Gibraltar in the news

In my home town of Pontefract the Butter Cross in the Market Place was erected in 1734 by Solomon Dupier. He is said to have been a member of the Spanish garrison of Gibraltar in 1704 when the Rock was beseiged by Sir George Rooke and the man who indicated to the beseigers that a good time to attack was when the garrison were at church. This proved successful, and Gibraltar became a British possession - and Dupier a government pensioner who ended up in Pontefract. He appears to have travelled there with a Captain Lay who was, perhaps, his contact. He was evidently prosperous, and able to be a  benefactor, as the Butter Cross and his memorial in the nearby church at Darrington testify. As a result the history of Gibraltar has an added interest for me.

The Rock of Gibraltar

Image: BookNerja 

The latest Brexit-induced spat about the status of Gibraltar is a sad indicator of the bad tempered proceedings that I fear Brexit will prove to be. British and Spanish membership of the EU helped put the issue on ice between two allied countries, and permanently opened the frontier but with Brexit negotiations looming that is all up for discussion, animosity and grabs.

Giving the Gibraltarians a right of veto on union with Spain allows the local people to be secure in their Britishness, but also to play the UK and Spain off against one another over such issues as territorial waters and cigarette smuggling. Kicking the issue into the diplomatic equivalent of touch looked the best way out of the impasse.

However the latest verbal exchanges and expressions of solidarity with the Rock from British politicias, not to mention Lord Howard conjuring up the spirit of the Falklands War ( has he gone gaga?) and all implicit with more typical jibes at Johnny (Juanito ) Foreigner are all very depressing and unnecessary.

Which leads me to ask the rhetorical question - would we have had a referendum in 1940 when the then UK government thought of offering Gibraltar to the Caudillo to keep Spain out of WWII, not to mention the idea of bribing Italy with Malta? I 'll bet anyone more than a few euros or indeed pesetas that we would not...

The flag of Gibraltar

It was regularised in 1982 and derives from the coat of arms granted by Queen Isabella I on 10 July 1502

Image: Wikipedia

A link to a past era

Yesterday's Daily Telegraph contained the obituary of Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe, who has died at the age of 99. This caught my attention because it not only recorded an aristocratic lifestyle and connections that belongs in so many ways to a lost world, but because s the daughter of the one and only Marquess of Crewe (d.1945) her ancestors once lived in my home area. Her father, of whom there is an illustrated online life here, inherited from his father, the first Lord Houghton, the estate at Fryston just north-east of Pontefract.  His father, the first Lord Houghton (d.1885), had been MP for Pontefract as a Conservative and then as a Liberal from 1837 to 1863, when he was elevated to the Lords, and was a well known patron of artists and the literary scene - as well as a notable collector of pornography.  There is an illustrated life of him here.

The obituary of ther Duchess camn be read at Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe

Sir Patrick Moore

The death yesterday of Sir Patrick Moore removes a familiar figure from the British televison and indeed national scene. The obituary from the Daily Telegraph can be read here.

My reason for noting it is taht I did meet him on on eoccasion. It was, I think, the autumn on 1974 and he had been invited to speak at the annual dinner of Pontefract Civic Trust. I think I can claim with my mother credit for the idea. having seen him present an edition of the Sky at Night about the Birr (or Parsonstown) telescope of the fourth Earl of Rosse in Ireland in the nineteenth century. He clearly knw the then Earl and his Countess, who happened to be the President of the Pontefract Civic Trust - and was herslf a doughty campaigner on conservation matters. Their Yorkshire home was a few miles from Pontefract.

When Patrick Moore came it fell to the Vice-Chairman to entertain him to lunch and I joine dthem asa prelude to showing our guest around the town. He was as large a personality, indeed more so, than he appeared on television - physically dominating the room and with a wide range of views on matters of the day. We took him round the town centre afterwards where he surprised a tobacconist and some shoppers by dashing in to buy supplies for his pipe.

At the dinner in the evening he spoke and we invited along the local Astronomy Society to meet him, and they were delighted to be photographed with him and to get his autograph.

I remeber it as a happy and enjoyable day with someone who lived up to the expectations of his image. The impression of a clever man, but also a humane and decent one, with an infectious enthusiasm was borne out in an actual meeting with him.

St Nicholas

Today is the feast day of St Nicholas, Bishop of Myra in the fourth century and who became one of the most popular saints on the middle ages, and retains his appeal to the present day. I posted about him last year in Celebrating St Nicholas.

 

St Nicholas

Fr Angelico 1423-4

Image:Wikipaintings

Today his relics are at Bari in Apulia. In 1071 Bari had been captured by Robert Guiscard, following a three year siege. Under Norman rule the Basilica di San Nicola was founded in 1087 to receive the relics of the saint, which had been surreptitiously brought from Myra in Lycia, in Byzantine territory. The saint thereby began his development from Saint Nicholas of Myra into Saint Nicholas of Bari and began to attract pilgrims, whose encouragement and care became central to the local economy. Pope Urban II consecrated the Basilica in 1089.

I was interested to read recently in D.C.Douglas'  The Normans and their Achievement  how the translation of St Nicholas' relics to Bari led to the rapid dissemination of the cult of this essentially eastern saint across the Norman world. It is an interesting illustration of the spread of ideas and devotion in the period and of the cultural contacts of the Normans. Thus it looks as if most ancient English churches dedicated to him date from after this famous incident of furta sacra and were new developments of parishes in existing towns or to serve entirely new developments. Thus the churches of St Nicholas in Great Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Newcastle upon Tyne (all sea faring towns of course, and St Nicholas is the patron of seafarers), Nottingham and Thorne, as well as a lost chapel near where I live in Oxford appear to represent the rapid and extensive devotion to him in the wake of the Norman acquisition of his remains. Indeed I think another such example can be cited from my own home town of Pontefract where the hospital (almshouse) of St Nicholas appears to have comeinto being under that name by the 1090s, although based around a possibly older foundation.By the thirteenth century what appears to have been the ancestor of my old school was attached to the hospital - a suitable link given St Nicholas' role as patron of children.

Commemorating Trafalgar

Today is Trafalgar Day, which apart from its national significance, has a particular link to a monument in my home town of Pontefract - which given the fact that the town lies well inland is both somehat unusual and also, dare I suggest, given the circumstances of the acquisition of the memorial not untypical of the town's history and character.

Filling most of the south wall of Pontefract Town Hall, built in 1785, is a plaque depicting The Death of Nelson. Set behind cast-iron railings with spear finials and lotus standards, and with an expaletory label, it shows the wounded Lord Nelson being carried from the deck of HMS Victory, and underneath it the words of the famous signal: England expects every man will do his duty.

It is in fact the plaster sculpture or maquette from which one of the sides of the base of Nelson’s Column, in Trafalgar Square, London, was cast in bronze. Four sculptors contributed to the making of the monument. Of these this one, by John Edward Carew , was the first to be installed, facing Whitehall, in 1849 and cast by Adams, Christie and Co. of Rotherhithe.

The plaque on Nelson's Column

Image: Wikipedia

I have not found a photograph online of the Pontefract plaque but I did find the image above of the finished bronze in Trafalgar Square.

Carew was a friend of Benjamin Oliveira, one of the two Liberal M.P.s for Pontefract from 1852 until 1857. The M.P. suggested to the Mayor of Pontefract that the plaque would look well in the Town Hall and show the town’s admiration for Lord Nelson. The offer was accepted and the plaque, cut, as can still be discerned into six pieces, was transported by horse and flat cart and delivered and erected in the Town Hall.

Shortly afterwards the bill arrived. The Corporation of Pontefract had been under the impression that the plaque was a gift from the sculptor and a great deal of embarrassment ensued. The bill was finally paid, but the amount was never disclosed.

With acknowledgements to my friend Barbara Stewart's blog Barbara's Web Site : family history and local history. This is a good example of how a blog can serve as an autobiography and family history and be a record for others interested in the local history of an area.

St Thomas of Pontefract

Today is the putative feast day of St Thomas of Pontefract. I say putative as Thomas was never formally canonised, but today is the anniversary of his death in 1322, and he did enjoy a popular cult in the decades after his death.

Thomas, Earl of Lancaster was the cousin of King Edward II, and the politics of the years 1312-1322 shaped by their bitter disagreements, which ended with Thomas' defeat at the battle of Boroughbridge in March 1322, followed by his capture and trial and conviction for treason in his own castle at Pontefract, rapidly followed by his beheading on what became known as St Thomas' Hill on the outskirts of the town. As with some other medieval rebels, such as Simon de Montfort at Evesham, a cult sprang up around his tomb in the Cluniac priory in Pontefract, around apicture in St Paul's cathedral in London and, following the deposition of King Edward II in 1326-7, attempts were made to secure Thomas' canonisation. That did not come about despite appeals to Pope John XXII, and his cultus remained local and particular to the Lancastrian family. An office hymn was composed in his honour and pilgrimages made to Pontefract in the fourteenth century. for a number of years it was very popular and survived at Pontefract at least until the dissolution of the priory in 1539. His belt was believed to assist women in child birth and his hat was believed to aid sufferers from migraine and 'rye-asthma' - hay fever. On the site of his execution a memorial chapel was built by a Lancastrian retainer, Simon Symeon in 1361. Now destroyed some fragments of worked stone were found on the site in the 1940s.

As his biographer Dr John Maddicott argues in his book Thomas' sanctity is rather vitiated by his "repulsive" character. He appears to have been violent, harsh, contrary, selfish and promiscuous. Dr Maddicott's biography for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography of Earl Thomas and his wife Countess Alice, the heiress of Pontefract, can be read here.

Thomas, Earl of Lancaster with St George

Bodleian MS Douce 231

Image :Wikipedia

This manuscript indicates a rather more positive view of him. There has been the suggestion that the figure may be his father, Earl Edmund (d.1296), but the five points on the label on his shield may well indicate Thomas as a grandson of King Henry III. Assuming that it is Thomas he is paired with St George, who was increasingly assuming the role of the nation's patron saint.

One surviving piece of devotion to him is the wall painting shown above in South Newington church in north Oxfordshire. The church has a wonderful series of fragments of medieval wall paintings. To that series were added a pair depicting the martyrdoms of St Thomas of Canterbury and St Thomas of Pontefract. Although much damaged they are still clear, and indicate how some at least saw Thomas of Lancaster in the years after his death. The painting were apparently commissioned by a retainer of the Earl.

I have long known of the South Newington painting from photographs, but it was only in recent years that I got to see it whilst on an historic church-crawl with Fr Jerome Bertram of the Oxford Oratory in 2005. The visit was a great delight, to see the painting after so many years, and all the others that survive in the church. There is an article about them here , whence comes the illustration I have copied.

There also survives in the British Museum a large lead openwork plaque in the style of the pilgrim badges from the period depicting scenes from the life and death of Thomas. This presumably was made in some numbers for churches or private devotion.

A long time ago I saw a copy of a drawing of a medieval vestment orphrey depicting Thomas - I ought to check up on this, but I think it was taken from the publications of the Society of Antiquaries.

Here in Oxfordshire there may be another link. In the very intersting church at Stanton Harcourt are the remains of the shrine base of St Edburga from Bicester Priory. This dates from Thomas' lifetime. On the base are a series of coats of arms with small heads above them. I think that these may well be meant to portray the owners of the arms and the two on the right in this photograph are the arms of Earl Thomas and of his wife, Alice , with a male and a female head above them.

The shrine of St Edburga
The possible portraits of Earl Thomas and Countess Alice are on the right

Image:Nash Ford publications

This is one of those pieces of antiquarian research I keep meaning to do some more research on and write up for a suitable academic journal.

St Giles Fair

Today is the second and last day of St Giles Fair here in Oxford. A popular saint in twelfth century England St Giles is the patron of the parish that developed at that time around the northern end of the wide road towards Woodstock and Banbury outside the north gate of the Anglo-Saxon city. As his feast day falls on September 1st it was in past centuries a good time at which to hold a fair to buy and sell as the autumn set in. Many towns held fairs at this season - most famously Winchester - but not many survive. In Oxford it still does.

Here St Giles' Fair is very much part of the life of the city, but not especially of the University, which is not up at this time of year. Oxford, happily, has not, like my home town of Pontefract did in the interwar years, exiled such a fair to waste ground away from the centre but gives up the whole of St Giles Street - still the main route into the city centre from the north - over to the Fair on the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday following September 1st.

Picking one's way through a wide rage of ever more spectacular, noisy, flashing, and not infrequently, frankly terrifying, rides and sideshows, not to mention the pervasive smell of the cooking of burgers and hot dogs, gives a new quality to walking to and from Mass on these days. What St Giles - a hermit and then an abbot - would make of it is open for speculation, but it is, nevertheless, and even if the people attending never give him a thought, a celebration of him.

To my mind, what is also good about it, firstly, is that it is a living tradition - loud and
vulgar it may be, but it reasserts a popular way of letting off steam and enjoying oneself. Last nights drizzle and rain did not appear to be damping that.

Secondly, it is really heartening to see so many families there - fathers and mothers taking their children to the fair, rather as I was fifty years ago. The fair may be garish and dressed up in the latest modern fashion, but at heart it is as it was fifty or a hundred years ago. In a simple and unsophisticated way it reasserts popular family values, and long may it do so.

Traditional Dominican Liturgy

I have recently discovered through NLM Fr Augustine Thompson O.P.'s blog Dominican Liturgy. This is concerned with all aspects of the ancient Dominican rite, and a valuable resource for historians of the liturgy and the Church as well as for the Blackfriars themselves. It is well worth looking at and I have added it to my blogroll.

My own interest is increased in it by the fact that not only do we have an excellent Dominican house here in Oxford today but one of those little historical projects that I mean to do sometime is a new edition of the history of the medieval Dominican house in my hometown of Pontefract. Founded in 1256 it was closed in 1538, but a local historian produced in the late nineteenth century a study of the house that in its detail was unusual and poneering, basing his research on bequests and other sources. Over a century and a quarter later that could be supplemented by new research in the sources, archeological evidence from the site and by the wider scholarship on mendicant history. This is something I would like to do, and the work of Fr Thompson would be of great assistance.

Restoration

Saturday May 29th is, of course, the 350th anniversary of the Restoration of the Monarchy when King Charles II entered London, in the twelfth year of his reign. I am indebted to the Australian Radical Royalist for some of this piece, and the images of the commemorative coin. The fact that it is being issued is an improvement on what happened fifty years ago, when so far as I recall it the anniversary passed unmarked.

Following General Monck's march on London and the collapse of what remained of the regicide regime amidst popular calls for a free Parliament the Long Parliament having finally agreed to dissolve itself - it had gained the power not to be dissolved without its own consent ( does that sound at all familiar at the moment? ) the new, so-called Convention Parliament assembled on 25th April 1660, and soon afterwards received news of the Declaration of Breda in which Charles II indicated the moderate basis upon which the Restoration could be based. The English Parliament resolved to proclaim Charles King and invite him to return, which message reached Charles at Breda on 8th May 1660. The King landed at Dover and travelled to London which he entered in state on May 29th, his thirtieth birthday.

The Convention Parliament was dissolved in December 1660, and King Charles was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 23th April 1661.

I stress that fact that Charles II was in his twelfth year as King for two reasons. Firstly that is the legal point established in 1660 - he had been the lawful King of England since his father's death in 1649, and in Scotland he had been crowned in 1651.

The other reason is that in my home town of Pontefract the castle was held by a royalist garrison in January 1649 who were under siege from Parliamentarian forces. Upon hearing of the regiicide they proclaimed Charles II as King, and produced siege coins in his name, and with the inscription Post Mortem Patris Pro Filio which subsequently became the motto on the arms of the borough of Pontefract.