up once moreThis is a stone circle that Richard Bradley excavated, and it’s one of the rare places where we have a good date. It’s a rubble platform on a low hilltop, which was enclosed by a stone circle about 2300 BC. There is no henge and it’s got a tremendous all-round view, with an illusion of an entrance on the south-west side. It’s illusory as it is blocked by a huge stone. This false entrance is aligned exactly on a mountaintop some 20 miles away. The circle was reused in the late Bronze Age as a cremation site.
In the early part of the 20th century, the site was threatened by quarrying. Alexander Keiller, who went on to dig at Avebury, stopped its destruction, but not before the quarry workers had taken most of the stones out of their sockets and laid them flat. Following Richard Bradley’s excavations, the stones were refitted back into their sockets. Apparently it was quite obvious which hole each stone should go in as they had a very snug fit.
Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk
Richard Bradley is professor of archaeology at Reading University and author of The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland (Cambridge UP, 2007).
July 15, 2016
Henry VIII is buried where?!
History Extra
Portrait of Henry VIII. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)
He’s the king who had six wives and tired of them like a child tires of toys, who rid himself (and the world) of anyone who disagreed with him, didn’t like the pope and was fat…. Well, not quite. The truth and the facts are somewhat simplified for the wider audience; as one American tourist said to me on thinking she had found the tomb of Henry VIII in Westminster Abbey: “Henry VIII? He’s the one who killed all his wives, right?” She can be forgiven for both thinking of him as the ‘wife-killing king’ and for assuming he would be buried within the splendour of Westminster Abbey. She was wrong on both counts.
The iconic image of Henry VIII, created by talented court painter Hans Holbein, is known worldwide. Poised in confrontational stance, he stares out of the painting, challenging us to find fault and leaving us in no doubt that he is in charge. This was a carefully crafted image as was typical of Henry. As his father before him, he consciously, purposely and effectively used ceremony, art and symbolism to send the self-asserting message to his contemporaries: “I am the rightful king of England, appointed and supported by God.” We can only imagine the consternation and anger he would feel to know that the shrine-like tomb he designed for himself was never completed.
Indeed, despite his keen control of self-image in life and instructions for his tomb and image in death, he remains in a ‘temporary’ vault under the Quire in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in the company of his third queen, Jane Seymour, and also the body of Charles I and one of Queen Anne’s tragically short-lived children. The chamber is marked simply by a black marble slab placed there almost 300 years later on the orders of William IV, its functional description the only thing alerting us to his presence beneath:
IN A VAULT
BENEATH THIS MARBLE SLAB
ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS
OF
JANE SEYMOUR QUEEN OF KING HENRY VIII 1537
KING HENRY VIII
1547
KING CHARLES I
1648
AND
AN INFANT CHILD OF QUEEN ANNE. THIS MEMORIAL WAS PLACED HERE
BY COMMAND OF
KING WILLIAM IV. 1837.
The Quire in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images)
So how, when it came to what should have been Henry’s most important and enduring symbol, do we find him in a crowded vault marked only by a simple black marble tomb stone? It is a far cry from the ostentatious tomb of his father and mother in Westminster Abbey and far from what Henry imagined, indeed instructed, should be created for himself.
Henry VIII died in the early hours of 28 January 1547 at Whitehall Palace aged 55. For a couple of days his death was kept secret from everyone except those closest to the king, to allow for a smooth transition to the council rule which was to follow under his son, Edward VI. Court ritual continued so as not to alert anyone to the king’s death before everything was ready. Meals even continued to be brought to his chambers – announced, as always, by the sound of trumpets.
Edward VI was nine years old at his accession and would be only the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty. He was male and legitimate, but for the fledgling dynasty a child king was almost as dangerous a prospect as a woman on the throne. Everything had to be managed in minute detail, all of which had been planned by Henry himself. Of course this included Henry’s funeral which would, through impressive pageantry and ceremony, assert once again that the Tudors were rightful kings of England under God with the strong implication that Edward should be unchallenged. Always one for self-appreciation, Henry also wanted to show that he had been a true Renaissance king on the European stage.
Edward VI. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The funeral procession that escorted Henry’s body to Windsor left London on 14 February with an overnight stop at Syon House. It was four miles long, included more than a thousand men on horseback and hundreds more on foot. The coffin, draped in cloth of gold with an effigy of the king on top, was pulled on a carriage by eight horses. It impressed all who lined the processional route. So far so good! Henry would have approved.
The ceremony, too, was as Henry wanted. Following a sermon by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, Henry’s coffin was lowered into its temporary place next to his third wife and Edward VI’s mother, Jane Seymour. The white wands of office, which each office holder broke over his head, followed into the grave in customary fashion.
For his tomb, Henry requested “... a convenient altar honourably prepared and apparelled with all manner of things requisite and necessary for daily masses there to be said perpetually while the world shall endure”. Neither the tomb, nor the masses, were completed as Henry had stipulated.
A black marble sarcophagus, confiscated from Cardinal Wolsey by Henry, was already at Windsor. Thanks to John Speed, the 17th-century mapmaker and antiquarian, and his 1627 book The History of Great Britaine, we are able to understand how Henry planned to use it for himself. Fortuitously, for Henry’s original manuscript has since gone missing, Speed transcribes the instructions Henry left for a double tomb, magnificent in size, decoration and iconography.
Described in around 1,400 words, the plans included effigies of the king and queen as if sleeping; numerous angels; prophets aloft columns; scriptures and children with baskets of red and white roses scattering them down over the tomb and the pavement beyond. It would have been fabulous, very ‘Henry-esque’ – if it had been built! However, the sarcophagus remained at Windsor for more than 250 years until the Georgians found a use for it and transported it to the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, where it now holds the coffin of Admiral Horatio Nelson.
The sarcophagus of English naval officer Horatio Nelson in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, London, c1925. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
So why did Henry not ensure his legacy by having his tomb built in his own time? Lack of money perhaps, although that had never deterred Henry from large expensive projects before. More likely, then, that despite Henry’s concern (you could say preoccupation) with the Tudor succession, he simply did not want to face up to his own mortality. Talk of the death of the king was a treasonable offence. Indeed, it had been a brave Sir Anthony Denny who had finally told Henry on the evening of 27 January 1547 that he was dying and thus allowing him (just) enough time to take the last rites – essential for one of the Catholic faith, as Henry was right to the end of his life.
Henry may not have liked to think about his own death, but three of his children followed him to the throne. Did none of them wish to honour their father with a fitting monument? The short answer is ‘no’. At any rate, none of them did. But why was this the case?
Edward VI may have been a child of only nine years old when he followed his father to the throne, but he had determination beyond his years and had one clear agenda – to make England Protestant. Edward was ruthless in his reforms, going far beyond anything his father had done. He died only six years later and had dedicated the majority of his reign to religious reform. We can surmise that building his father's tomb as designed, with all its trappings of the Catholic faith, was neither a priority nor a concern to the boy king. It was far easier to display his father’s memory for his own use in his own image. A portrait of Edward in the National Portrait Gallery, believed to have been painted following his accession, mimics the strong pose of his father in the Whitehall Mural.
Edward was succeeded in turn by his two older half-sisters. First Mary, daughter of Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and then by Elizabeth, daughter of his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Unlike Edward, both sisters had been subjected to emotional damage at the hands of their father and both had suffered the devastation of being declared illegitimate, coupled with separation from their mothers.
Mary Tudor, 1544. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Of the two, Mary suffered the most. Elizabeth, two years old when her mother was executed, may have been confused to be addressed one day as ‘Princess Elizabeth’ and the following day ‘the lady Elizabeth’, but the toddler probably had no lasting memories of such events. On the other hand, Mary could remember all too vividly the cruel treatment herself and her mother endured at the hands of her father when he failed in his efforts to secure a divorce from Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Mary had been forbidden to see her mother, forced to agree that her parents’ marriage was illegal and that her mother had never been queen, and to reject the pope and recognise her father as supreme head of the Church in England. It would be difficult to overestimate the impact all these things had on her. Tragically, mother and daughter were kept apart and Mary never saw her mother again.
It would therefore have been surprising for Mary to expend much energy on the glorification of her father's memory. Besides, she was far too busy trying to undo his and Edward’s religious reforms by re-establishing the Catholic church in England under the pope in Rome.
After Mary came Elizabeth, who is known to have enjoyed reminding people that she was her father’s daughter. Elizabeth often referred to Henry when speaking to her council and made reference to him in a speech to parliament quite late into her reign, in 1593, when she talked of the debt she was in to her father “whom in the duty of a child I must regard, and to whom I must acknowledge myself far shallow”.
Many historians and writers have asserted that Elizabeth’s references come from a deep affection for her late father, which had developed toward the end of his life when she spent a great deal of time at court. Perhaps this is true. However, it is difficult to deny that her references served a purpose. Invoking her father’s memory, aided no doubt by her inheritance of his auburn hair, reminded those around her of her descent and provided Henry’s support for her legitimacy from beyond the grave. Ironically this was something he had failed to do in life when he restored her to the succession but left her illegitimate.
Elizabeth I is not known to have spoken of her mother in public, however a ring she wore, now known as the Chequers Ring, contained a miniature portrait of her mother and one of herself. Although she had only been a little girl of two years old when her mother was beheaded at the Tower of London, Elizabeth felt a connection to her and, privately at least, kept her memory alive. Would she have been willing to create a tomb to her father when she could not have done the same for her mother?
The Chequers Ring. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
We could surmise from all of this that once Henry's mortal presence was gone his children were not going to be his biggest supporters. It was easier to invoke his name at points where it was advantageous to them than to muster the effort and money required to erect his permanent shrine. Nowadays, then, thousands of visitors walk over his remains every year without realising they are so close to the infamous Henry VIII.
Philippa Brewell is a historical trip writer and blogs at britishhistorytours.com.
Portrait of Henry VIII. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images) He’s the king who had six wives and tired of them like a child tires of toys, who rid himself (and the world) of anyone who disagreed with him, didn’t like the pope and was fat…. Well, not quite. The truth and the facts are somewhat simplified for the wider audience; as one American tourist said to me on thinking she had found the tomb of Henry VIII in Westminster Abbey: “Henry VIII? He’s the one who killed all his wives, right?” She can be forgiven for both thinking of him as the ‘wife-killing king’ and for assuming he would be buried within the splendour of Westminster Abbey. She was wrong on both counts.
The iconic image of Henry VIII, created by talented court painter Hans Holbein, is known worldwide. Poised in confrontational stance, he stares out of the painting, challenging us to find fault and leaving us in no doubt that he is in charge. This was a carefully crafted image as was typical of Henry. As his father before him, he consciously, purposely and effectively used ceremony, art and symbolism to send the self-asserting message to his contemporaries: “I am the rightful king of England, appointed and supported by God.” We can only imagine the consternation and anger he would feel to know that the shrine-like tomb he designed for himself was never completed.
Indeed, despite his keen control of self-image in life and instructions for his tomb and image in death, he remains in a ‘temporary’ vault under the Quire in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in the company of his third queen, Jane Seymour, and also the body of Charles I and one of Queen Anne’s tragically short-lived children. The chamber is marked simply by a black marble slab placed there almost 300 years later on the orders of William IV, its functional description the only thing alerting us to his presence beneath:
IN A VAULT
BENEATH THIS MARBLE SLAB
ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS
OF
JANE SEYMOUR QUEEN OF KING HENRY VIII 1537
KING HENRY VIII
1547
KING CHARLES I
1648
AND
AN INFANT CHILD OF QUEEN ANNE. THIS MEMORIAL WAS PLACED HERE
BY COMMAND OF
KING WILLIAM IV. 1837.
The Quire in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images)
So how, when it came to what should have been Henry’s most important and enduring symbol, do we find him in a crowded vault marked only by a simple black marble tomb stone? It is a far cry from the ostentatious tomb of his father and mother in Westminster Abbey and far from what Henry imagined, indeed instructed, should be created for himself.
Henry VIII died in the early hours of 28 January 1547 at Whitehall Palace aged 55. For a couple of days his death was kept secret from everyone except those closest to the king, to allow for a smooth transition to the council rule which was to follow under his son, Edward VI. Court ritual continued so as not to alert anyone to the king’s death before everything was ready. Meals even continued to be brought to his chambers – announced, as always, by the sound of trumpets.
Edward VI was nine years old at his accession and would be only the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty. He was male and legitimate, but for the fledgling dynasty a child king was almost as dangerous a prospect as a woman on the throne. Everything had to be managed in minute detail, all of which had been planned by Henry himself. Of course this included Henry’s funeral which would, through impressive pageantry and ceremony, assert once again that the Tudors were rightful kings of England under God with the strong implication that Edward should be unchallenged. Always one for self-appreciation, Henry also wanted to show that he had been a true Renaissance king on the European stage.
Edward VI. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The funeral procession that escorted Henry’s body to Windsor left London on 14 February with an overnight stop at Syon House. It was four miles long, included more than a thousand men on horseback and hundreds more on foot. The coffin, draped in cloth of gold with an effigy of the king on top, was pulled on a carriage by eight horses. It impressed all who lined the processional route. So far so good! Henry would have approved.
The ceremony, too, was as Henry wanted. Following a sermon by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, Henry’s coffin was lowered into its temporary place next to his third wife and Edward VI’s mother, Jane Seymour. The white wands of office, which each office holder broke over his head, followed into the grave in customary fashion.
For his tomb, Henry requested “... a convenient altar honourably prepared and apparelled with all manner of things requisite and necessary for daily masses there to be said perpetually while the world shall endure”. Neither the tomb, nor the masses, were completed as Henry had stipulated.
A black marble sarcophagus, confiscated from Cardinal Wolsey by Henry, was already at Windsor. Thanks to John Speed, the 17th-century mapmaker and antiquarian, and his 1627 book The History of Great Britaine, we are able to understand how Henry planned to use it for himself. Fortuitously, for Henry’s original manuscript has since gone missing, Speed transcribes the instructions Henry left for a double tomb, magnificent in size, decoration and iconography.
Described in around 1,400 words, the plans included effigies of the king and queen as if sleeping; numerous angels; prophets aloft columns; scriptures and children with baskets of red and white roses scattering them down over the tomb and the pavement beyond. It would have been fabulous, very ‘Henry-esque’ – if it had been built! However, the sarcophagus remained at Windsor for more than 250 years until the Georgians found a use for it and transported it to the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, where it now holds the coffin of Admiral Horatio Nelson.
The sarcophagus of English naval officer Horatio Nelson in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, London, c1925. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
So why did Henry not ensure his legacy by having his tomb built in his own time? Lack of money perhaps, although that had never deterred Henry from large expensive projects before. More likely, then, that despite Henry’s concern (you could say preoccupation) with the Tudor succession, he simply did not want to face up to his own mortality. Talk of the death of the king was a treasonable offence. Indeed, it had been a brave Sir Anthony Denny who had finally told Henry on the evening of 27 January 1547 that he was dying and thus allowing him (just) enough time to take the last rites – essential for one of the Catholic faith, as Henry was right to the end of his life.
Henry may not have liked to think about his own death, but three of his children followed him to the throne. Did none of them wish to honour their father with a fitting monument? The short answer is ‘no’. At any rate, none of them did. But why was this the case?
Edward VI may have been a child of only nine years old when he followed his father to the throne, but he had determination beyond his years and had one clear agenda – to make England Protestant. Edward was ruthless in his reforms, going far beyond anything his father had done. He died only six years later and had dedicated the majority of his reign to religious reform. We can surmise that building his father's tomb as designed, with all its trappings of the Catholic faith, was neither a priority nor a concern to the boy king. It was far easier to display his father’s memory for his own use in his own image. A portrait of Edward in the National Portrait Gallery, believed to have been painted following his accession, mimics the strong pose of his father in the Whitehall Mural.
Edward was succeeded in turn by his two older half-sisters. First Mary, daughter of Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and then by Elizabeth, daughter of his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Unlike Edward, both sisters had been subjected to emotional damage at the hands of their father and both had suffered the devastation of being declared illegitimate, coupled with separation from their mothers.
Mary Tudor, 1544. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Of the two, Mary suffered the most. Elizabeth, two years old when her mother was executed, may have been confused to be addressed one day as ‘Princess Elizabeth’ and the following day ‘the lady Elizabeth’, but the toddler probably had no lasting memories of such events. On the other hand, Mary could remember all too vividly the cruel treatment herself and her mother endured at the hands of her father when he failed in his efforts to secure a divorce from Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Mary had been forbidden to see her mother, forced to agree that her parents’ marriage was illegal and that her mother had never been queen, and to reject the pope and recognise her father as supreme head of the Church in England. It would be difficult to overestimate the impact all these things had on her. Tragically, mother and daughter were kept apart and Mary never saw her mother again.
It would therefore have been surprising for Mary to expend much energy on the glorification of her father's memory. Besides, she was far too busy trying to undo his and Edward’s religious reforms by re-establishing the Catholic church in England under the pope in Rome.
After Mary came Elizabeth, who is known to have enjoyed reminding people that she was her father’s daughter. Elizabeth often referred to Henry when speaking to her council and made reference to him in a speech to parliament quite late into her reign, in 1593, when she talked of the debt she was in to her father “whom in the duty of a child I must regard, and to whom I must acknowledge myself far shallow”.
Many historians and writers have asserted that Elizabeth’s references come from a deep affection for her late father, which had developed toward the end of his life when she spent a great deal of time at court. Perhaps this is true. However, it is difficult to deny that her references served a purpose. Invoking her father’s memory, aided no doubt by her inheritance of his auburn hair, reminded those around her of her descent and provided Henry’s support for her legitimacy from beyond the grave. Ironically this was something he had failed to do in life when he restored her to the succession but left her illegitimate.
Elizabeth I is not known to have spoken of her mother in public, however a ring she wore, now known as the Chequers Ring, contained a miniature portrait of her mother and one of herself. Although she had only been a little girl of two years old when her mother was beheaded at the Tower of London, Elizabeth felt a connection to her and, privately at least, kept her memory alive. Would she have been willing to create a tomb to her father when she could not have done the same for her mother?
The Chequers Ring. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
We could surmise from all of this that once Henry's mortal presence was gone his children were not going to be his biggest supporters. It was easier to invoke his name at points where it was advantageous to them than to muster the effort and money required to erect his permanent shrine. Nowadays, then, thousands of visitors walk over his remains every year without realising they are so close to the infamous Henry VIII.
Philippa Brewell is a historical trip writer and blogs at britishhistorytours.com.
July 14, 2016
To kidnap a king: the foiled plot to abduct Edward VI
History Extra
King Edward VI by an unknown artist after Hans Holbein the Younger. Oil on panel, c1542, National Portrait Gallery, London. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)
When Henry VIII died in January 1547, power was quickly grasped by Edward Seymour, who became both lord protector and Duke of Somerset. He was unwilling to share power with his younger brother, who had been little esteemed by the old king. The relationship between the pair was further soured when Thomas married Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s widow. The younger Seymour hoped to be appointed guardian of the king, but there was little prospect of his brother relinquishing the role.
Thomas Seymour had been pleased to be appointed Lord High Admiral early in 1547, telling his friend Sir William Sharington that it gave him “the rule of a good sort of ships and men. And I tell you it is a good thing to have the rule of men”. He suffered disappointment, however, when Lord Clinton was instead appointed to head the English navy that summer in the Protector’s invasion of Scotland. Thomas Seymour remained in London, kicking his heels about the court as Somerset surged northwards, winning a victory against the Scots at the battle of Pinkie, east of Edinburgh, on 10 September 1547. With the protector gone, Thomas Seymour was able to gain access easily to the king in his apartments at Hampton Court.
Sitting with his royal nephew one day, Thomas told Edward that Somerset would never be able to dominate in Scotland “without loss of a great number of men or of himself; and therefore that he spent a great sum of money in vain”. This hit a nerve with the king, since Somerset was widely believed to be embezzling Henry VIII’s treasury and alienating his lands. Thomas chided his nephew that he was “too bashful” in his own affairs, and that he should speak up in order to “bear rule, as other kings do”. Edward shook his head, declaring that “I needed not, for I was well enough”, yet he registered his uncle’s words.
Thomas Seymour, c1545. Original publication from the original by Hans Holbein. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
When Thomas came to him again that September, he told the child that “ye must take upon you yourself to rule, for ye shall be able enough as well as other kings; and then ye may give your men somewhat; for your uncle is old, and I trust will not live long”. Edward’s reply was chilling: “it were better that he should die”. Indeed, there was little love lost between the monarch and the lord protector. Thomas also informed Edward that “ye are but even a beggarly king now,” drawing attention to the fact that he had no money with which to play at cards or reward his servants. Thomas would, he assured Edward, supply him with the sums required. In return, Edward assured his uncle that he was happy to take “secret measures” to ensure that he replaced Somerset as royal governor.
Somerset’s absence in Scotland had handed the king to his brother, and Thomas meant to capitalise on it. He trawled through royal records, seeking out precedents to support his bid to become the king’s governor, and he began to build support at court. He was, however, incapable of concealing his actions: word soon reached Somerset that a plot was afoot and, abandoning a promising situation in Scotland, he hurried southwards. He re-established control, banning his brother from meeting with the king. This had little effect, however, since Thomas was friends with several members of the privy chamber. It was a simple matter to communicate with the boy over the coming months.
The relationship between the brothers remained frosty into the following year. The death in childbirth of Thomas’s wife, Katherine Parr, on 5 September 1548 also failed to heal relations. Although Katherine had once been so furious with the protector that she had threatened to bite him, she had been a restraining hand on her husband. With her death, he moved headlong towards his ruin.
Henry VIII’s younger daughter, Princess Elizabeth, had originally lived with Katherine and Thomas, but had been sent away after the queen had caught her husband embracing the girl that June. Thomas Seymour had toyed with marrying the teenager before he wed the queen, and had carried out a flirtation with her for more than a year at the queen’s residences at Chelsea and Hanworth and in his own London residence, Seymour Place. With Katherine’s death, Thomas became, as Elizabeth’s governess, Katherine Ashley, informed her, “the noblest man unmarried in this land”. Soon, her cofferer, Thomas Parry, was meeting privately with Seymour in London. It seemed that Elizabeth was prepared to consider marriage with the king’s younger uncle.
Who was the real Edward VI? At the same time as his negotiations with Elizabeth’s servant, Thomas Seymour was also plotting to bring down his brother. For some months he had been attempting to win friends in the counties by visiting important local men. In October 1548 he informed his ally, Sir William Sharington that from his own tenants and servants he could muster 10,000 men. Sharington was himself a useful ally, since he was the under-treasurer of the Bristol mint and had been counterfeiting testoons [silver coins] since the spring of 1548, stamped with his own initials and a bust of Henry VIII.
In the autumn of 1548, Seymour asked Sharington how much money would be required to pay and ration 10,000 men for a month, before declaring “God’s faith, Sharington, if we had £10,000 in ready money; that were well, could not you be able to make so much money?”. The coiner agreed that it could be done and set to work. Thomas began to provision Holt Castle, a fortification that stood at an important crossing point on the River Dee, giving access to south Wales.
Thomas Seymour was a regular visitor to the king’s chambers during the winter of 1548–9. He was there on the evening of 6 January 1549, where he spoke jovially to the king’s attendants, unaware that the Bristol mint had been searched by the protector’s servants that day. While Thomas Seymour appeared nonchalant at Sharington’s arrest a few days later, he understood the implications that it had for his own plot. On the night of the arrest, John Fowler, who was Seymour’s chief contact in the king’s privy chamber, came to him in a state of alarm, lamenting that “I am utterly undone”. Privately, Seymour resolved to bring his plot forwards.
From around 10 January, he began to invite the Marquess of Dorset and the Earl of Huntington – both men he believed he could trust – to Seymour Place in the evenings. The talk was mundane, but on each evening the meetings would break up suddenly, with Seymour setting out alone for the court at Westminster. There, his behaviour was suspicious. He would go quietly into the buttery, where alcohol for the court was kept. Pouring himself a drink, he would wait alone among the bottles and barrels until John Fowler appeared. Each time, he asked “whether the king would say anything of him?” “Nay in good faith” replied Fowler. At once melancholy, Thomas wished aloud that Edward was five or six years older. At the end of each visit, the king’s younger uncle would insist that Fowler “bring him word when the king was rising”. Every morning he did so.
Anonymous portrait of Katherine Parr, c1545. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
By day, Seymour was still attending parliament, but his strange behaviour was beginning to be noticed. While talking to John Fowler on one occasion, Seymour was informed about orders that had been given to ensure that the king remained safely locked away at night. Thomas asked what was meant by this, but Fowler said he could not tell. Thomas concurred: “No I neither. What is he afraid that any man will take the king away from him? If he think that I will go about it, he shall watch a good while”. It was hardly a baseless concern, as Fowler himself could attest, since Seymour had once commented to him that “there is a slender company about the king”, before stating that “a man might steal away the king now, for there come more with me than is in all the house besides”. Such a course, if successful, would, de facto, give Seymour the coveted governorship of the king’s person.
On 16 January, a servant informed Thomas Seymour that the Earl of Rutland, whom he considered a friend, had made a deposition against him to the council. Hearing this, he began to suspect “by diverse conjectures” (as he later admitted) that the council intended his arrest. That evening, Seymour’s brother-in-law, the Marquess of Northampton, found him in a state of high agitation, rehearsing the day’s events out loud.
After sending Northampton away, Seymour went to court, arriving in the evening. Once there he spoke to the king’s guards, scattering their watch as he sent them on various errands. With a key that had been given to him by one of the king’s chamberlains he was able to open the door to the room adjoining the king’s bedchamber, “which he entered in the dead of night”. There, he disturbed the little dog, which usually slept in the king’s bedroom, and was his “most faithful guardian”. In the ensuing panic he stabbed the dog to death with his dagger, before fleeing home once more to Seymour Place.
The next day Thomas Seymour was arrested and sent to the Tower of London. Later, he would be accused of trying “to instil into His Grace’s head” the idea that he should “take upon himself the government and managing of his own affairs”. In his evening visits to court the week before, did he meet with the king and plan an “abduction” with him? It would seem plausible that the bedchamber key had been given to him on Edward’s command, since none of his attendants was ever accused of this.
In the Tower, Seymour, while at his lowest ebb, wrote the lines of verse: “forgetting God to love a king / Hath been my rod, or else nothing”. His protests of innocence, too, insofar as he made any defence, were based on the claim that he had had the king’s confidence and approval in everything. How could it be treason to do as the king asked? He probably hoped to collect Princess Elizabeth at Hatfield on the way out of London. At Holt Castle, the three could then wait for the protector to fall before Thomas Seymour – the king’s new brother-in-law – emerged to take his place.
Unfortunately for Seymour, by leaving his dog in the chamber outside his bedroom the boy-king had botched his own escape attempt. On 20 March 1549, Thomas Seymour lost his head for it.
Elizabeth Norton is a historian of the queens of England and the Tudor period. She is the author of England's Queens: The Biography and The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor, which looks at the relationship between the future Elizabeth I and Thomas Seymour, the uncle of King Edward VI.
King Edward VI by an unknown artist after Hans Holbein the Younger. Oil on panel, c1542, National Portrait Gallery, London. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images) When Henry VIII died in January 1547, power was quickly grasped by Edward Seymour, who became both lord protector and Duke of Somerset. He was unwilling to share power with his younger brother, who had been little esteemed by the old king. The relationship between the pair was further soured when Thomas married Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s widow. The younger Seymour hoped to be appointed guardian of the king, but there was little prospect of his brother relinquishing the role.
Thomas Seymour had been pleased to be appointed Lord High Admiral early in 1547, telling his friend Sir William Sharington that it gave him “the rule of a good sort of ships and men. And I tell you it is a good thing to have the rule of men”. He suffered disappointment, however, when Lord Clinton was instead appointed to head the English navy that summer in the Protector’s invasion of Scotland. Thomas Seymour remained in London, kicking his heels about the court as Somerset surged northwards, winning a victory against the Scots at the battle of Pinkie, east of Edinburgh, on 10 September 1547. With the protector gone, Thomas Seymour was able to gain access easily to the king in his apartments at Hampton Court.
Sitting with his royal nephew one day, Thomas told Edward that Somerset would never be able to dominate in Scotland “without loss of a great number of men or of himself; and therefore that he spent a great sum of money in vain”. This hit a nerve with the king, since Somerset was widely believed to be embezzling Henry VIII’s treasury and alienating his lands. Thomas chided his nephew that he was “too bashful” in his own affairs, and that he should speak up in order to “bear rule, as other kings do”. Edward shook his head, declaring that “I needed not, for I was well enough”, yet he registered his uncle’s words.
Thomas Seymour, c1545. Original publication from the original by Hans Holbein. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
When Thomas came to him again that September, he told the child that “ye must take upon you yourself to rule, for ye shall be able enough as well as other kings; and then ye may give your men somewhat; for your uncle is old, and I trust will not live long”. Edward’s reply was chilling: “it were better that he should die”. Indeed, there was little love lost between the monarch and the lord protector. Thomas also informed Edward that “ye are but even a beggarly king now,” drawing attention to the fact that he had no money with which to play at cards or reward his servants. Thomas would, he assured Edward, supply him with the sums required. In return, Edward assured his uncle that he was happy to take “secret measures” to ensure that he replaced Somerset as royal governor.
Somerset’s absence in Scotland had handed the king to his brother, and Thomas meant to capitalise on it. He trawled through royal records, seeking out precedents to support his bid to become the king’s governor, and he began to build support at court. He was, however, incapable of concealing his actions: word soon reached Somerset that a plot was afoot and, abandoning a promising situation in Scotland, he hurried southwards. He re-established control, banning his brother from meeting with the king. This had little effect, however, since Thomas was friends with several members of the privy chamber. It was a simple matter to communicate with the boy over the coming months.
The relationship between the brothers remained frosty into the following year. The death in childbirth of Thomas’s wife, Katherine Parr, on 5 September 1548 also failed to heal relations. Although Katherine had once been so furious with the protector that she had threatened to bite him, she had been a restraining hand on her husband. With her death, he moved headlong towards his ruin.
Henry VIII’s younger daughter, Princess Elizabeth, had originally lived with Katherine and Thomas, but had been sent away after the queen had caught her husband embracing the girl that June. Thomas Seymour had toyed with marrying the teenager before he wed the queen, and had carried out a flirtation with her for more than a year at the queen’s residences at Chelsea and Hanworth and in his own London residence, Seymour Place. With Katherine’s death, Thomas became, as Elizabeth’s governess, Katherine Ashley, informed her, “the noblest man unmarried in this land”. Soon, her cofferer, Thomas Parry, was meeting privately with Seymour in London. It seemed that Elizabeth was prepared to consider marriage with the king’s younger uncle.
Who was the real Edward VI? At the same time as his negotiations with Elizabeth’s servant, Thomas Seymour was also plotting to bring down his brother. For some months he had been attempting to win friends in the counties by visiting important local men. In October 1548 he informed his ally, Sir William Sharington that from his own tenants and servants he could muster 10,000 men. Sharington was himself a useful ally, since he was the under-treasurer of the Bristol mint and had been counterfeiting testoons [silver coins] since the spring of 1548, stamped with his own initials and a bust of Henry VIII.
In the autumn of 1548, Seymour asked Sharington how much money would be required to pay and ration 10,000 men for a month, before declaring “God’s faith, Sharington, if we had £10,000 in ready money; that were well, could not you be able to make so much money?”. The coiner agreed that it could be done and set to work. Thomas began to provision Holt Castle, a fortification that stood at an important crossing point on the River Dee, giving access to south Wales.
Thomas Seymour was a regular visitor to the king’s chambers during the winter of 1548–9. He was there on the evening of 6 January 1549, where he spoke jovially to the king’s attendants, unaware that the Bristol mint had been searched by the protector’s servants that day. While Thomas Seymour appeared nonchalant at Sharington’s arrest a few days later, he understood the implications that it had for his own plot. On the night of the arrest, John Fowler, who was Seymour’s chief contact in the king’s privy chamber, came to him in a state of alarm, lamenting that “I am utterly undone”. Privately, Seymour resolved to bring his plot forwards.
From around 10 January, he began to invite the Marquess of Dorset and the Earl of Huntington – both men he believed he could trust – to Seymour Place in the evenings. The talk was mundane, but on each evening the meetings would break up suddenly, with Seymour setting out alone for the court at Westminster. There, his behaviour was suspicious. He would go quietly into the buttery, where alcohol for the court was kept. Pouring himself a drink, he would wait alone among the bottles and barrels until John Fowler appeared. Each time, he asked “whether the king would say anything of him?” “Nay in good faith” replied Fowler. At once melancholy, Thomas wished aloud that Edward was five or six years older. At the end of each visit, the king’s younger uncle would insist that Fowler “bring him word when the king was rising”. Every morning he did so.
Anonymous portrait of Katherine Parr, c1545. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
By day, Seymour was still attending parliament, but his strange behaviour was beginning to be noticed. While talking to John Fowler on one occasion, Seymour was informed about orders that had been given to ensure that the king remained safely locked away at night. Thomas asked what was meant by this, but Fowler said he could not tell. Thomas concurred: “No I neither. What is he afraid that any man will take the king away from him? If he think that I will go about it, he shall watch a good while”. It was hardly a baseless concern, as Fowler himself could attest, since Seymour had once commented to him that “there is a slender company about the king”, before stating that “a man might steal away the king now, for there come more with me than is in all the house besides”. Such a course, if successful, would, de facto, give Seymour the coveted governorship of the king’s person.
On 16 January, a servant informed Thomas Seymour that the Earl of Rutland, whom he considered a friend, had made a deposition against him to the council. Hearing this, he began to suspect “by diverse conjectures” (as he later admitted) that the council intended his arrest. That evening, Seymour’s brother-in-law, the Marquess of Northampton, found him in a state of high agitation, rehearsing the day’s events out loud.
After sending Northampton away, Seymour went to court, arriving in the evening. Once there he spoke to the king’s guards, scattering their watch as he sent them on various errands. With a key that had been given to him by one of the king’s chamberlains he was able to open the door to the room adjoining the king’s bedchamber, “which he entered in the dead of night”. There, he disturbed the little dog, which usually slept in the king’s bedroom, and was his “most faithful guardian”. In the ensuing panic he stabbed the dog to death with his dagger, before fleeing home once more to Seymour Place.
The next day Thomas Seymour was arrested and sent to the Tower of London. Later, he would be accused of trying “to instil into His Grace’s head” the idea that he should “take upon himself the government and managing of his own affairs”. In his evening visits to court the week before, did he meet with the king and plan an “abduction” with him? It would seem plausible that the bedchamber key had been given to him on Edward’s command, since none of his attendants was ever accused of this.
In the Tower, Seymour, while at his lowest ebb, wrote the lines of verse: “forgetting God to love a king / Hath been my rod, or else nothing”. His protests of innocence, too, insofar as he made any defence, were based on the claim that he had had the king’s confidence and approval in everything. How could it be treason to do as the king asked? He probably hoped to collect Princess Elizabeth at Hatfield on the way out of London. At Holt Castle, the three could then wait for the protector to fall before Thomas Seymour – the king’s new brother-in-law – emerged to take his place.
Unfortunately for Seymour, by leaving his dog in the chamber outside his bedroom the boy-king had botched his own escape attempt. On 20 March 1549, Thomas Seymour lost his head for it.
Elizabeth Norton is a historian of the queens of England and the Tudor period. She is the author of England's Queens: The Biography and The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor, which looks at the relationship between the future Elizabeth I and Thomas Seymour, the uncle of King Edward VI.
July 13, 2016
Henry VIII’s mistresses: who else did the Tudor king sleep with?
History Extra
Portrait of Mary Boleyn, mistress of Henry VIII, by Holbein the Younger. (Hever Castle Ltd/Bridgeman Images)
Popular history is so well versed in the six wives of Henry VIII that they require little introduction. From the colourful bodice-ripper series The Tudors (2007–10) to the flickering candlelight of Wolf Hall (2015), we are reminded of the old mantra we learned at school: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. We might also be forgiven for thinking that the king was so busy keeping up with the women to whom he was legally united that he had little time for any others. However, Henry, with his “angelic” face, athletic build and red-gold hair, had an eye for the ladies, and in his early years, particularly, few were able to resist him. Paradoxically, we can learn most about Henry’s mistresses through his wives. Anne Boleyn’s refusal to sleep with the king in the late 1520s was all the more successful because until this point he was accustomed to other women saying yes. Two of them in particular are known to us: Elizabeth Blount and Anne’s own sister, Mary, who were Henry’s lovers in the late 1510s and early 1520s after he started to question his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Bessie BlountElizabeth, or ‘Bessie’, is the first woman who is known, with any certainty, to have been Henry’s mistress. She was born at Kinlet in Shropshire in around 1500, making her just a teenager at the time she arrived at Henry’s court. Her family home fell under the jurisdiction of Catherine of Aragon’s first husband, Arthur, so it is not impossible that the young Catherine saw Bessie as a baby during her residence at Ludlow Castle in 1501–02. In fact, it is quite likely that Bessie’s parents capitalised on this early connection to place their daughter in the queen’s household. Two court dances suggest the duration of Bessie’s tenure. Bessie is recorded as being one of eight in a masque performed to celebrate new year 1515, partnered by Henry himself. Then, in October 1518 she was paired with courtier Francis Bryan during a masque performed at Durham House in London. It was around this time that she fell pregnant with Henry’s son. The pregnant Bessie disappeared from court, taken in secret by Henry’s leading minister, Thomas Wolsey, into the safety of the Essex countryside. There, at the Augustinian priory of St Laurence at Blackmore, also known as ‘Jericho’, Bessie gave birth to Henry Fitzroy, the king’s only acknowledged illegitimate child. Henry stayed at two of his nearby properties that summer, Havering-atte-Bowe (aka Havering-atte-Bower) in August and Beaulieu in September, which would have allowed him to visit his newborn son, had he been minded to do so. What Catherine thought of the arrangement, or whether she was then aware of the situation, is not recorded. Wolsey stood in as godfather and the boy would later be given such significant titles as the Duke of Somerset and Richmond. A marriage was arranged for Bessie to Gilbert Tailboys in 1522 (although some sources suggest 1519) and she retired from court for a time, bearing at least two more children (some sources suggest three while others say four) in the early 1520s. The uncertainty of the children’s birth dates has led to speculation that they were fathered by Henry, although by this time we know he had moved on to Mary Boleyn. Bessie remarried in the 1530s following Tailboys’ death and lived long enough to predecease Henry Fitzroy (who died in 1536), serving briefly as a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves shortly before her own death in around 1540.
Henry Fitzroy, illegitimate son of Henry VIII and his mistress Elizabeth Blount. (The Print Collector/Getty Images) Mary BoleynAnother masque marks the entry of the Boleyn sisters to the Tudor scene. In March 1522, Mary took the part of Kindness and Anne that of Perseverance in the Chateau Vert pageant at York Place. Henry was among the eight men led by the figure of ‘Ardent Desire’ to lay siege to the castle to rescue the women. Anne had recently returned from the French court, which Mary had left several years before – rumours still persisted that Mary had been intimate with Francis I. In February 1520 Henry had attended Mary’s wedding to his gentleman of the privy chamber, William Carey, or at least sent a gift in addition to his offering of 8s 6d. The exact moment Mary became Henry’s mistress is unclear, but it is interesting that her marriage coincided with substantial gifts from Henry to her father and husband. Much of Mary’s personality and education eludes us, as do the details and duration of her affair with Henry. Both she and Anne were already known to Henry as the daughters of Sir Thomas Boleyn who, along with Wolsey, had masterminded the magnificent Anglo-French meeting at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Yet it was Mary who caught Henry’s eye first and her two children, Catherine and Henry, born in 1524 and 1526 respectively, have sometimes been attributed to the king. As Mary was married, though, the children were legally considered to be those of her husband, who always treated them as such. By the time of Henry Carey’s birth, though, the king’s attention had wandered to the enchanting, dark-eyed Anne Boleyn. We only know about his prior relationship with Mary because he required a dispensation to marry her sister, and had to admit to the affair. When questioned about his relations with the Boleyn girls and their mother, Henry replied, tellingly, “never with the mother”. After Carey’s death from the sweating sickness, Mary remarried for love, returning briefly to court during her sister’s reign and admitting her secret. Mary was banished for her indiscretion and lived out her days in the Essex countryside. 
Hever Castle, Kent. The seat of the Boleyn family, including Anne and her sister Mary, who was one of Henry VIII’s mistresses. (Peter Thompson/Heritage Images/Getty Images) Henry’s relations with Bessie and Mary are known to us almost by accident. If Henry Fitzroy had not lived, or had Henry not been forced to declare his past relationship with Mary, he might today be lauded by historians for his faithfulness to Catherine of Aragon. These accidental survivals raise the question of what other secrets have remained concealed in Henry’s private life. Glimmers of possible affairs can be read into his associations with other women at his court. In 1534, during the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, the imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys wrote that Henry had “renewed and increased the love which he formerly bore to another very handsome young lady of his court” and that Anne attempted to “dismiss the damsel from her service”. Referred to as the ‘imperial lady’, the identity of this woman cannot be verified, but her presence seems to have put a strain upon Henry’s marriage, occasioning harsh words between husband and wife. ‘Imperial’ may not have referred to the woman’s origins but instead highlighted her sympathies to the cause of Rome and Henry’s rejected daughter, Mary. Also from this era date the rumours of Henry’s involvement with Anne Boleyn’s cousin, Margaret (or ‘Madge’) Shelton, who may be the same person as a Mary Shelton, who until recently was assumed to be Anne’s sister. Chapuys’ letters from February 1535 make reference to a Mistress Shelton, and any affair she had with Henry would date to that year. Early in 1536 Madge was engaged to the ill-fated Henry Norris, who lost his head along with Anne Boleyn that May. Mistress Shelton was suggested as a potential wife for the widowed king two years later, but she married another man in 1546 and lived well into the reign of Elizabeth I. 
Mary Shelton, after she married to become Lady Heveningham. By Hans Holbein the Younger. (Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/Bridgeman Images) Other womenMost of the other reputed mistresses who may have shared Henry’s bed date from the earlier part of his reign. During Catherine of Aragon’s first pregnancy, in 1509, Henry was embroiled with Anne Hastings, sister of the Duke of Buckingham and a newly married member of Catherine’s household. Henry’s close friend William Compton appears to have acted as a go-between, although Anne later went on to have an affair with Compton himself. Henry sent her away from court in retaliation. There was also a ‘Madame the Bastard’ who kept Henry dancing into the small hours of the morning in 1513 at the court of Margaret of Savoy, and Étiennette de la Baume, whose plaintive letter to Henry asking for assistance reminded him of the promise he had made her when leaving France that year, and that he had called her his ‘page’. There was the mysterious Jane Popincourt, who was refused entry to France by Louis XII, with the comment that she should be burned, plus a host of other ladies who received gifts from Henry at some point, or danced with him in a masque. Their connections with Henry are only fleeting and suggested, yet they might hint at secrets that the king had hidden more successfully than those of Bessie and Mary. Given Henry’s desire for an heir, it is unsurprising that various stories survive that connect him with illegitimate paternity. The timing of these is interesting, with three in particular dating from the period when the king was wooing Anne Boleyn and, apparently, refraining from sex. If Henry did not sleep with Anne until 1532, Tudor medicine would have advised him not to remain completely celibate, as this would have been thought to imperil his health. Accordingly, Henry may have sought solace elsewhere. Mary Berkeley had been married in 1526 to her uncle’s ward, Thomas Perrot, settling in Pembrokeshire. Perrot had been knighted by Henry that year and was a great hunter; it is thought that Mary was part of Catherine’s household, placing the pair at court during these years. Mary’s eldest son, John, was born in November 1528 and reputedly bore a great resemblance to the king. As a young man John was in the king’s favour – Henry once intervened to prevent him from being punished after he was drawn into a brawl. Later involved with piracy, debt, deception and scandal, John’s reputed parentage may have been a convenient way to escape retribution. 
Henry VIII wearing the outfit worn for his marriage to Anne of Cleves. Painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. (DeAgostini/Getty Images) In the same way, another man claimed to be Henry’s son, with perhaps the same intentions. Thomas Stukeley was employed as a standard bearer in 1547, placing him in his late teens. The son of Jane Pollard, who was married in around 1520 to Sir Hugh Stukeley, Thomas is thought to have been conceived when Henry stayed at their Devon home of Affeton Castle. Thomas was something of a romantic figure, and poems and plays written about him after his death (for example, George Peele’s 1590s work The Battle of Alcazar) served to inflame such rumours. Finally, the child arguably most likely to be related to Henry is an Ethelreda, or Audrey, Malte. If Henry had sought sexual satisfaction from someone other than Anne Boleyn, he is more likely to have turned to a woman of the lower classes, who were considered to be more ‘earthy’ and would not complicate lines of dynastic inheritance. Audrey’s mother was a Joan or Joanna Dingley, employed as a royal laundress, and the girl was raised by one of the cutters in the king’s wardrobe [who cut clothing patterns out of cloth]. John Malte “and Awdrye his base daughter” received a grant of £1,312 from the king while he lay on his deathbed, a huge sum for mere servants. Nothing more is known of Joanna or her daughter. What this exploration of Henry’s love life makes tantalisingly clear is the fragile nature of the surviving sources. Henry’s desire for secrecy, and his ability to achieve it, are coupled with the problematic nature of rumour and second-hand accounts that date from this period. It may be that Chapuys exaggerated, or that Perrot made false claims; perhaps, in the case of Jane Popincourt, Louis XII was mistaken; or Anne Hastings’ sister was being over-protective. What we know for certain is that our scant knowledge of Henry’s affairs with Bessie and Mary reached us accidentally and indirectly. Far from being a prude, Henry was a very private man and took measures to cover his tracks. When it comes to the question of who shared the king’s bed, it is likely that we will never know the full truth. Amy Licence is a journalist and historian and the author of books including In Bed With the Tudors (Amberley Publishing, 2012), The Six Wives and Many Mistresses of Henry VIII, (Amberley Publishing, 2014) and Elizabeth of York: The Forgotten Tudor Queen (Amberley Publishing, 2013).
Portrait of Mary Boleyn, mistress of Henry VIII, by Holbein the Younger. (Hever Castle Ltd/Bridgeman Images) Popular history is so well versed in the six wives of Henry VIII that they require little introduction. From the colourful bodice-ripper series The Tudors (2007–10) to the flickering candlelight of Wolf Hall (2015), we are reminded of the old mantra we learned at school: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. We might also be forgiven for thinking that the king was so busy keeping up with the women to whom he was legally united that he had little time for any others. However, Henry, with his “angelic” face, athletic build and red-gold hair, had an eye for the ladies, and in his early years, particularly, few were able to resist him. Paradoxically, we can learn most about Henry’s mistresses through his wives. Anne Boleyn’s refusal to sleep with the king in the late 1520s was all the more successful because until this point he was accustomed to other women saying yes. Two of them in particular are known to us: Elizabeth Blount and Anne’s own sister, Mary, who were Henry’s lovers in the late 1510s and early 1520s after he started to question his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Bessie BlountElizabeth, or ‘Bessie’, is the first woman who is known, with any certainty, to have been Henry’s mistress. She was born at Kinlet in Shropshire in around 1500, making her just a teenager at the time she arrived at Henry’s court. Her family home fell under the jurisdiction of Catherine of Aragon’s first husband, Arthur, so it is not impossible that the young Catherine saw Bessie as a baby during her residence at Ludlow Castle in 1501–02. In fact, it is quite likely that Bessie’s parents capitalised on this early connection to place their daughter in the queen’s household. Two court dances suggest the duration of Bessie’s tenure. Bessie is recorded as being one of eight in a masque performed to celebrate new year 1515, partnered by Henry himself. Then, in October 1518 she was paired with courtier Francis Bryan during a masque performed at Durham House in London. It was around this time that she fell pregnant with Henry’s son. The pregnant Bessie disappeared from court, taken in secret by Henry’s leading minister, Thomas Wolsey, into the safety of the Essex countryside. There, at the Augustinian priory of St Laurence at Blackmore, also known as ‘Jericho’, Bessie gave birth to Henry Fitzroy, the king’s only acknowledged illegitimate child. Henry stayed at two of his nearby properties that summer, Havering-atte-Bowe (aka Havering-atte-Bower) in August and Beaulieu in September, which would have allowed him to visit his newborn son, had he been minded to do so. What Catherine thought of the arrangement, or whether she was then aware of the situation, is not recorded. Wolsey stood in as godfather and the boy would later be given such significant titles as the Duke of Somerset and Richmond. A marriage was arranged for Bessie to Gilbert Tailboys in 1522 (although some sources suggest 1519) and she retired from court for a time, bearing at least two more children (some sources suggest three while others say four) in the early 1520s. The uncertainty of the children’s birth dates has led to speculation that they were fathered by Henry, although by this time we know he had moved on to Mary Boleyn. Bessie remarried in the 1530s following Tailboys’ death and lived long enough to predecease Henry Fitzroy (who died in 1536), serving briefly as a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves shortly before her own death in around 1540.
Henry Fitzroy, illegitimate son of Henry VIII and his mistress Elizabeth Blount. (The Print Collector/Getty Images) Mary BoleynAnother masque marks the entry of the Boleyn sisters to the Tudor scene. In March 1522, Mary took the part of Kindness and Anne that of Perseverance in the Chateau Vert pageant at York Place. Henry was among the eight men led by the figure of ‘Ardent Desire’ to lay siege to the castle to rescue the women. Anne had recently returned from the French court, which Mary had left several years before – rumours still persisted that Mary had been intimate with Francis I. In February 1520 Henry had attended Mary’s wedding to his gentleman of the privy chamber, William Carey, or at least sent a gift in addition to his offering of 8s 6d. The exact moment Mary became Henry’s mistress is unclear, but it is interesting that her marriage coincided with substantial gifts from Henry to her father and husband. Much of Mary’s personality and education eludes us, as do the details and duration of her affair with Henry. Both she and Anne were already known to Henry as the daughters of Sir Thomas Boleyn who, along with Wolsey, had masterminded the magnificent Anglo-French meeting at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Yet it was Mary who caught Henry’s eye first and her two children, Catherine and Henry, born in 1524 and 1526 respectively, have sometimes been attributed to the king. As Mary was married, though, the children were legally considered to be those of her husband, who always treated them as such. By the time of Henry Carey’s birth, though, the king’s attention had wandered to the enchanting, dark-eyed Anne Boleyn. We only know about his prior relationship with Mary because he required a dispensation to marry her sister, and had to admit to the affair. When questioned about his relations with the Boleyn girls and their mother, Henry replied, tellingly, “never with the mother”. After Carey’s death from the sweating sickness, Mary remarried for love, returning briefly to court during her sister’s reign and admitting her secret. Mary was banished for her indiscretion and lived out her days in the Essex countryside. Hever Castle, Kent. The seat of the Boleyn family, including Anne and her sister Mary, who was one of Henry VIII’s mistresses. (Peter Thompson/Heritage Images/Getty Images) Henry’s relations with Bessie and Mary are known to us almost by accident. If Henry Fitzroy had not lived, or had Henry not been forced to declare his past relationship with Mary, he might today be lauded by historians for his faithfulness to Catherine of Aragon. These accidental survivals raise the question of what other secrets have remained concealed in Henry’s private life. Glimmers of possible affairs can be read into his associations with other women at his court. In 1534, during the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, the imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys wrote that Henry had “renewed and increased the love which he formerly bore to another very handsome young lady of his court” and that Anne attempted to “dismiss the damsel from her service”. Referred to as the ‘imperial lady’, the identity of this woman cannot be verified, but her presence seems to have put a strain upon Henry’s marriage, occasioning harsh words between husband and wife. ‘Imperial’ may not have referred to the woman’s origins but instead highlighted her sympathies to the cause of Rome and Henry’s rejected daughter, Mary. Also from this era date the rumours of Henry’s involvement with Anne Boleyn’s cousin, Margaret (or ‘Madge’) Shelton, who may be the same person as a Mary Shelton, who until recently was assumed to be Anne’s sister. Chapuys’ letters from February 1535 make reference to a Mistress Shelton, and any affair she had with Henry would date to that year. Early in 1536 Madge was engaged to the ill-fated Henry Norris, who lost his head along with Anne Boleyn that May. Mistress Shelton was suggested as a potential wife for the widowed king two years later, but she married another man in 1546 and lived well into the reign of Elizabeth I. Mary Shelton, after she married to become Lady Heveningham. By Hans Holbein the Younger. (Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/Bridgeman Images) Other womenMost of the other reputed mistresses who may have shared Henry’s bed date from the earlier part of his reign. During Catherine of Aragon’s first pregnancy, in 1509, Henry was embroiled with Anne Hastings, sister of the Duke of Buckingham and a newly married member of Catherine’s household. Henry’s close friend William Compton appears to have acted as a go-between, although Anne later went on to have an affair with Compton himself. Henry sent her away from court in retaliation. There was also a ‘Madame the Bastard’ who kept Henry dancing into the small hours of the morning in 1513 at the court of Margaret of Savoy, and Étiennette de la Baume, whose plaintive letter to Henry asking for assistance reminded him of the promise he had made her when leaving France that year, and that he had called her his ‘page’. There was the mysterious Jane Popincourt, who was refused entry to France by Louis XII, with the comment that she should be burned, plus a host of other ladies who received gifts from Henry at some point, or danced with him in a masque. Their connections with Henry are only fleeting and suggested, yet they might hint at secrets that the king had hidden more successfully than those of Bessie and Mary. Given Henry’s desire for an heir, it is unsurprising that various stories survive that connect him with illegitimate paternity. The timing of these is interesting, with three in particular dating from the period when the king was wooing Anne Boleyn and, apparently, refraining from sex. If Henry did not sleep with Anne until 1532, Tudor medicine would have advised him not to remain completely celibate, as this would have been thought to imperil his health. Accordingly, Henry may have sought solace elsewhere. Mary Berkeley had been married in 1526 to her uncle’s ward, Thomas Perrot, settling in Pembrokeshire. Perrot had been knighted by Henry that year and was a great hunter; it is thought that Mary was part of Catherine’s household, placing the pair at court during these years. Mary’s eldest son, John, was born in November 1528 and reputedly bore a great resemblance to the king. As a young man John was in the king’s favour – Henry once intervened to prevent him from being punished after he was drawn into a brawl. Later involved with piracy, debt, deception and scandal, John’s reputed parentage may have been a convenient way to escape retribution. Henry VIII wearing the outfit worn for his marriage to Anne of Cleves. Painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. (DeAgostini/Getty Images) In the same way, another man claimed to be Henry’s son, with perhaps the same intentions. Thomas Stukeley was employed as a standard bearer in 1547, placing him in his late teens. The son of Jane Pollard, who was married in around 1520 to Sir Hugh Stukeley, Thomas is thought to have been conceived when Henry stayed at their Devon home of Affeton Castle. Thomas was something of a romantic figure, and poems and plays written about him after his death (for example, George Peele’s 1590s work The Battle of Alcazar) served to inflame such rumours. Finally, the child arguably most likely to be related to Henry is an Ethelreda, or Audrey, Malte. If Henry had sought sexual satisfaction from someone other than Anne Boleyn, he is more likely to have turned to a woman of the lower classes, who were considered to be more ‘earthy’ and would not complicate lines of dynastic inheritance. Audrey’s mother was a Joan or Joanna Dingley, employed as a royal laundress, and the girl was raised by one of the cutters in the king’s wardrobe [who cut clothing patterns out of cloth]. John Malte “and Awdrye his base daughter” received a grant of £1,312 from the king while he lay on his deathbed, a huge sum for mere servants. Nothing more is known of Joanna or her daughter. What this exploration of Henry’s love life makes tantalisingly clear is the fragile nature of the surviving sources. Henry’s desire for secrecy, and his ability to achieve it, are coupled with the problematic nature of rumour and second-hand accounts that date from this period. It may be that Chapuys exaggerated, or that Perrot made false claims; perhaps, in the case of Jane Popincourt, Louis XII was mistaken; or Anne Hastings’ sister was being over-protective. What we know for certain is that our scant knowledge of Henry’s affairs with Bessie and Mary reached us accidentally and indirectly. Far from being a prude, Henry was a very private man and took measures to cover his tracks. When it comes to the question of who shared the king’s bed, it is likely that we will never know the full truth. Amy Licence is a journalist and historian and the author of books including In Bed With the Tudors (Amberley Publishing, 2012), The Six Wives and Many Mistresses of Henry VIII, (Amberley Publishing, 2014) and Elizabeth of York: The Forgotten Tudor Queen (Amberley Publishing, 2013).
July 12, 2016
The Viking Fortress that Burned: Arson Investigator to Analyze 1,000-Year-Old Crime Scene
Ancient Origins
Archaeologists have asked police to send an arson investigator to the site of a 1,000-year-old Danish castle that apparently was deliberately burned, possibly as an act of retaliation against Viking King Harald Bluetooth, who was said to have driven his men too hard.
Archaeologists say they have found clear evidence that someone set fire to the Viking castle Vallø Borgring near Køge not far from Copenhagen. They are hoping to shed more light on the cold case with modern fire-investigation techniques. According to an article in the CPHPost.dk, the arsonists set fires at the northern and eastern gates of the castle, which was constructed in a ring.
Drone operators discovered the fortress (circled in red) in 2014. (photo: Museum Sydøstdanmark)Jens Ulriksen, head of the excavations at the fortress, told DR Nyheder: “All indications are that there has been a fire set at the gates of the castle. The outer posts of the east gate are completely charred, and there are signs of burning on the inside.”
Researchers say the half-constructed castle may have belonged to King Harald Bluetooth, who reigned in the late 900s. Historical documents state that the king drove his army too hard, so his men retaliated in a riot during which he was killed.
“Our theory right now is that other powerful men in the country attacked the castle and set fire to the gates,” Ulriksen is quoted as saying.
Another view of the landscape and the ring fortress without infrared (Photo: Danskebjerge)It was possibly the last structure built by Bluetooth, researchers say, because construction on it was only half done when it burned.
The researchers intend to ask the fire investigator to bring in dogs to sniff out human remains in the earth and possibly to help uncover other evidence of arson.
“Borgring” means ring fortress. It was built as a 10- to 11-meter-wide (32.8 to 36 feet) stockade with pointed wooden poles, excavations have shown. The fortress is 145 meters (475.7 feet) in diameter and visible from the air (see photo above and at the top of the article).
Five other Viking ring fortresses have been found in Denmark, possibly all built on the command of one person, but when this castle was discovered in 2014, it was the first in 60 years.
“The four other circular fortresses have been dated to the reign of Harald Bluetooth in the late 900s. The construction of this fortress is very similar to the one found in Hobro, and thus it is likely that Harald Bluetooth was the builder too, the Danish Castle Centre believes,” says CPHPost.dk in another article.
A runestone with an inscription to Harald Bluetooth (
Wikimedia Commons
/Jürgen Howaldt)“Although, there were Vikings in other countries, these circular fortresses are unique to Denmark. Many have given up hope that there were many of them left,” Viking age scholar Lasse C.A. Sonne said in 2014.
Carbon dating has confirmed the castle near Køge dates to around the time of Bluetooth. He reigned from around 958 to his death in 985, possibly at the hands of his son Sweyn Forkbeard. Harald was the son of Gorm the Old and Thyra Dannebod, founders of a new line of royalty who ruled from northern Jutland, the Danish peninsula that juts into the North Sea toward Sweden and Norway.
Harald's kingdom in red and his vassals and allies in yellow, as described in medieval Scandinavian sources (
Wikimedia Commons
/Bryangotts)Harald continued the unification of Denmark begun by Gorm. He also was one of the principal figures in the conversion of the Danes to Christianity. Around 970 he conquered Norway. His descendants would rule England for a time.
His name was used in the Bluetooth standard that connects electronic devices without wires.
Top image: Photo from a modern-day Viking fire festival (Photo: warosu.org)
By Mark Miller
Archaeologists have asked police to send an arson investigator to the site of a 1,000-year-old Danish castle that apparently was deliberately burned, possibly as an act of retaliation against Viking King Harald Bluetooth, who was said to have driven his men too hard.
Archaeologists say they have found clear evidence that someone set fire to the Viking castle Vallø Borgring near Køge not far from Copenhagen. They are hoping to shed more light on the cold case with modern fire-investigation techniques. According to an article in the CPHPost.dk, the arsonists set fires at the northern and eastern gates of the castle, which was constructed in a ring.
Drone operators discovered the fortress (circled in red) in 2014. (photo: Museum Sydøstdanmark)Jens Ulriksen, head of the excavations at the fortress, told DR Nyheder: “All indications are that there has been a fire set at the gates of the castle. The outer posts of the east gate are completely charred, and there are signs of burning on the inside.”Researchers say the half-constructed castle may have belonged to King Harald Bluetooth, who reigned in the late 900s. Historical documents state that the king drove his army too hard, so his men retaliated in a riot during which he was killed.
“Our theory right now is that other powerful men in the country attacked the castle and set fire to the gates,” Ulriksen is quoted as saying.
Another view of the landscape and the ring fortress without infrared (Photo: Danskebjerge)It was possibly the last structure built by Bluetooth, researchers say, because construction on it was only half done when it burned.The researchers intend to ask the fire investigator to bring in dogs to sniff out human remains in the earth and possibly to help uncover other evidence of arson.
“Borgring” means ring fortress. It was built as a 10- to 11-meter-wide (32.8 to 36 feet) stockade with pointed wooden poles, excavations have shown. The fortress is 145 meters (475.7 feet) in diameter and visible from the air (see photo above and at the top of the article).
Five other Viking ring fortresses have been found in Denmark, possibly all built on the command of one person, but when this castle was discovered in 2014, it was the first in 60 years.
“The four other circular fortresses have been dated to the reign of Harald Bluetooth in the late 900s. The construction of this fortress is very similar to the one found in Hobro, and thus it is likely that Harald Bluetooth was the builder too, the Danish Castle Centre believes,” says CPHPost.dk in another article.
A runestone with an inscription to Harald Bluetooth (
Wikimedia Commons
/Jürgen Howaldt)“Although, there were Vikings in other countries, these circular fortresses are unique to Denmark. Many have given up hope that there were many of them left,” Viking age scholar Lasse C.A. Sonne said in 2014.Carbon dating has confirmed the castle near Køge dates to around the time of Bluetooth. He reigned from around 958 to his death in 985, possibly at the hands of his son Sweyn Forkbeard. Harald was the son of Gorm the Old and Thyra Dannebod, founders of a new line of royalty who ruled from northern Jutland, the Danish peninsula that juts into the North Sea toward Sweden and Norway.
Harald's kingdom in red and his vassals and allies in yellow, as described in medieval Scandinavian sources (
Wikimedia Commons
/Bryangotts)Harald continued the unification of Denmark begun by Gorm. He also was one of the principal figures in the conversion of the Danes to Christianity. Around 970 he conquered Norway. His descendants would rule England for a time.His name was used in the Bluetooth standard that connects electronic devices without wires.
Top image: Photo from a modern-day Viking fire festival (Photo: warosu.org)
By Mark Miller
July 11, 2016
Stone Age Text Links Australia to Europe: Initial Evidence for Worldwide Travel by an Ancient Stone Age Civilization
Ancient Origins
Dr. Derek Cunningham has recently introduced a new intriguing theory to archaeology that many geometric patterns seen worldwide are a form of ancient text, with the angular writing based on the astronomical values used by astronomers to measure time and predict eclipse events. In this theory it was noted that many geometrical patterns seen throughout the archaeological record align to angles matching the circa 1 degree sidereal motion of earth as it travels around the sun; the 5.1 degree angle of the moon’s orbital plane relative to Earth, the 18.6 year lunar cycle, and the 27.32 day sidereal month.
One of his early studies was the preliminary analysis of Saksaywaman Temple in Peru, where he argued that the polygonal walls of the temple align, and also the entire temple complex were designed to align to these key astronomical values. In this theory the angular offsets are argued to be either offsets angled to either above or below the vertical or to the left and right of the horizontal; with perhaps the direction of the offset marking a vowel sound and the angle the sound of the consonant. Thus it is quite possible that the walls could have created a basic but readable text.
The polygonal walls of Saksaywaman in Peru
Arrangement of stones in a wall at Saksaywaman. Astronomical values can be found in the form of an angular array, offset to either above or below the horizontal, or the right or left of the vertical. Photo credit: Derek CunninghamIn Derek’s most recent study of this proposed angular text, he has returned with what can only be said is a well thought out study that takes direct aim at the often used counter argument that the alignments are actually totally random.
In this new test, Derek reasoned that if all geometric patterns found worldwide are entirely random, then even if within the experiment deliberate bias is shown to align the geometric image so that one particular angle dominates - in other words to force an optimum angular alignment - then because in the counter argument all lines are entirely randomly distributed, then the secondary to quaternary values should also be entirely random. In other words, only the primary value optimised should be the same.
If, however, the various geometric patterns found worldwide are as Derek claimed an ancient form of text, then perhaps the exact same secondary, tertiary and quaternary angular values should be emphasised in the various ancient images. And that is exactly what he found.
Using the 5.1 degree angle representing the moon’s orbital plane relative to Earth as a key reference point for his study, a very careful study of Australian geometric images has revealed that the secondary to quaternary angles seen most in geometric artwork does repetitively and routinely aligned to the same secondary to quaternary angular values. For the preliminary study Australia was chosen because it has remained isolated for much of its history, and thus the observed result could not be argued to be caused by potential long distance trade routes.
Derek then chose to extend this study to look at to various geometric images found in Europe. This included a comparison with the Polygonal walls found at Delphi, and an interesting analysis of the extremely archaic and unusual fan motif found carved on a tibia bone of a straight-tusked elephant at Bilzingsleben in Germany. In each case the intent was to directly compare the European secondary to quaternary angular values with those seen in ancient Australian geometrics.
Photograph showing part of the Polygonal Wall found under the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Image taken by Dr. Derek Cunningham. 
Image of a 20,000-year-old Cylcon held in the collection of ancient writing of Martin Schøyen. Here a detailed analysis of the various lines present on the stone showed an identical angular distribution to the Polygonal Stone Wall found at Delphi
After a careful study of the angular distribution produced by the various polygonal stones found at Delphi it was determined that the same angular preferences seen in Australia are indeed found in distant Europe. Specifically, it was found that European and Australian art both emphasised the 18.6 year lunar cycle and the 27.32 day sidereal month; and because identical primary to quaternary values were seen, the statistical analysis argues that the link between these images must date back at least 50,000 years ago. This suggests that an ancient Stone Age civilization was actively traveling the world, leaving behind postcards for us to find.
One of the more unusual visual pieces of evidence gathered in this particular study was an engraved stone found in Australia that replicates a geometrical pattern discovered in Bilzingsleben Germany. The Australian stone was discovered by Jennifer Summerville, who then passed the stone on to Derek for a more detailed analysis.
Astronomical alignments of Aboriginal engravings found on a stone in Australia
Fan-motif found on the Bilzingsleben elephant tibia bone found in GermanyAs can be seen the stone creates a fan motif that is identical in structure and angular content to the more famous fan-motif that is found on the Bilzingsleben elephant tibia bone. The bone is currently dated by archaeologist John Feliks to be circa 400,000 years old.
Equally intriguing, the exact same angular values can be found in the various geometric images found in Lascaux Cave. These geometrics are at a minimum circa 13,000 years old.
The various similarities seen in the geometric artwork found in Australia and Europe have long been known. What really has been missing until now is a simple method to measure the “artistic intent” of the Stone Age artist who made these patterns.
As astronomical values are inherently numerical in nature this creates the potential to analyze mathematically ancient artwork for intent, and also to create a method that allows us to directly compare artwork that is entirely dissimilar. This is a major breakthrough in the study of the ancient past.
With this new ability to directly compare dissimilar geometrical images an entirely new experimental technique is created that for the first time ever allows us to read the drawings left behind by our very distant ancestors.
Top image: Aboriginal rock paintings that show astronomical alignments.
Dr. Derek Cunningham has recently introduced a new intriguing theory to archaeology that many geometric patterns seen worldwide are a form of ancient text, with the angular writing based on the astronomical values used by astronomers to measure time and predict eclipse events. In this theory it was noted that many geometrical patterns seen throughout the archaeological record align to angles matching the circa 1 degree sidereal motion of earth as it travels around the sun; the 5.1 degree angle of the moon’s orbital plane relative to Earth, the 18.6 year lunar cycle, and the 27.32 day sidereal month.
One of his early studies was the preliminary analysis of Saksaywaman Temple in Peru, where he argued that the polygonal walls of the temple align, and also the entire temple complex were designed to align to these key astronomical values. In this theory the angular offsets are argued to be either offsets angled to either above or below the vertical or to the left and right of the horizontal; with perhaps the direction of the offset marking a vowel sound and the angle the sound of the consonant. Thus it is quite possible that the walls could have created a basic but readable text.
The polygonal walls of Saksaywaman in PeruArrangement of stones in a wall at Saksaywaman. Astronomical values can be found in the form of an angular array, offset to either above or below the horizontal, or the right or left of the vertical. Photo credit: Derek CunninghamIn Derek’s most recent study of this proposed angular text, he has returned with what can only be said is a well thought out study that takes direct aim at the often used counter argument that the alignments are actually totally random.In this new test, Derek reasoned that if all geometric patterns found worldwide are entirely random, then even if within the experiment deliberate bias is shown to align the geometric image so that one particular angle dominates - in other words to force an optimum angular alignment - then because in the counter argument all lines are entirely randomly distributed, then the secondary to quaternary values should also be entirely random. In other words, only the primary value optimised should be the same.
If, however, the various geometric patterns found worldwide are as Derek claimed an ancient form of text, then perhaps the exact same secondary, tertiary and quaternary angular values should be emphasised in the various ancient images. And that is exactly what he found.
Using the 5.1 degree angle representing the moon’s orbital plane relative to Earth as a key reference point for his study, a very careful study of Australian geometric images has revealed that the secondary to quaternary angles seen most in geometric artwork does repetitively and routinely aligned to the same secondary to quaternary angular values. For the preliminary study Australia was chosen because it has remained isolated for much of its history, and thus the observed result could not be argued to be caused by potential long distance trade routes.
Derek then chose to extend this study to look at to various geometric images found in Europe. This included a comparison with the Polygonal walls found at Delphi, and an interesting analysis of the extremely archaic and unusual fan motif found carved on a tibia bone of a straight-tusked elephant at Bilzingsleben in Germany. In each case the intent was to directly compare the European secondary to quaternary angular values with those seen in ancient Australian geometrics.
Photograph showing part of the Polygonal Wall found under the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Image taken by Dr. Derek Cunningham. Image of a 20,000-year-old Cylcon held in the collection of ancient writing of Martin Schøyen. Here a detailed analysis of the various lines present on the stone showed an identical angular distribution to the Polygonal Stone Wall found at Delphi After a careful study of the angular distribution produced by the various polygonal stones found at Delphi it was determined that the same angular preferences seen in Australia are indeed found in distant Europe. Specifically, it was found that European and Australian art both emphasised the 18.6 year lunar cycle and the 27.32 day sidereal month; and because identical primary to quaternary values were seen, the statistical analysis argues that the link between these images must date back at least 50,000 years ago. This suggests that an ancient Stone Age civilization was actively traveling the world, leaving behind postcards for us to find.
One of the more unusual visual pieces of evidence gathered in this particular study was an engraved stone found in Australia that replicates a geometrical pattern discovered in Bilzingsleben Germany. The Australian stone was discovered by Jennifer Summerville, who then passed the stone on to Derek for a more detailed analysis.
Astronomical alignments of Aboriginal engravings found on a stone in AustraliaFan-motif found on the Bilzingsleben elephant tibia bone found in GermanyAs can be seen the stone creates a fan motif that is identical in structure and angular content to the more famous fan-motif that is found on the Bilzingsleben elephant tibia bone. The bone is currently dated by archaeologist John Feliks to be circa 400,000 years old.Equally intriguing, the exact same angular values can be found in the various geometric images found in Lascaux Cave. These geometrics are at a minimum circa 13,000 years old.
The various similarities seen in the geometric artwork found in Australia and Europe have long been known. What really has been missing until now is a simple method to measure the “artistic intent” of the Stone Age artist who made these patterns.
As astronomical values are inherently numerical in nature this creates the potential to analyze mathematically ancient artwork for intent, and also to create a method that allows us to directly compare artwork that is entirely dissimilar. This is a major breakthrough in the study of the ancient past.
With this new ability to directly compare dissimilar geometrical images an entirely new experimental technique is created that for the first time ever allows us to read the drawings left behind by our very distant ancestors.
Top image: Aboriginal rock paintings that show astronomical alignments.
July 10, 2016
10 things you (probably) didn't know about the Middle Ages
History Extra
c1450: A French 15th-century covered market showing silversmiths, cobblers and drapers selling their wares. Original artist: Bibliotheque de la Ville de Rouen. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
1) They weren’t all knights or serfs or clergyAlthough certain medieval writers described their society as divided into 'three orders' – those who prayed, those who fought, and those who laboured – that became an increasingly inaccurate picture from after about 1100.
The population of Europe increased hugely across the 12th and 13th centuries, with cities and towns getting much larger. Paris grew about ten-fold (and London nearly as much) in this period. In the cities, people had all kinds of jobs: merchants, salesmen, carpenters, butchers, weavers, foodsellers, architects, painters, jugglers...
And in the countryside, it was not at all the case that everyone was an impoverished ‘serf’ (that is, ‘unfree’ and tied to the land). Many peasants were free men – and women – and owned their own land, while others who were to some degree ‘unfree’ in fact bought and sold land and goods, much like other free men.
There certainly were poor, oppressed serfs, but it wasn't a universal condition.
2) People had the voteWell, some people at least. Not a vote for national, representative government – because that really wasn't a medieval thing – but a vote in local politics. In France, in the 12th and 13th centuries and beyond, many towns and villages were run at a local level as a commune, and there were often annual elections for ‘consuls’ and ‘councillors’, where most of the male inhabitants could vote.
A more complex form of election and government was used in the city states of north Italy, with more tiers of elected officials. Women could not usually stand as officials, nor vote, but some of them were noted in the agreed charters of ‘liberties’ that French towns proudly possessed.
3) The church didn't conduct witch huntsThe large-scale witch-hunts and collective paranoid response to the stereotype of the evil witch is not a medieval, but rather an early modern phenomenon, found mostly in the 16th and 17th centuries. There were some witch trials in the Middle Ages, and these became more widespread in German-speaking lands in the 15th century, but those doing the prosecuting were almost always civic authorities rather than ecclesiastical ones.
For much of the Middle Ages, the main message that churchmen gave in regard to magic was that it was foolish nonsense that didn't work. When Heinrich Kramer wrote the infamous Malleus Maleficarum in the late 15th century, his motive was to try to persuade people of the reality of witches. In fact, the book was initially condemned by the church, and even in the early 16th century, inquisitors were warned not to believe everything that it said.
4) They had a Renaissance, and invented experimental scienceWhen people talk about ‘the Renaissance’, they usually mean the very self-conscious embrace of classical models in literature, art, architecture and learning found at the end of the Middle Ages. This is usually taken to be one of the ways in which we moved from ‘medieval’ to (early) ‘modern’ ways of thinking.
But in fact, medieval intellectuals also had a ‘renaissance’ of classical learning and rhetoric. This was in the 12th century, and depended particularly on the transmission of works by Aristotle and other classical authors via Arabic philosophers and translators.
One of the outcomes was to prompt an enquiring and reflective approach to the physical world, and it led Roger Bacon (c1214–94), among others, to think about how one might observe and experiment with the physical world to learn more about it.
5) They travelled – and traded – over very long distancesIt may be the case that the majority of medieval people – particularly those who lived in the countryside – rarely travelled very far from where they lived. But that would be the case with quite a lot of people in much later ages also.
It is not the case, however, that medieval people never travelled. Many went on pilgrimage, sometimes journeying thousands of miles to do so. And those involved in trade certainly travelled, linking parts of the world together via merchandise across extraordinary distances.
Even in the early Middle Ages, all kinds of high-status goods were transported from very distant shores to various European lands: silk from China; spices from Asia, brought to Europe via the Middle East; amber and furs from the Baltic. A few intrepid travellers even wrote journals charting their journeys: William of Rubruck’s Journey to the Eastern Parts of the World describes his three-year journey, which began in 1253, through the lands we now know as Ukraine and Russia.
6) They had some great ‘folk’ customsMuch of the public culture of the Middle Ages was shaped, or at least informed by, Christianity. But there were also some quite curious customs, usually tolerated by the church, but which may have had older roots.
One was the practice – found in many different parts of Europe – of rolling burning barrels down a hill on Midsummer’s Eve. Another was to throw wheat over the heads of a newly married couple. It was also common to raise money for charity by holding a ‘help ale’: brewing up a batch of ale, having a big party to drink it, and collecting donations.
There were undoubtedly a number of things that look to us like ‘superstitions’, often to do with invoking supernatural protection against disease or failure of harvest. But the Midsummer festivals, and the ales, also sound like they were a good laugh.
7) You didn't have to get married in churchIn fact, you almost certainly didn’t get married in church: those who wanted their marriage ‘solemnised’ would usually do so at the gate to the churchyard. But in any case, couples didn’t need a church, or a priest, or the banns being read, or any other religious paraphernalia.
The church certainly wanted people to do these things: since around the 12th century it had started to argue that marriage was a formal sacrament (that is, that it involved God enacting a change within the world). But in practice, and in law, people got married by declaring clearly that they wanted to marry each other.
There had to be consent, and ideally there should be witnesses (in case either party later had a change of mind). But you could marry very simply.
8) Most great medieval authors didn't writeWe tend to think of literacy as one thing, but in fact it combines various different skills, of which the physical act of writing is only one. For much of the Middle Ages, working as a scribe – writing – was seen as a kind of labour, and was not something that tremendously clever, important people like theologians and intellectuals would bother doing themselves.
Instead, they would use the medieval equivalent of voice recognition software: a scribe who would write down what the author dictated.
9) Some people weren't very religiousThe Middle Ages famously features great examples of extreme religiosity: mystics, saints, the flagellants, mass pilgrimage, and the like. But it would be wrong to assume that people were always very focussed on God and religion, and definitely wrong to think that medieval people were incapable of sceptical reflection.
There is solid evidence of some ordinary people who looked askance at particular beliefs – at the miracles performed by saints, or the nature of the Eucharist, or what was said to happen after death. A number of ordinary people decided that the soul was ‘nothing but blood’, and simply disappeared at the point of death. Others thought that there was no reason to think that it was God who made plants and crops grow, but just the innate properties of working and feeding the soil.
There is also ample evidence of people just not bothering very much with religion – most of all not going to church on a Sunday. One Spanish priest, in the very early 14th century, reported to his bishop that hardly anyone came to church on Sundays, but rather larked about in the streets playing. Other records give the sense that at least a sizeable minority enjoyed themselves elsewhere on Sunday mornings.
10) They didn't believe the world was flatMost people probably know this already, along with the fact that Viking helmets did not have horns. Both are bits of Victorian myth-making about the period, along with the idea that the lord had the right to sleep one night with any newly-wedded woman.
What makes studying medieval history fascinating is that you have to grapple with both the puzzle of extracting information from difficult and often fragmented surviving records, and the challenge of constantly checking your own thinking for assumptions and inherited stereotypes.
John H Arnold, professor of medieval history at Birkbeck, University of London, is the author The Oxford Handbook to Medieval Christianity (OUP, 2014). He is also the author of What is Medieval History? (Polity, 2008) and Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (Bloomsbury, 2005).
c1450: A French 15th-century covered market showing silversmiths, cobblers and drapers selling their wares. Original artist: Bibliotheque de la Ville de Rouen. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) 1) They weren’t all knights or serfs or clergyAlthough certain medieval writers described their society as divided into 'three orders' – those who prayed, those who fought, and those who laboured – that became an increasingly inaccurate picture from after about 1100.
The population of Europe increased hugely across the 12th and 13th centuries, with cities and towns getting much larger. Paris grew about ten-fold (and London nearly as much) in this period. In the cities, people had all kinds of jobs: merchants, salesmen, carpenters, butchers, weavers, foodsellers, architects, painters, jugglers...
And in the countryside, it was not at all the case that everyone was an impoverished ‘serf’ (that is, ‘unfree’ and tied to the land). Many peasants were free men – and women – and owned their own land, while others who were to some degree ‘unfree’ in fact bought and sold land and goods, much like other free men.
There certainly were poor, oppressed serfs, but it wasn't a universal condition.
2) People had the voteWell, some people at least. Not a vote for national, representative government – because that really wasn't a medieval thing – but a vote in local politics. In France, in the 12th and 13th centuries and beyond, many towns and villages were run at a local level as a commune, and there were often annual elections for ‘consuls’ and ‘councillors’, where most of the male inhabitants could vote.
A more complex form of election and government was used in the city states of north Italy, with more tiers of elected officials. Women could not usually stand as officials, nor vote, but some of them were noted in the agreed charters of ‘liberties’ that French towns proudly possessed.
3) The church didn't conduct witch huntsThe large-scale witch-hunts and collective paranoid response to the stereotype of the evil witch is not a medieval, but rather an early modern phenomenon, found mostly in the 16th and 17th centuries. There were some witch trials in the Middle Ages, and these became more widespread in German-speaking lands in the 15th century, but those doing the prosecuting were almost always civic authorities rather than ecclesiastical ones.
For much of the Middle Ages, the main message that churchmen gave in regard to magic was that it was foolish nonsense that didn't work. When Heinrich Kramer wrote the infamous Malleus Maleficarum in the late 15th century, his motive was to try to persuade people of the reality of witches. In fact, the book was initially condemned by the church, and even in the early 16th century, inquisitors were warned not to believe everything that it said.
4) They had a Renaissance, and invented experimental scienceWhen people talk about ‘the Renaissance’, they usually mean the very self-conscious embrace of classical models in literature, art, architecture and learning found at the end of the Middle Ages. This is usually taken to be one of the ways in which we moved from ‘medieval’ to (early) ‘modern’ ways of thinking.
But in fact, medieval intellectuals also had a ‘renaissance’ of classical learning and rhetoric. This was in the 12th century, and depended particularly on the transmission of works by Aristotle and other classical authors via Arabic philosophers and translators.
One of the outcomes was to prompt an enquiring and reflective approach to the physical world, and it led Roger Bacon (c1214–94), among others, to think about how one might observe and experiment with the physical world to learn more about it.
5) They travelled – and traded – over very long distancesIt may be the case that the majority of medieval people – particularly those who lived in the countryside – rarely travelled very far from where they lived. But that would be the case with quite a lot of people in much later ages also.
It is not the case, however, that medieval people never travelled. Many went on pilgrimage, sometimes journeying thousands of miles to do so. And those involved in trade certainly travelled, linking parts of the world together via merchandise across extraordinary distances.
Even in the early Middle Ages, all kinds of high-status goods were transported from very distant shores to various European lands: silk from China; spices from Asia, brought to Europe via the Middle East; amber and furs from the Baltic. A few intrepid travellers even wrote journals charting their journeys: William of Rubruck’s Journey to the Eastern Parts of the World describes his three-year journey, which began in 1253, through the lands we now know as Ukraine and Russia.
6) They had some great ‘folk’ customsMuch of the public culture of the Middle Ages was shaped, or at least informed by, Christianity. But there were also some quite curious customs, usually tolerated by the church, but which may have had older roots.
One was the practice – found in many different parts of Europe – of rolling burning barrels down a hill on Midsummer’s Eve. Another was to throw wheat over the heads of a newly married couple. It was also common to raise money for charity by holding a ‘help ale’: brewing up a batch of ale, having a big party to drink it, and collecting donations.
There were undoubtedly a number of things that look to us like ‘superstitions’, often to do with invoking supernatural protection against disease or failure of harvest. But the Midsummer festivals, and the ales, also sound like they were a good laugh.
7) You didn't have to get married in churchIn fact, you almost certainly didn’t get married in church: those who wanted their marriage ‘solemnised’ would usually do so at the gate to the churchyard. But in any case, couples didn’t need a church, or a priest, or the banns being read, or any other religious paraphernalia.
The church certainly wanted people to do these things: since around the 12th century it had started to argue that marriage was a formal sacrament (that is, that it involved God enacting a change within the world). But in practice, and in law, people got married by declaring clearly that they wanted to marry each other.
There had to be consent, and ideally there should be witnesses (in case either party later had a change of mind). But you could marry very simply.
8) Most great medieval authors didn't writeWe tend to think of literacy as one thing, but in fact it combines various different skills, of which the physical act of writing is only one. For much of the Middle Ages, working as a scribe – writing – was seen as a kind of labour, and was not something that tremendously clever, important people like theologians and intellectuals would bother doing themselves.
Instead, they would use the medieval equivalent of voice recognition software: a scribe who would write down what the author dictated.
9) Some people weren't very religiousThe Middle Ages famously features great examples of extreme religiosity: mystics, saints, the flagellants, mass pilgrimage, and the like. But it would be wrong to assume that people were always very focussed on God and religion, and definitely wrong to think that medieval people were incapable of sceptical reflection.
There is solid evidence of some ordinary people who looked askance at particular beliefs – at the miracles performed by saints, or the nature of the Eucharist, or what was said to happen after death. A number of ordinary people decided that the soul was ‘nothing but blood’, and simply disappeared at the point of death. Others thought that there was no reason to think that it was God who made plants and crops grow, but just the innate properties of working and feeding the soil.
There is also ample evidence of people just not bothering very much with religion – most of all not going to church on a Sunday. One Spanish priest, in the very early 14th century, reported to his bishop that hardly anyone came to church on Sundays, but rather larked about in the streets playing. Other records give the sense that at least a sizeable minority enjoyed themselves elsewhere on Sunday mornings.
10) They didn't believe the world was flatMost people probably know this already, along with the fact that Viking helmets did not have horns. Both are bits of Victorian myth-making about the period, along with the idea that the lord had the right to sleep one night with any newly-wedded woman.
What makes studying medieval history fascinating is that you have to grapple with both the puzzle of extracting information from difficult and often fragmented surviving records, and the challenge of constantly checking your own thinking for assumptions and inherited stereotypes.
John H Arnold, professor of medieval history at Birkbeck, University of London, is the author The Oxford Handbook to Medieval Christianity (OUP, 2014). He is also the author of What is Medieval History? (Polity, 2008) and Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe (Bloomsbury, 2005).
July 9, 2016
4,300-Year-Old Woodhenge in Germany Revealed to the Public for First Time
Ancient Origins
The so-called German Stonehenge near Pommelte, where there was apparent human sacrifice, has been under reconstruction for several years and has just opened to the public for the first time. The 4,300-year-old site, which was originally constructed in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, might more properly be called the “Woodhenge” of Germany because it was made of 1,200 locust tree logs.
Sponsored by Revenue.com The ancient site was discovered from an airplane in 1991 in the woods near the Elbe River. It consists of rings of wooden posts in seven circles, shafts and trenches and is thought to have been a place of astronomical and mortuary observances from the 21st to 23rd centuries BC. Archaeologists determined the site’s dates of occupation from analyzing potsherds.
Skeletons of children and young women were excavated at the site, which measures 115 meters (377.3 feet) in diameter. They had sustained injuries that suggested they met a violent end, Dr. Andre Spietzer told the tourism office of Saxony-Anhalt, the province where the site is located.
An arched entryway to the Ringheiligtum Pömmelte, which is called that because it is near the town of Pömmelte, German. (
DW photo
)“This unique configuration of circles is at the level of Stonehenge,” Spietzer is quoted in DW. “The only difference is that in Pömmelte, everything was made of wood and therefore bygone.”
The site of the Ringheiligtum Pömmelte, as it is called, is on the tourist path called the Himmelsweg, which means path to heaven, a route in Saxony-Anhalt that has sites where people are thought to have observed the heavens and celestial bodies in prehistoric times, says DW.
Experts have spent $2.27 million (2 million euros) rebuilding the site and have opened it to the public.
The wooden “German Stonehenge” at Pommelte has been reconstructed in wood after 4,300 years and is open to the public. (
DW photo
)SpiegelOnline reports:
Only one skeleton of a man that suffered human sacrifice at Stonehenge proper in England has been found, according to Smithsonian. He was in his late 20s and had been shot repeatedly with flint arrows at close range. “The forensics are clear proof he did not die in a hunting accident or in battle. And the location of his grave rules out the possibility he was a criminal … though the exact reason for his execution may never be known,” says the Smithsonian video.
The people of the Pommelte area had oxen, corn, rapeseed. And around this time trade routes were crossing Europe and this area with amber, salt and ores, says SpiegelOnline.
By Mark Miller
Top image: The reconstruction of Ringheiligtum Pömmelte ( welt.de )
The so-called German Stonehenge near Pommelte, where there was apparent human sacrifice, has been under reconstruction for several years and has just opened to the public for the first time. The 4,300-year-old site, which was originally constructed in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, might more properly be called the “Woodhenge” of Germany because it was made of 1,200 locust tree logs.Sponsored by Revenue.com The ancient site was discovered from an airplane in 1991 in the woods near the Elbe River. It consists of rings of wooden posts in seven circles, shafts and trenches and is thought to have been a place of astronomical and mortuary observances from the 21st to 23rd centuries BC. Archaeologists determined the site’s dates of occupation from analyzing potsherds.
Skeletons of children and young women were excavated at the site, which measures 115 meters (377.3 feet) in diameter. They had sustained injuries that suggested they met a violent end, Dr. Andre Spietzer told the tourism office of Saxony-Anhalt, the province where the site is located.
An arched entryway to the Ringheiligtum Pömmelte, which is called that because it is near the town of Pömmelte, German. (
DW photo
)“This unique configuration of circles is at the level of Stonehenge,” Spietzer is quoted in DW. “The only difference is that in Pömmelte, everything was made of wood and therefore bygone.”The site of the Ringheiligtum Pömmelte, as it is called, is on the tourist path called the Himmelsweg, which means path to heaven, a route in Saxony-Anhalt that has sites where people are thought to have observed the heavens and celestial bodies in prehistoric times, says DW.
Experts have spent $2.27 million (2 million euros) rebuilding the site and have opened it to the public.
The wooden “German Stonehenge” at Pommelte has been reconstructed in wood after 4,300 years and is open to the public. (
DW photo
)SpiegelOnline reports:“Human sacrifice. This is such a harsh word. ‘Researchers prefer the term “ritual killings”,’ Norma Literski Henkel by the State Office for archeology and heritage in Saxony-Anhalt says almost apologetically. But in the end it was the same thing. In the service of a larger idea people are murdered. That is obviously going on here between the 23rd and the 21st century BC, women were assassinated, children, adolescents.”Similarly, evidence of human sacrifice has been discovered at sites near the prehistoric Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in England, after which the Ringheiligtum Pömmelte is nicknamed.
Only one skeleton of a man that suffered human sacrifice at Stonehenge proper in England has been found, according to Smithsonian. He was in his late 20s and had been shot repeatedly with flint arrows at close range. “The forensics are clear proof he did not die in a hunting accident or in battle. And the location of his grave rules out the possibility he was a criminal … though the exact reason for his execution may never be known,” says the Smithsonian video.
The people of the Pommelte area had oxen, corn, rapeseed. And around this time trade routes were crossing Europe and this area with amber, salt and ores, says SpiegelOnline.
By Mark Miller
Top image: The reconstruction of Ringheiligtum Pömmelte ( welt.de )
July 8, 2016
2,000-Year-Old Cooling System for Chariot Horses Unearthed at Ancient Carthage Site
Ancient Origins
In the Classical world, chariot races were the equivalent of today’s highest-profile sports and had the highest-paid athletes in history. But how did the chariot horses of North Africa cope with the searing heat? Archaeologists have now found the answer after unearthing an advanced system that cooled the horses and kept the popular races running at the Roman Circus of Carthage in Tunisia 2,000 years ago.
The circuses in Carthage, Rome and elsewhere around the empire were built specifically for the chariot races, which were fast, violent and wildly popular. Haaretz, which has a report on the horse-cooling features recently discovered, says one charioteer won 36 million sesterces (silver coins) —the equivalent of about $15 billion in today’s money.
An ancient mosaic shows the circus of Carthage. (
Wikimedia Commons
/University of Chicago)Carthage’s circus was 470 meters (1542 feet) long and 30 meters (98.4 feet) wide. This was smaller than the Circus Maximus in Rome, which was wider and 80 meters longer. And while the Circus Maximus could seat 150,000 to 200,000 people, scholars believe the Carthage circus held far fewer spectators at around 45,000. Still, the Carthage circus was the largest sporting venue of the empire except for those in Rome itself.
The arches of the ruins of the Circus Maximus in Rome—the largest chariot racetrack of them all. (
Wikimedia Commons
/Joris van Rooden)There was ancient poetry about the chariot races (read one such poem here), mosaics, and of course the circuses around the empire that attest to the sport’s popularity.Chariot drivers wore uniforms of distinct color and teams represented different groups in society, social or political, Haaretz says. According to accounts of the time, supporters applauded wildly when their favorite team took the field. Certain charioteers were so adulated that their portraits were hung in homes.
There were riots, including one at Pompeii that Roman historian Tacitus told about, when Pompeians fought with fanatics from nearby Nucreia.
Part of the reason the archaeologists determined that the ancient Carthaginians cooled the horses came with the discovery of water-resistant mortar at the circus.
“This kind of mortar is called hydraulic mortar. It's a type of waterproof lime mortar mixed with crushed and pulverized ceramics that the Romans used in hydraulic engineering,” Frerich Schön of Tübingen University told Ha’aretz. He is a water technology specialist who discovered the hydraulic mortar at the spina, or the median.
Water basins were built along the track and spina at Carthage and elsewhere. Sparsores—the people who sprinkled the horses—dipped clay vessels into the water and sprinkled it on the chariots as they passed, according to Ralf Bockmann of the German Archaeological Institute, co-director of the excavations with Hamden Ben Romdhane of the Institut National du Patrimonie de Tunisie.
The men say this was without doubt a dangerous job.
“The sparsores would usually be on foot, directly on the spina, presumably at the level of the arena, to cool down the chariot wheels driving by at high speed. How exactly the cooling was organized is not clear. But for sure, it must have been a dangerous business,” Dr. Bockmann told Haaretz.
Chariot racing was popular not just in Rome but also in Greece and the Byzantine Empire. It was less violent than the gladiatorial contests, but still, many horses and men suffered grave injuries and death in the races.
Nike rides a chariot to victory in this relief from ancient Greece; the sport was popular all over the Classical world. (
Wikimedia Commons
/Jastrow)The charioteers were slaves or freedmen. They drove light chariots, which made the sport all the more dangerous. Races were run for seven laps, and up to a dozen chariots ran in them.“Many drivers were thrown from a broken or overturned chariot,” says an article on PBS. “They could then be trampled and killed by the charging horses, or get caught in the reins and dragged to their deaths.”Aristocrats sneered at the chariot races, thinking them childish and unremarkable. But the public was in thrall to them.
Top image: Chariot racing in ancient Rome ( University of Wisconsin )
By Mark Miller
July 7, 2016
10,000-Year-Old Telescopes? Ancient Tombs May Have Enhanced Visibility of Astronomical Phenomena
Ancient Origins
Could ancient megalithic passage graves in Portugal dating as far back as 8000 BC have doubled as astronomical observatories? A team of researchers studying the ancient tombs thinks so, and have even suggested that the megaliths provided optical opportunities for the ancient observers, effectively acting as ‘telescopes’ without lenses.
Sponsored by Revenue.com The idea behind the researchers’ speculations is that the passages of the tombs, which show just a small patch of sky on the horizon, would have been dark. Anyone sitting inside them would have had an early view of rising stars. The reduced ambient light in the passages around twilight would have made the stars more visible to the naked eye. Telescopes did not come until much later (1608 AD), but ancient observers may have used the stone constructions to enhance their visibility of astronomical phenomena.
In particular, says undergrad Kieran Simcox of Nottingham Trent University in England, the ancient people may have been trying to get an early glimpse of Aldebaran, a bright red star in the constellation Taurus.
That star might have played a role in moving herds and flocks to higher grazing every summer. It’s possible, the researchers say, that herding the flocks to higher ground may have coincided with the star’s first annual rising in morning twilight. Around 4000 BC, Aldebaran rose for the first time each year around the end of April of beginning of May, “so it would be a very good, very precise calendrical marker for them to know when it was time to move into the higher grounds,” Dr. Fabio Silva of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David told the Guardian.
Earth’s moon occults Aldebaran (Wikimedia Photo/
Christina Irakleous
)Dr. Silva and Daniel Brown, also of Notthingham Trent University, were the advisers for Mr. Simcox’s project.
The passage tombs, which consist of one or more chambers and a corridor covered in earth or stone, are known all over Europe. Prehistoric peoples placed their deceased community members in the tombs between 6000 and 2000 BC, the Neolithic era - some of the tombs feature paintings point to their purpose. Two famous passage graves are Maeshowe in Scotland and Newgrange in Ireland.
The famous passage tomb of Newgrange (
public domain
)Inner chambers of the tombs, which are known as dolmens, were graves for the deceased (at least later on), while outer chambers may have been used to conduct death rites or other rituals, the researchers say.
Drs. Silva and Brown told Discover Magazine: “These passage graves exhibit elements suggesting that initiation rituals, also known as rites of passage, might have been conducted within the megalithic chamber.”
Mr. Simcox told Discover that some literature speculates that viewing stars from passage tombs would make them more visible, but the idea needs research. The team intends to do just that—study the rising of faint stars to see if they are more visible from the passages.
The orientation of the tombs suggests that they are aligned to offer a view of Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation of Taurus. Photograph: University of Wales Trinity Saint David/Nottingham Trent University.For many years, researchers and scholars have been speculating whether prehistoric and ancient stone monuments around the world were used for astronomical and calendrical purposes, now they are getting closer to understanding just how they did this.
Top image: Dolmens or passage graves like this one, Anta da Orca, in Portugal, may have been simple star observatories. (Photo by Alta Falisa/ Wikimedia Commons )
By Mark Miller
Could ancient megalithic passage graves in Portugal dating as far back as 8000 BC have doubled as astronomical observatories? A team of researchers studying the ancient tombs thinks so, and have even suggested that the megaliths provided optical opportunities for the ancient observers, effectively acting as ‘telescopes’ without lenses.Sponsored by Revenue.com The idea behind the researchers’ speculations is that the passages of the tombs, which show just a small patch of sky on the horizon, would have been dark. Anyone sitting inside them would have had an early view of rising stars. The reduced ambient light in the passages around twilight would have made the stars more visible to the naked eye. Telescopes did not come until much later (1608 AD), but ancient observers may have used the stone constructions to enhance their visibility of astronomical phenomena.
In particular, says undergrad Kieran Simcox of Nottingham Trent University in England, the ancient people may have been trying to get an early glimpse of Aldebaran, a bright red star in the constellation Taurus.
That star might have played a role in moving herds and flocks to higher grazing every summer. It’s possible, the researchers say, that herding the flocks to higher ground may have coincided with the star’s first annual rising in morning twilight. Around 4000 BC, Aldebaran rose for the first time each year around the end of April of beginning of May, “so it would be a very good, very precise calendrical marker for them to know when it was time to move into the higher grounds,” Dr. Fabio Silva of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David told the Guardian.
Earth’s moon occults Aldebaran (Wikimedia Photo/
Christina Irakleous
)Dr. Silva and Daniel Brown, also of Notthingham Trent University, were the advisers for Mr. Simcox’s project.The passage tombs, which consist of one or more chambers and a corridor covered in earth or stone, are known all over Europe. Prehistoric peoples placed their deceased community members in the tombs between 6000 and 2000 BC, the Neolithic era - some of the tombs feature paintings point to their purpose. Two famous passage graves are Maeshowe in Scotland and Newgrange in Ireland.
The famous passage tomb of Newgrange (
public domain
)Inner chambers of the tombs, which are known as dolmens, were graves for the deceased (at least later on), while outer chambers may have been used to conduct death rites or other rituals, the researchers say.Drs. Silva and Brown told Discover Magazine: “These passage graves exhibit elements suggesting that initiation rituals, also known as rites of passage, might have been conducted within the megalithic chamber.”
Mr. Simcox told Discover that some literature speculates that viewing stars from passage tombs would make them more visible, but the idea needs research. The team intends to do just that—study the rising of faint stars to see if they are more visible from the passages.
The orientation of the tombs suggests that they are aligned to offer a view of Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation of Taurus. Photograph: University of Wales Trinity Saint David/Nottingham Trent University.For many years, researchers and scholars have been speculating whether prehistoric and ancient stone monuments around the world were used for astronomical and calendrical purposes, now they are getting closer to understanding just how they did this.Top image: Dolmens or passage graves like this one, Anta da Orca, in Portugal, may have been simple star observatories. (Photo by Alta Falisa/ Wikimedia Commons )
By Mark Miller
