The threat to the Lincolnshire landscape

Yesterday the Daily Telegraph had a timely article about the threat posed to the Lincolnshire countryside by the plans for a line of pylons and the related infrastructure to carry renewable sources electricity across the eastern part of the county for onward transmission. Taken together with the numerous applications for solar farms in this rural area that is a serious threat to the landscape of this county. That risk may increase further with the iniquitous proposal to charge 20% inheritance tax on substantial areas of farmland. Although more expensive an off-shore cable system along the coast to transfer North Sea wind-farm generated power would be in the long term more environmentally friendly. The same could surely be said for similar threats in Norfolk.

Lincolnshire is not a well-known county and it is indeed surprising how many people either who never been there or whether or not they have ever visited it assume that it is all flat with bulb and beet fields - as indeed the south-east of the county. By contrast the hills and sweeping landscape of the Lincolnshire Wolds and the Lincoln Edge, the distinctive landscape of the Marshland and coast, and the gently rolling countryside of Kesteven are little known to outsiders. Were it a better known part of the English landscape there would, I imagine, already be more outrage at the threat that is now posed.  As someone whose ancestors, in part, lived in the county I feel I have skin in this game.

The battle is by no means lost, indeed has barely begun, and articles such as this one that not only draws attention to the danger but also highlights the variety and distinctive features of Lincolnshire are a necessary part of the campaign.

The article can be seen at The tranquil corner of England about to be lost forever

A Bridgettine volume at the British Library

The British Library Medieval manuscripts blog has a feature about Harleian MS 612 from the great Bridgettine house of Syon Abbey founded by King Henry V, and which is on display as part of the Medieval Women exhibition at the Library.

It is a massive mid-fifteenth century compendium of the life of the fourteenth century monastic foundress and mystic Saint Bridget ( Birgitta ), of her writings and of writings about her. It is the work of Thomas Colyngbourne, one of the brothers of the community and written for the use of the other brothers as part of their devotional formation.

They blog article particularly concentrate on the delightful and delicate marginalia which are included to indicate important sections of the text or to pass comment upon it. 

The illustrated description can be seen on the website at Birgitta's marvellous marginalia

The remarkable history of Syon Abbey and its endurance from its foundation in 1415 down to the tragic decision to close in 2011 is set out by Wikipedia at Syon Abbey

That article is regrettably too concise in its account of the travels and travails of these English nuns living in exile until their final return to England in 1861.

In 2004 with a relative who lived nearby I paid fleeting visit to the community house at South Brent in Devon and did see one of the Sisters in her very distinctive Bridgettine habit taking her morning walk in the grounds. A rare privilege and now, alas, unavailable to others.

 

 

It’s still not Mrs President

So another US Presidential election has come and almost gone, and we know who will be the occupant of the White House for the forthcoming four year term. Inevitably in the modern world thing one tends to follow at least some of the news about American elections and also one has opinions as to the eligibility and suitability of the candidates. However I will keep my opinions on that matter largely to myself but I will say that I never really thought that Kamala Harris would win the election. She just didn’t seem to me to be a sufficiently strong candidate for the post. 

Had she been successful she would have course of been the first female President of the USA. When that might actually happen, remains still an open question. However, there is also the question of when did a woman first run for this exalted position. If you want to keep up-to-date with your fund of knowledge of pub quiz trivia, such as the fact that Donald Trump will be only the second US President to have two separate terms in office, the other being Grover Cleveland, then who and when was the first female candidate is clearly of great importance. The answer is surprising both in the date and also in the very eventful life of that first female candidate.

It was in the election of 1872 that Victoria Woodhull ( later Woodhull-Martin ) was nominated, although that was technically invalid as she was not yet 35, the minimum age under the Constitution. She also sought to be a candidate in 1884 and 1892, but by then she was no longer based in the United States, but in the United Kingdom.where she lived from 1877. In 1878 she met her third husband-to-be whom she married in 1883. Following his death in 1897 she remained in England and from 1901 lived at Norton Park at Bredon’s Norton on the southern edge of Worcestershire. That is where she died aged 88, and was buried in the churchyard in 1927. 

Bredon’s Norton is very close to Tewkesbury and in the ambulatory of the abbey church is a handsome colourful wall tablet, topped with the crossed Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes and which commemorates her, her work for the “great cause” of Anglo-American friendship and records that she played a significant part in securing the open lawns which set the Abbey off to the east. Her political and publishing career is not mentioned. Although I had seen the monument in Tewkesbury Abbey on my many visits there it was quite by chance that I came across her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography when it was the featured life of the day and I recognised her name. Looking at her life span I did vaguely wonder when looking at the monument what she had experienced in the land of her birth before and after the Civil War, but reading her life was far more interesting than one could glean from the memorial in Tewkesbury Abbey.

In addition to the ODNB there is a quite detailed life of her on Wikipedia at Victoria Woodhull

Her remarkable and varied life story really would make a good film or television series.

The Coronation of King Henry VI in 1429

595 years ago today, King Henry VI was  crowned at Westminster. Two years later he was to be crowned as King of France in Notre Dame in Paris, the only Plantagenet or later monarch to receive the crowns of both realms. The young king was a month short of his eighth birthday and the move to crown him followed from the events of the spring when his uncle King Charles VIi had been crowned King of France at Reims. The view of the government was that King Henry should be crowned as soon as possible in France and that meant that his English coronation had to take place first.

In the early fifteenth century the English coronation rite had assumed probably its most elaborate form following from the compilation of the Liber Regalis in the reign of King Richard II. Thus the boy King was at the centre of a ritual that had been celebrated in 1399 for his grandfather and in 1413 for his father.At its heart was the use of the eagle ampulla believed to have been delivered by the Virgin Mary to St Thomas of Canterbury for anointing English kings, but not used before 1399.

The King Henry VI website, which unfortunately appears to be dormant,has a quite detailed description of the ceremony in Westminster Abbey and in the Palace afterwards, which can be seen at The English Coronation – KING HENRY VI

It is not a criticism of the blog author to say that this does not include everything that must have happened, such as the homage of the peers, and that there appears to be some confusion presumably on the part of the contemporary chroniclers as to some precise part of the liturgy, the account of which seems curiously repetitious or confused as to the number of the King’s prostrations and what he wore at certain  points, and not in line with the norms of an English coronation at that time or subsequently. That said a lot of what we witnessed last year in Westminster Abbey at the present King’s Coronation would have been recognisable to those attending in 1429. Whether Archbishop Chichele had as many very obvious problems getting St Edward’s Crown straight on the monarch’s head as his successor did last year is not recorded.

Effigy of Archbishop Henry Chichele in Canterbury Cathedral 

Image: Wikipedia 

There is more about the Coronation Banquet in Westminster Hall after the ceremonies in the Abbey in a feature from last year on the British Library Medieval manuscripts blog which can be seen at The Coronation Banquet of Henry VI

Some slight idea of what might have been seen that day can be gleaned from the illumination of the charter granted by the King in 1445-6 to his new fo foundation of King’s College in Cambridge.

Although the king was by now in his twenties, he is still depicted as a small boy in his robes of state supported by the Lords Spiritual ( including Cardinals Beaufort and Kempe ) and Temporal ( in the earliest serving coloured depiction of their robes with the differing bars of ermine indicating their rank ) and by the faithful Commons in Parliament assembled offering the new foundation to the Virgin Mary and to Saint Nicholas.

King Henry VI and his Lords and Commons

Image: kcctreasures.com

King Henry VI

Image:kcctreasures.com

The fact of his anointing and coronation and the oaths made to him were doubtless a very potent factor with many in rhe political elite, and hence the reluctance of a large part of the aristocracy to set the King aside in 1460 in favour of the Yorkist line. Furthermore it helps explain the continuing Lancastrian loyalism, expended in blood, until his own violent death in 1471, and even thereafter in his cult as a saint invoked by ordinary people as well as by King Henry VII.

Preparing this article, I came upon another blog Friends of Henry VI which was active iin 2019, but not seemingly since. It can be viewed at Friends of Henry VI

The Act of Supremacy 1534

 

490 years ago on November 3rd 1534 the legal measure to create the Royal Supremacy in England completed its Parliamentary stages and on December 18th it received the Royal Assent from King Henry VIII and became an Act of Parliament.

Wikipedia gives a summary of the Act, and of the associated Treason Act at Acts of Supremacy

This was the logical and virtually inevitable legislative conclusion to the Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532 and of the Appointment of Bishops Act 1533 which was passed and received Royal Assent earlier in 1534. 

Constitutionally the English Reformation had been achieved and legally set in stone.

It is not unreasonable to see these events as the ending of mediaeval England and much more so than, for example, the battle of Bosworth in 1485 or even the summoning of the Reformation Parliament in 1529. The spiritual and temporal partnership of church and Crown over the realm which endured since the tenth century was now merged into a single Constitutional monopoly on behalf of the Monarchy.

During this process Pope Clement VII, much of whose troubled pontificate had been taken up with the “King’s Great Matter”, had died on September 25th and he had been successful on October 13th by Pope Paul III, an outwardly improbable but, as it turned out, very significant reformer, just three weeks before the legislative process was completed at Westminster. 

A significant change can be seen during the process of the passage of these Acts. Whereas  that in Restraint of Appeals and that regulating appointments to Bishoprics had had as their ultimate sanction the 1393 legislation in respect of Praemunire with its its massive financial penalties, the Act of Supremacy and the Treason Act that set out that to deny it was to commit High Treason - for individuals the risks of opposition were made significantly more threatening.

Praemunire had been a marker along the historical road that had included the rejection in the 1420s of Papal attempts to repeal it and the Provisions legislation of the fourteenth century, and long before that the ructions over episcopal investiture in the late eleventh and early twelfth century, and, of course, the dramatic life and death of St Thomas of Canterbury - “Bishop Becket” or the “traitor Becket” as far as King Henry and Mr Secretary Cromwell were concerned.

That there was a recognisable Ecclesia Anglicana long before 1534 is clear, but very much as part of the Catholic Church. Equally it is clear that English Kings exercised a not inconsiderable position of influence within the public life of that Ecclesia and of appointments to the hierarchy, but as patrons and partners not as the ultimate arbiter.

A new era has dawned. We still live with its consequences, unimaginable as they would surely be to everyone in the England or Europe of 1534.

Sentry Duty in a Roman Watchtower

The house in which I was brought up faced north across the open grassland of what survives of the medieval hunting park created by about 1180 and associated with the castle. Within this area is the race course. Just to the north-west was the Park Hill, a geological erratic, on top of which was an early twentieth century water tower built above a nineteenth century reservoir. When that was excavated in the 1870s Roman pottery was found and some apparent evidence for a ditch. This has been interpreted as the site of a Roman signal tower from the later imperial period and seems to be confirmed by an early nineteenth century map which shows a recognisable square just at that point on the hilltop. In Yorkshire, the obvious comparison is the evidence for signal stations along the Yorkshire coast most evident today at Scarborough Castle. The one close to my old home would have overlooked the Roman road linking Legiolium ( Castleford ) and points north to both Eboracum ( York ) and to Hadrians Wall, to Danum ( Doncaster )  and thence to the rest of Britannia and the rest of the Empire. Other possible watchtower sites, forming a linked chain, have been identified to the north and south of the Pontefract example.  Most of this route is still in use as A roads today, although the stretch immediately west of the tower had disappeared under the hunting park by the twelfth century, surviving in part as a boundary, but otherwise obliterated.

 

A reconstruction of a rypical Roman watchtower on the Limes in Germany. There appear to be a considerable number of such reconstructed towers in the area of the Limes.

Image: Wikipedia

It is arguable, indeed probable, that it was along this road that Constantine the Great travelled as he began his journey to the sole rule of the whole Enpirw and all that flowed therefrom. The alternative would have been from York to the Humber at Brough, then, after the ferry, to Lincoln along Ermine Street and thence to the world beyond.

I was therefore interested to find online a couple of videos about this type of watchtower or signal station on the northern frontier of the Empire is now the Netherlands and Germany. The two are filmed at reconstructed towers and explain how they operated as a system of defence and warning, and also about the life of those who are stationed in them.

They can be seen at Watchtowers: the Roman System of Border Defense and at  

What was Watchtower Duty like on the Roman Frontier? DOCUMENTARY

A painting for All Saints Day

Trying to find a suitable artwork to share for All Saints was not easy. Durer’s Asoration of the Trinity  certainly includes a lot of saints but it is more an image of the Church Trumphant and Militant in adoration rather than just a celebration of those whose reward has been gained and is assured.

I then turned to the can Eyck Adoration of the Lamb. As I read the article on Wikipedia I saw the idea advanced that the composition references the liturgy for All Saints, and that decided me to share the article. It is lengthy and quite detailed both in analysing the painting but also in recounting its misadventures over almost six centuries. It is a wonder that we still have it.

The scale of the work means that only small portions make it to the article, but there is sufficient to indicate the microscopic detail and skill in its creation. It is justly esteemed as one of the truly great works of European painting

The article can be seen at Ghent Altarpiece

Warding off witches in Lincolnshire

Today is Halloween and, whilst from my view point, the modern commercialised things surrounding the day should be ignored, there has been the traditional telling of stories about witches and witchcraft and about warding off evil.

They have been some recent online reports about the ways in which people in the past warded off the activities of witches and of the evil eye in Lincolnshire.

The first concerns a survey that has been undertaken of witch marks and of other superstitious markings designed to protect against the house burning down at the Old Hall at Gainsborough. In recent years such symbolic marks have received more attention and it is clear that Gainsborough is a major resource for the study of these things. the Hickman family who owned the house at the beginning of the seventeenth century were closely associated with the Pilgrim Fathers who, of course, left initially from Boston for the United Provinces before their journey across the Atlantic in 1620. They and similarly-minded people were particularly conscious of what they saw as the threat posed by witches in the seventeenth century.

The reports can be seen from the Daily Telegraph at Secret ‘witch marks’ found in Tudor Manir House, from The Guardian at ‘Staggering array’ of witches’ marks discovered at English Heritage site, and from Sky News at 'Astonishing' witches' marks discovered at heritage site - including curses

Like some of the members of the Hickman’s ‘house church’ who met at the Hall the story of the discovery has crossed the Atlantic and is reported upon in some considerable detail by the Washington Post in Centuries-old ‘witches marks’ found carved into walls of English Manor House 

If you have not visited and are in the vicinity I would strongly recommend a visit to Gainsborough Old Hall, which has buildings dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and is a relatively rare survival of a house of its type. It has a very impressive late medieval timber framed Hall and a spectacular brick kitchen with multiple hearths for feeding the owner and his household, not to mention distinguished guests.

The English Heritage website about it can be seen at Gainsborough Old Hall and Wikipedia has a history of the building and its owners at Gainsborough Old Hall

Coincidentally the BBC News website reports on a new exhibition at Lincoln Castle about charms against witches that have been found in the county from as late as the nineteenth century.

The article can be seen at Witchcraft charms go on display at Lincoln Castle

 It also refers to the Belvoir witchcraft case of 1618-19. BelvoirCastle, just over the county boundary in north-east Leicestershire, was at the centre of charges claiming that two children of the Earl of Rutland had been bewitched to death. The monument to the children in the Manners family burial place of Bottesford church is unique in explicitly stating that they died as a result of witchcraft. The story of this well documented and sensational case, together with modern theories about what was going on, can be seen on Wikipedia at Witches of Belvoir