england – It's More Fun to Be Jack of All Trades than Master of One

Celts: Art and Identity (British Museum Exhibition)

At the end of 2015 the British Museum put on an exhibition about the Celts, looking at both the original culture in its historical context and the way it was later re-imagined. The overall take home message from the exhibition was that the ancient people we now call Celts probably didn’t think of themselves as such, and the modern peoples who we call Celts don’t necessarily have that much to do with the ancient Celts. The Greeks were the first to refer to “the Celts”, and the Romans later took up the term. They used it for the barbarians to the North and East of Greece & Rome – in modern day Spain, France, Eastern Europe and Turkey; not Britain (at least not intially). It’s not known if the Celts saw themselves as single culture, nor if they used the term Celts to describe themselves, but it seems unlikely.

To set the tone the exhibition opened with three iconic (modern) Celtic symbols: an Irish harp, the Druid’s flag and a Pictish stone. And then around the corner were some examples of ancient Celtic art, and video showing the changes in what Celt has meant through the ages – covering along the way the noble barbarians of Roman writings, the Christian monks of Ireland, the national folk heroes of the 19th Century. After this the exhibition fell into two parts: first the historical Celts and then the later re-imagining of Celtic identity.

The ancient Celtic artifacts were laid out in several cases in one long sweeping room, with curved trails on the ceiling which you could use as a guide for how to travel between the cases. I hope they did that on purpose (I’m sure they did), because it seemed awfully thematically appropriate. The central theme of this whole room was that the ancient Celts were many different peoples & tribes, but they were linked by shared culture, art style and languages. So it seemed appropriate to be moving between the disparate cases following a line drawn from their art style. An important difference between Celtic art and the contemporary Greek art was that the Celts weren’t interested in naturalistic representations. Of course the abstract swirls and so on aren’t naturalistic, but even their portrayals of animals (as in the jug I have a picture of below) are stylised rather than realistic. (That jug is one of the Basse-Yutz Flagons, found in France dating to 400-360BCE – I took this picture a couple of years ago, one of the pair is on display in the Iron Age Europe room in the British Museum, and it’s one of my favourite items to go & see.)

Jug With Hunting Dogs and Duck Decoration

The items in this room were grouped thematically rather than by culture, to emphasise the commonalities. Near the beginning of the space was a reminder that they shared so much because the world was a connected world then as it is now – trade links people – and one of the cases that was particularly striking was a selection of torcs from right across the Celtic region. They were all recognisably the same thing, but different areas had different styles. Some were big and powerful looking, some were beautiful and delicately made. I particularly liked a big silver one from southwest Germany which had bulls heads as the terminals. And then as counterpoint to that case there was a hoard of torcs that was discovered in Scotland – there are several different styles of torc in this hoard, but all were made locally and inspired by exotic foreign designs.

As well as traders the Celts were also warriors. One of the items in the exhibition for this theme was a carynx – a boar headed warhorn. They had both an original and a replica, and a recording of a replica being played, which was rather cool. They also had a replica chariot, based on fittings found in a grave in Wetwang, Yorkshire dating to c.200 BCE, which I was a bit surprised to see had some basic sort of suspension rather than being completely solid.

The Celts also went in for feasting in a big way – the Greek writers thought the Celts were very fond of their wine. And to serve their feasts they had ornate vessels, some of which have also been discovered in graves for feasting in the afterlife. The pièce de résistance here was the Grundestrup Cauldron, which I would’ve loved to’ve taken photos of but had to settle for a postcard instead – which shows the same bit of decoration as the photo below (which I found on wikipedia with a licence that meant I could use it). It’s not actually my favourite bit of the decoration – that was the bit with the warriors playing carynxs.

Gundestrup Cauldron Decoration, photo by Malene Thyssen.

The next section of the exhibition looked at the impact of Roman conquest on Celtic art, and identity. In continental Europe the Celtic style pretty much vanished in favour of Roman art. The situation in Britain was more complex – Britain was conquered relatively late, and never completely, so it was more of a frontier and never fully assimilated culturally into the Empire. There was definitely some Roman art in Britain of course – for instance they had on display a statue of Nero found in East Anglia around the time of Boudicea. And there was also some amalgamation of gods (and associated iconography). But Celtic art styles and culture also became a badge of “not Roman”, particularly around the periphery of the Empire on both sides of the border. Torcs, for instance, became more elaborate and are used as a statement of cultural identity (as opposed to just of status within the culture).

The exhibition then moved on to a time after the Romans left and after the Anglo-Saxons arrived. In this period the Celts were once again the periphery of the main culture of the British Isles – the “not Anglo-Saxon” peoples living at the western & northern edges. These post-Roman Celts were Christians, and their Christianity had an art & devotional style that was distinctively Celtic. The items that caught my eye in this section were a large (replica) stone cross from Iona, and at the other end of the scale the St Chad Gospels. For all their Christianity they still kept telling some of their original mythological stories – we know this because they were written down later in the medieval period in manuscripts like the Book of the White Earl.

The last couple of sections of the exhibition left behind the historical Celts and moved on to the later rediscovery & re-imagining of Celtic identity. There’s no evidence that the historical Celts ever thought of themselves as Celtic, and once the Romans had left Britain no-one else called them Celts either. This changed with the Renaissance, when scholars returned the old Greek/Roman term to use, but redefined it as specifically the people of the north-west of the British Isles rather than a Europe-wide culture. Books from the 17th Century tended to depict the ancient Celts in a very similar way to the way contemporary artists depicted Native Americans, and this theme continued through to some Victorian art as well. Even down to skin tone in some cases, as if the peoples met on the other side of the world had to be physically similar to ancient peoples because all were considered “noble savages”! The mind boggles.

From the 1750’s onwards the Celts and their mythology & history were retold in romanticised tales. For instance in 1760 there was a book publised by James Macpherson which purported to be a translation of work by the Celtic bard Ossiam. It was enormously popular, inspiring paintings and sculpture, and admired across Europe by people such as Goethe & Napoleon. Even after it was revealed to be the fabrication of Macpherson and not remotely ancient nor Celtic it still retained a lot of influence. The later 19th Century Celtic Revival was based a little bit more in fact – archaeological discoveries like the Tara brooch inspired jewellery designs and pattern books. Rennie Mackintosh’s work is a part of this movement and the part that I like. The part that I’m rather less fond of is what I’d characterise as Victorian twee-ness, and they had several examples of such things. There’d been a Victorian statue of Caractacus earlier in the exhibition that fell into this category, and also a few rather twee paintings of Celtic myths (like John Duncan’s The Riders of the Sidhe). And they also had the regalia of the National Eistedfodd in the exhibition, all my notes say is “Victorian invention, twee beyond belief!”.

The exhibition finished with a look at Celtic identity today. Again, it’s political and political in a “we’re not that lot” sense just as it was back in Anglo-Saxon times or Roman times. Nowadays of course it’s English that a Celt is not. As the English born & brought up child of Scottish parents I personally don’t see myself as either English or Scottish, preferring to call myself British. But the parts of the Celtic diaspora that headed to the US in particular have a different way to look at it. The exhibition noted that there are more people who identify as Irish in the US than there are in Ireland! And in Ireland itself Celtic identity is a powerful political statement – the mythological Irish hero Cúchulainn is now a big part of Irish Nationalist identity.

I really liked this exhibition (I even went to see it twice!), although I preferred the earlier sections about the historical Celts to the later parts about the re-imagined Celtic identity 🙂

In Our Time: Holbein at the Tudor Court

Hans Holbein the Younger was one of the foremost portrait painters to work in England during the Tudor period (and perhaps ever), and it’s his paintings that shape how we see the court of Henry VIII. Discussing his time at the Tudor court on In Our Time were Susan Foister (the National Gallery), John Guy (Clare College, University of Cambridge) and Maria Hayward (University of Southampton).

They started the programme by setting the scene for the Tudor court of 1526, when Holbein first arrives. At this point Henry VIII has been on the throne for 17 years. Cardinal Wolsey is still his right hand man, and Anne Boleyn has just arrived on the scene. In terms of international politics there has just been a bit of a shake up. Previously Henry VIII was allied with the Spanish against the French – there had been a plan that the two countries would co-ordinate an attack on France, and once successful Henry VIII would get to keep northern France (and be crowned King of France) and the Spanish would claim southern France. However the Spanish had won a victory over the French, but then not divided the spoils with England as Henry VIII thought they’d agreed. So the alliance had broken down, and now Henry VIII was allied with France. Which is another factor in the waning influence of Henry’s Spanish wife, Katharine of Aragon, and in the rising influence of the French educated Anne Boleyn. I don’t think I’d heard anyone explicitly point out this political connection before, the narrative generally focuses on the need for an heir and “true love”.

Hans Holbein’s father was also called Hans Holbein and was also an artist, so generally “the Younger” and “the Elder” are appended to their names to disambiguate them. I don’t think they said on the programme where Hans Holbein the Younger was born, but it was in continental Europe (Germany, if I remember correctly). He was probably educated alongside his brother, by their father, in a wide variety of artistic techniques and media. This included goldsmith designs and techniques, frescos and other sorts of painting, and producing illustrations for printed books. This last was particularly emphasised by the experts on the programme as a new and lucrative market for an artist at the time. In early adulthood Holbein and his brother move to Basel (Switzerland) where they make a living mostly from illustrations and engravings, but also from religious paintings.

Holbein was looking for an opportunity to become a court painter (as it was a lucrative and prestigiuos position to hold). I think they said he had tried to get employment at the French court, but not had much success. In 1526 he moved to London, with a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Thomas More. He had probably sent ahead his portrait of Erasmus as a showcase for what his skills were. Thomas More was apparently not very optimistic about Holbein’s chances of employment in London. He wrote that England was “not fertile ground” – tapestries and theatrical sets where the dominant arts in the country at the time, not portraiture. But the experts suggest that with the benefit of hindsight this may have been because there wasn’t an accomplished portrait artist available until Holbein arrived.

During this first stay in London there doesn’t seem to’ve been much work – he started by being employed to paint theatrical sets, and he also undertook some commissions from Thomas More and from some other members of the elite (although not necessarily the court). Holbein returned to Basel – they weren’t clear on the programme why, nor if he originally intended to stay there. I’m not sure if that’s coz it isn’t known, or if it’s just that the programme was concentrating on his time in Tudor England so they were skipping lightly over the other information.

In 1532 Holbein returned to London. This is just as Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII finally get married, and there is some evidence that Anne Boleyn is a patron of his. There are no records available to say whether or not she actually paid him for anything, but there are several paintings with links to her. Including one painting of her in her nightgown (for which read “dressing gown” not “nightie”) – so he had access to her in informal settings such as her bedchamber which is a distinct mark of her favour. He is also first recorded on Henry VIII’s payroll during this time – so he has achieved his ambition of becoming a court painter. Although apparently he wasn’t paid as well as he might like – the French court painters received more money and more privileges from their king!

Holbein clearly had a knack for politics, or rather for staying out of politics. He remained in the employ of Henry VIII until his death in 1543, through the downfall of Anne Boleyn, and even weathered the storm surrounding Henry’s brief marriage to Anne of Cleves. When Henry was looking for his fourth wife, Holbein was the man sent to the courts of Europe to paint the potential brides. The two best known paintings are that of Anne of Cleves and that of Christina Duchess of Milan (who turned Henry down). It’s known that Holbein didn’t actually get to paint the whole Christina’s portrait from life – he had one 3 hour sitting with her, and quite probably only brought drawings back to London which he subsequently turned into a painting. It’s really quite remarkable that Holbein didn’t fall into disfavour after Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves failed almost before it began. Henry’s complaint was that he found Anne too ugly, but there’s no indication that he blamed Holbein for misrepresenting her (he did blame Cromwell, however). And the experts said that Holbein probably didn’t misrepresent Anne – despite Henry’s distaste she seems to’ve been regarded by contemporaries as a handsome woman. Probably the most Holbein did was minimise the German-ness of her clothing and headdress, so she would look more fashionable to English eyes.

As well as this overview of Holbein’s career in England the experts also discussed some of his better known paintings – you’d think that would be quite hard on a radio programme but I recognised all the works they discussed from having seen them previously, so had the right mental images. One of them was one of my favourite things in the Portrait Gallery when I visited it last year: the surviving half of the cartoon for the Whitehall Mural. The finished piece (which doesn’t survive) was a large dynastic portrait of the Tudors so far. On the left were Henry VIII and his father Henry VII, and on the right were their wives – Elizabeth of York for Henry VII and Jane Seymour for Henry VIII. The timing of this portrait is around or just after the birth of Edward VI, Henry VIII & Jane’s son. The cartoon is the same size as the painting was, so we can see that the viewer would’ve been presented with a lifesize image of the King standing directly in front of them – apparently terrifying for those who saw it. Inspection of the cartoon shows that originally the figure wasn’t full frontal, but Henry apparently wanted that changed so it would have the maximum impact.

Another of the paintings they discussed was the girl with a squirrel that we’d seen in the British Museum’s Germany exhibition in 2014. This portrait combines a clever use of symbols with a warm & touching portrait – the squirrel is not just the girl’s pet, it’s also part of her family’s coat of arms. And they also discussed The Ambassadors, which I think of as “the one with the weird skull in front”. This painting is also not just a portrait of the two men – it also showcases Holbein’s skill at painting many different objects. Including the distorted momento mori motif of the skull, which looks just right if viewed from the side of the painting.

Even at the time of Holbein’s death he was regarded as a particularly good portrait painter, and his reputation has only increased since. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Holbein’s portraits are how we see Henry VIII’s court. Those paintings are what shape our mental image of “the Tudors” and are what take them from a collection of dates and facts and turn them into people in our collective imagination.

Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy (Exhibition at British Library)

While I was in a London for a few days in July 2015 I visited the Magna Carta: Law, Liberty and Legacy exhibition at the British Library, which was put on to mark the 800th anniversary of the original issue of the charter. The items displayed in the exhibition were mostly written documents (as you might expect in a library) although there were also some other things, including paintings and examples of seals. There were also several short films each of which had someone talking about a particular aspect of the charter & its legacy. The talking heads were a variety of historians, lawyers and politicians. I did like these, they added quite a bit to the exhibition, but they also broke up the flow a bit – there wasn’t always enough space for people to walk past those who were standing and watching them, so at times the galleries felt clogged up.

The first section of the exhibition put Magna Carta into its original historical context. There were some examples of charters issued by previous kings (such as one by Henry I), and some contemporary accounts of King John. One of these was written by Matthew Paris, who really didn’t much approve of John – something he wrote after John’s death included the quote: “Hell foul as it is, is made fouler still by presence of John”! In this section they also displayed some earlier drafts of the charter, made as it was being negotiated at Runnymead. And they had several examples of seals, including the one used by John to seal the Magna Carta. Almost immediately after the Magna Carta was issued John repealed it – asking the Pope to declare it invalid in a Papal Bull (which was there to see in the exhibition). When he unexpectedly died during the ensuing civil war his young son Henry came to the throne at the age of 9. He began a period of using reissuing the Magna Carta as a means of legitimising the authority of the King which continued over the next century or so.

They had a rather neat animated graphic in the exhibition which showed the various clauses being weeded out over time until only the last few more general ones remained. This covered up until the modern day, despite it’s placement at this point in the exhibition – I think because after this the exhibition moved on to looking at the legacy rather than the actual thing itself. The common theme tying together the rest of the exhibition was that “Magna Carta” came to represent more as an idea and a totem than was actually present in the original document.

After the 13th Century the importance of the Magna Carta faded – to the extent that when Shakespeare wrote his play about King John in the 16th Century he didn’t even reference the document. There was a revival of interest in it in the 17th Century which is the beginning of the modern prominence of the document. It was used to justify rebellion against a tyrant King during the run up to the Civil War and subsequently used against Parliament when they were felt to be becoming tyrants.

Magna Carta has become extremely important both in US culture and US law. The Declaration of Independence draws on the charter and uses language that directly references it. Even before that the laws of the early colonies were based on Magna Carta. It’s still important in the US legal tradition today – one of the talking head videos was explaining that it has been used as part of the legal argument against the incarceration of people in Guantanamo Bay.

During the 18th & 19th Centuries radicals within the UK continue to use Magna Carta when challenging the government, for instance the Chartists write a new revised version suitable for their times (and agenda). Magna Carta was generally not applicable in the British Empire, and one of the things that the 20th Century sees is the the newly independent ex-colony states issuing documents to grant these rights to their citizens. And there’s a tendency for grants of legal rights to be referred to as the Something Magna Carta (i.e. the Maori Magna Carta) even tho the content of the documents is very far from the content of the original Magna Carta (which is really quite specific and parochial in scope despite the later reputation). More recently it has also been invoked by Nelson Mandela and by Aung San Suu Kyi. In contrast to Shakespeare’s day the Magna Carta is now also likely to show up in popular culture. The penultimate section of the exhibition displayed several examples of this – including thoroughly anacronistic representations of King John signing the charter!

The exhibition then finished with the showpieces – two original copies of the Magna Carta. One of these was from Canterbury and had been very damaged, whereas the other one was in much better condition. Of course, it was in Latin (and abbreviated wherever possible) so even being able to see the text didn’t mean I could read it!

It was an interesting exhibition – although I think I was more interested in the beginning sections about the medieval history (and the very end) rather than the bits about the legacy. I was interested enough overall to buy the book tho! 🙂

Armada: 12 Days to Save England

Back in June of this year the BBC did a three part series about the Spanish Armada and how (astonishingly) England wasn’t conquered by Spain in 1588. It was billed as “part dramatisation, part documentary” so I was a bit concerned in advance that it wouldn’t be my cup of tea. But it turned out to be on the right side of the line for my tastes – a selection of set pieces but mostly a straightforward documentary series. The main presenter was Dan Snow, who we’ve seen do a selection of history documentaries in the past, more than one with a naval theme. There were several talking heads throughout the series – the primary one was Geoffrey Parker, who is an expert on James II of Spain. He’s discovered & researched a lot of documentation kept by James II on the Armada including a report from the second in command of the fleet which gave his opinions on why the invasion failed. Another strand of the documentary segments was two naval historians discussing the tactics the Spanish & English fleets used, and showed us them by pushing ships about on a battle map. Of the two, I recognised Sam Willis who we’ve seen present other documentaries and I forget who the other chap was. The conversations between the two of them were sadly a bit stilted and at times made it feel like Willis was explaining himself and his theories to his PhD supervisor in a meeting!

The two main threads running through the series were the naval tactics of the two sides and the more human side of the personalities & foibles of the key players in the war. I’m not really interested in military history per se so I hadn’t looked into the details of the Armada before – just absorbed the narrative of “superpower of the day goes up against plucky minor country and somehow fails, mostly due to inclement weather”. God Is On Our Side, and all that sort of thing. The reality is, of course, more nuanced than that. Whilst the storms around the north & west of the British Isles are what finally finished off a lot of the Spainish fleet, they’d actually already lost before they sailed through the storms. The English had got the upper hand through better tech and new tactics to go with it (including sailing in to their own gun range to fire on the Spanish, then sailing away before getting to a range where the Spanish could reply). However supply issues (Elizabeth I was both unwilling and unable to pay for sufficient ammo, or even food for the sailors) meant that this wasn’t decisive. The Spanish also lost by their own actions, largely due to a strict adherence to the original plan by the commander despite that plan having fatal flaws from its conception let alone after they met the opposing fleet.

The two fleets had similar command structures – political appointment at the top, second in command an experienced seaman. The key difference was that Francis Drake (the English second in command) was actually listened to. The Duke of Medina Sidonia (commander of the Spanish fleet) had been Spain’s second choice and wasn’t keen on taking the job because he had no naval expertise – but sadly for the Spanish his reservations about his own abilities meant he insisted on following James II of Spain’s original plan to the letter. This plan was that the fleet would sail round to the English Channel and pick up the Spanish army in Holland, together the combined forces would invade England (from Kent, iirc). But the plan didn’t include any detail for how the navy & the army would combine and communication between the two was not established in time for the plan to be put into action. And eventually after several failures to co-ordinate with the army, and battles with the English where the Spanish were at a disadvantage to begin with and then loss, finally the Duke’s nerve broke and he took the fleet round to the north & west to get away from the English fleet and back to Spain. His second in command repeatedly suggested alternate courses of action: a pre-emptive strike on Portsmouth to bottle up the English fleet; capture a deep harbour on the English coast and settle in to figure out how to meet up with the army in relative safety; etc. But the Duke wouldn’t deviate from the plan, and so they lost.

Part of the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s problem was that James II was something of a control freak. I knew pretty much nothing about James prior to this program other than: married Mary I of England, failed to have children; tried to marry Elizabeth, was refused; tried to conquer England, failed. So the characterisation of James in this documentary was particularly interesting to me (and I should really add a biography of him to my to-read mountain). He was a deeply pious man, and this fuelled much of his desire to get England under his control – rescuing it from the taint of Protestant heresy. He was also a micro-manager. In this case he’d laid down a Plan, and left the Duke of Medina Sidonia in no doubt that if he deviated from The Plan then there would be trouble. He was also a compulsive note-taker and prefered to communicate with his underlings by the written word. Which is why we know he was a micro-manager – there are archives full of his notes.

I liked the characterisation of Elizabeth I in this programme – the Gloriana myth she and her PR team promoted was talked about, but they portrayed the woman herself as the Tudor she was. Mean (in the financial sense), paranoid and a control freak. Made me think of the biography of Henry VII that I read several years ago (and am convinced I wrote up a review for a previous incarnation of this blog, but now cannot find): “Winter King” by Thomas Penn.

Overall I enjoyed this series – made me aware how little I actually knew about the Spanish Armada (and Spanish history) and then educated me about it 🙂

The Greatest Knight: William the Marshal

William the Marshal is one of the men responsible for the Magna Carta as we now know it. His seal is on the re-issuing of the charter in 1217 by Henry III, in his role as Regent for the king. His statue stands in the House of Lords behind the monarch’s throne defending the monarchy as he did in life. Earlier this year we watched a programme that was a biography of him, which rather surprisingly wasn’t part of the Magna Carta anniversary programmes that the BBC put on to coincide with 800 years (since the charter was first signed) as it was first aired in early 2014. The programme was presented by Thomas Ashbridge whose series on the Crusades we’d previously been less than impressed with (post). This programme was rather good, tho 🙂

After William the Marshal’s death his family commissioned a biography of him in verse form, which still survives. The text is in Norman French as one might expect for a member of the nobility of the time. Ashbridge opened the programme by showing us this book and telling us a little about it. Of course, as he said, it’s not all to be taken as literally true – it’s primary purpose is to demonstrate what an illustrious ancestor the family had. I assume Ashbridge used other sources to corroborate the information in the programme, but he didn’t say what those were.

William was born during the Anarchy, the civil war between the Empress Mathilda and Stephen de Blois. He was the second son of a minor noble and his father was on Mathilda’s side – or at least, not on Stephen’s. When William was 4 he was taken hostage by Stephen’s forces and Stephen attempted to win a seige of William’s father’s stronghold by threatening to kill the child. William’s father was not cowed by this threat, replying that he had the equipment to make more sons and leaving William to his fate. Clearly Stephen was bluffing, as William survived the encounter! You can’t help but think it must’ve been pretty traumatic, tho – it included William being paraded back & forth in front of the castle whilst his life was threatened.

In his adolescence he went across the channel to France to a relative of his mother’s to train as a knight. Ashbridge pointed out that during this time period the cross-channel connections for the nobility were still very strong and this would not be like going to a different country. Knights were a pretty new part of the culture and warfare of the time, and the stirrup was the new cutting edge technology of the day. It was a role that was really only available to the nobility, as you had to have an expensive horse. Ashbridge talked a bit about knights in general, and also showed some representations of them from this era. They were reminiscent of the Lewis Chessmen and of Norse berserker imagery – which isn’t entirely a surprise given the origins of the Normans. I think I hadn’t expected it to be quite noticeable in depictions of knights, because the mental image I have of “a knight” is from a later more courtly era.

The biography of William creates an image of a somewhat greedy and lazy teenager during these years (it’s not entirely a hagiography)! But once he was knighted (perhaps on the eve of battle, I can’t remember what Ashbridge said) he began to win a name for himself in tourneys. These are not the stylised and formal affairs of the later high medieval period, instead they are wide-ranging fairly brutal fights between groups of knights. The primary aim to was to capture some of the opposing side, who you could then ransom for a nice little cash bonus. William’s biography tries to claim he was only interested in honour and victory, but it does also mention his accountant who kept track of the ransoms he was paid. So clearly William was also interested in the money to be made, and made sufficient to employ someone to look after it for him!

William entered the court of Henry the Young King via Henry’s mother Eleanor of Acquitaine. (Henry the Young King was the eldest son of Henry II and Eleanor, and was crowned in his father’s lifetime.) William was part of his master’s entourage escorting Eleanor somewhere when they were ambushed. Most of the escort died but William and the other survivors managed to fight off the enemy forces for long enough for Eleanor to escape. He was captured, but once she was in safety she ransomed him and brought him to court. Once in the Young King’s court he rises to prominence as the best knight at court.

The politics of the court is a perilous game for William to negotiate, particularly with his status as the best knight. His biography states that at one point he is exiled due to a whispering campaign about himself and the Young King’s wife with hints that perhaps there was some degree of truth to it. This sounds very Lancelot & Guinevere, and may be a complete work of fantasy on the biographer’s part – after all by the time the text was written all the protagonists were safely dead so no offence could be given by a bit of nudge-nudge-wink-wink-the-queen-fancied-him. This was one point in particular where I wish Ashbridge had brought in other sources and talked about how plausible this was in terms of historical fact. He did talk to another historian who made the point that the Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere love triangle story reflects a very real anxiety of a Prince of that era. Court society at the time had a combination of a meritocracy of sorts (the knights) and a hereditary monarchy – the King or Prince was unlikely to be both the son of the right man and the best knight in his court. And if prowess at knighthood is the definition of the perfect man, then why wouldn’t the King’s wife be attracted to the best knight?

The next phase of William’s life is in the Holy Land as a Crusader. This is just before the time of Saladin and Richard III. Obviously Richard III is not yet in the Holy Land – he is Henry the Young King’s younger brother and didn’t go on Crusade until around the time he became King after both Henry II and Henry the Young King’s deaths. However Saladin is one of the key players at this stage. Not much is known about William’s time as a Crusader, other than that it happened – however he seems to’ve done well at it, and increased his reputation.

William then returns to Henry the Young King’s court, where he remains until the Young King’s death in 1183. He then enters the service of the Young King’s father, Henry II. Again he rises to prominence as the best knight at court. Henry II gives him an heiress to marry, and grants him lands – William is now a baron, a member of the landed aristocracy with a household and a retinue of knights of his own. Not bad for the second son of a minor noble. William remains a loyal servant of Henry II’s until the very end – in the last rebellion of Richard I (Richard Coeur de Lion) against Henry II William fought on Henry’s side. The biography says that at one point he was fighting one-to-one against Richard, and had the opportunity to kill him but at the last moment turned his lance aside and killed Richard’s horse instead. When Henry II died during this rebellion (although not directly by violence) William remained loyal even after death – Henry’s other servants fled, taking what they could, but William remained to see to Henry’s proper burial.

It might’ve been thought that Richard I would exile or otherwise punish William as he had fought against Richard during the rebellion. However Richard saw William’s actions as the honourable actions of a knight – he had remained loyal to his lord, and even after death did not dishonour his memory. And so William entered Richard’s service, and was subsequently a member of King John’s court when he in turn inherited the throne.

When John died in 1215 William was an old man in his mid-70s, and had pretty much retired from the life of the court. At the time of John’s death the country was in a perilous state – civil war was raging and the French King’s son had invaded (with the support of much of the English nobility) and ruled over half the country. Despite William’s age it was to him that the new King, Henry III a boy of 9 years old, turned. When he flung himself on William’s mercy William pledged to serve him despite the risks of failure because that was what his honour demanded. If William and the new King had failed to prevail in the civil war then William wasn’t just risking death, he was also risking the ruin of his family and household. And even at the end of his life he lived up to his reputation – he rallied support to the new King, he turned around the civil war and drove out the French. He was Regent for Henry III until his death in 1219, and as I said at the beginning of this post his seal is on Henry III’s first re-issuance of the Magna Carta.

This was a really interesting programme – I didn’t know much about William the Marshal before, although I knew the name, so I learnt lot from it.

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 18)

In the final chapter of this book Prestwich draws together the ideas and themes he explored in the rest of the book and discusses what it meant to be English during this period (1225-1360). On the one hand England was a pretty cosmopolitan society – there were many leading figures in the government who weren’t English born, and migrants with useful skills were encouraged (Flemish weavers during Edward III’s reign, for instance). On the other hand there was a strong sense of an English identity. Foreigners apparently had a simple stereotype: Englishmen had tails and were usually drunk! The English themselves had a bit more of a nuanced view, although not necessarily more complimentary. The author of the Vita of Edward II for instance said that the English “excel other nations in three qualities, in pride, in craft and in perjury”. The north/south divide is already evident during this time – southerners are considered more civilised. And there is still a sense of an ethnic divide between the aristocracy (of Norman descent) and commoners (of Saxon descent) but both are also considered English.

Language was important to both national identity and social status. There was a sense that English people should speak English – and Edward III used the idea that the French wanted to wipe out the use of English in England as a piece of propaganda to drum up popular support for his wars in France. But speaking French still marked one as part of the social elite. Prestwich discusses how this French is changing and becoming more English – by the end of the period it’s generally a learnt language not a naturally acquired one, and the French definitely think that the English speakers of French don’t speak it properly. Culturally England is still close to Northern France, but differences are beginning to emerge. The English literature of the period (whether written in English or French) has a distinctive voice, and has English heroes and covers themes & political concerns peculiar to England.

During this period English art & architecture also developed a distinct style. For most of the 13th Century Western European culture was dominated by the French styles of architecture, but by the late 13th Century the English Decorated style was developing. It was more exuberant, and featured more naturalistic carving & sculpture. Art in the form of paintings hasn’t survived in particularly great numbers & Prestwich doesn’t discuss how this compared to the previous French style. Illuminated manuscripts and embroidery (tapestry) do survive and display high quality work – some of it reflecting the new English Decorated style of the architecture.

The legal system was an important part of English identity. In border regions whose law you were subjected to was important – a lord who had both English and Welsh tenants in the Marches would be expected to deal with the two groups via their own law and their own courts. The legal system in England was distinctive in that it was not codified – it was a law based on litigation and precedents, and it was primarily learnt by attending courts. This was something that struck me in particular while I was reading this book – how much is known because the court records are preserved, and how often people took each other to court.

The mythology surrounding England’s origins as a country had a couple of different (mutually contradictory strands) during this era. One strand emphasised King Arthur and the Britons, with an ultimate origin of the country in Brutus the Trojan who defeated giants in Albion and founded Britain. The other concentrated on the Anglo-Saxons and the uniting of their kingdoms, and appealed to the authority of Bede’s history of the English.

The wars of the period helped to strengthen the sense of Englishness. In the case of the Anglo-Scottish wars there weren’t particularly large cultural differences between the two sides, but propaganda (on both sides) still made the enemy out to be vicious barbarians coming to commit atrocities against civilised people. The Anglo-French wars are often held up as important in forging an sense of Englishness as distinct from the Norman culture that stretched across England and Northern France. However Prestwich thinks it wasn’t that significant – he sees most of the national sentiments as being there already. And points out that Edward III would want to be careful about negative portrayals of the people he hoped to rule if he won.

The intellectual life of England was a significant part of the mainstream European intellectual culture. Oxford and Cambridge were two of the greatest universities of Europe in this period. Prestwich gives mini-biographies of a few of the intellectual elite – including Ockham of Ockham’s Razor – and discusses briefly the controversy of the day: nominalism vs. realism. Slightly confusingly nominalism is the school of thought that the only real things are those that can be observed and tested, whereas realism holds that there are absolute realities which the actual objects can only be approximations of.

Prestwich concludes by looking at the large scale trends throughout the period that the book covers. In the 1220s England was politically unstable with a weak monarchy and factional rifts among the ruling elite. The country was also militarily weak, and had barely succeeded in keeping independent of French rule. In contrast, the economy was strong, the population was rising and the peasants were firmly under the thumb of the aristocracy. By the 1360s this was reversed – England was politically and militarily strong, but the economy and population had collapsed (particularly in the wake of the Black Death). The peasantry were more able to make their feelings known as labour was now scarce. One of the key developments of the era not touched on by my simplistic summary was the emergence of Parliament as a mechanism for the monarch to consult with not just the highest ranking nobles but also the community of the realm as a whole via representatives for each county.

And so I have finally finished this book – I was reading it for around 18 months in the end. Which is too long! And it was primarily because I wasn’t very diligent at coming back to reading it. But also because writing the summaries takes time and so I don’t tend to read much more till I’m caught up with that in case I get too far ahead of myself. On the other hand, writing the summaries means I’ve retained rather more of the information, so I think it’s a net positive.

I enjoyed reading the book – I found Prestwich’s style readable and at times humorous (in a dry academic fashion). When I’ve whittled down my to-be-read pile a bit I may look for some more of his books – I know he’s written a biography of Edward I which would be interesting. It’s part of a series of books from Yale University Press on English Monarchs, which may make for an interesting project once I’ve finished the New Oxford History of England series (of which the present book is part) in a decade or two!

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“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 17)

I’m into the home straight with this book – and actually finished reading it a while ago, I’ve just got a backlog of posts to write 🙂 This is the penultimate chapter, all that’s left after this is the conclusion.

Population and the Black Death

The overall picture of population changes in England between 1225 and 1360 is first growth in the 13th Century, followed by a plateau in the early 14th Century and a catastrophic decrease caused by the Black Death in 1348. However despite this clear big picture the details are more difficult to get a proper grasp of, and so Prestwich spent the first half of this chapter looking at the sorts of evidence used to assess the population and discussing the sorts of numbers these indicate.

The population of a region is affected by three things – birth rate, death rate and migration – and Prestwich looks at these in turn. There’s very little evidence for what the birth rate in England was during this period – births were not required to be recorded. And it is difficult to make generalisations from what data there is because birth rates vary within populations & across time. There is some evidence that people tried to control the size of their families (via herbal concoctions or coitus interuptus) despite the disapproval of the Church. However a lack of understanding of reproductive biology & the female anatomy meant that this was difficult to do successfully. Prestwich notes that there is very little evidence for abortion (or attempted abortion), nor for infanticide. Death rates were affected by environmental causes like famines, and also by economic circumstances. Prestwich suggests that the growth in the 13th Century may’ve lead to the population outstripping the ability of the cultivatable land to feed it, leading to the plateau in the early 14th Century. Migration to and from England had little effect on the overall population, however internal migration had a large effect on the population of particular towns etc.

Prestwich next works through a couple of examples of starting assumptions and hypotheses to arrive at some estimates for the overall population at the peak at end of the 13th Century. All the methods of calculating the population have their own problems, and the margins of error are huge. However Prestwich suggests figures of between 4 million and 7 million, with 5 million being a plausible number to keep in mind. This is about two to three times the population at the end of the 11th Century (which one can estimate using the Domesday Book as a starting point). For a couple of modern comparisons: the modern population of Scotland is of the order of 5 milliion people, in contrast the population of London in 2013 (according to wikipedia) was on the order of 8.5 million.

On a more local level there are sometimes surviving records that give a better indication of population levels in a particular community – but historians disagree about how reliable these are (and how to extrapolate from what’s there). For instance manorial court records survive for some areas – like Coltishall in Norfolk where numbers of tenants can be calculated: 119 in 1314, 168 in 1349 and 74 in 1359. That doesn’t tell you how big their families were but it does suggest a rising population which then falls sharply after the Black Death. Prestwich goes through a few examples of the types of records that survive and what they can tell us. He also discusses the indirect evidence that can be used – like how much land is in cultivation (more suggests more people need fed). Or how much tax was returned from a community.

The second half of the chapter discusses the Black Death. This was probably the biggest human catastrophe ever to affect England – up to half the population died. It is generally said that the Black Death was an epidemic of Yersinia pestis (bubonic plague), and I had thought this was a known thing. However Prestwich devotes three or so pages to discussing the problems with this identification and what alternatives there may be. The argument against bubonic plague being the Black Death is that the symptoms & fatality levels as well as the spread speed & pattern of the disease do not match that seen in more modern outbreaks where we have much more accurate information. The usual answer to this is that the bacillus has mutated significantly since the 14th Century, and thus the disease we see now is not the disease they suffered. Prestwich is very keen to point out that this is just a hypothesis, and other explanations should not be dismissed out of hand. He doesn’t, however, have a favoured answer – he lists three possibilities (anthrax, influenza, a viral haemorrhagic disease) but also explains why they are implausible.

The epidemic, whatever it was, arrived on English soil sometime in June 1348 at the port of Melcombe Regis in Dorset. By November it had reached London, and in 1349 it spread throughout the country. Mortality was highest during the late spring & early summer of 1349. Death rates can be estimated using the surviving records although these generally do not list cause of death so some interpretation is needed to arrive at figures. Although perhaps as much as half the overall population died this was not evenly spread through society. The higher aristocracy were much less affected with only one member of the royal family dying in the outbreak, and only 13% of the parliamentary peerage in 1349. Clergy were more affected than this – with figures ranging from 29% to 60% in different areas. Those who resided with their congregations were more affected than those who did not. Mortality among monastic communities was very variable with some being nearly wiped out and others barely affected. Mortality amongst the rural population was much the same as for the clergy who resided amongst them (unsurprisingly). Data for the urban population is much more incomplete but one might assume it would be higher than in rural areas due to the greater numbers of people in close proximity. There are indications such as numbers of wills registered compared to a normal year or how many tax payers are recorded that back up this assumption.

The immediate effects of this huge loss of life on the economy & on government are surprisingly limited. The greater amount of available land (due to deaths of the tenants) and the death toll combined to reduce the number of landless labourers available to work did exert pressure to raise wages for labourers – and similarly for other professions in urban areas. However the government acted to freeze wages to pre-Black Death levels, and the long term economic effects of the population drop don’t show up till after 1360 when these measures began to fail. The mechanics of government and law & order also show surprising resiliance – the effects that show up in the period this book covers are primarily in low tax revenues and greater difficulty fielding large armies. The effects on the Church were greater. With so many dead clergy there weren’t as many truly appropriate candidates as needed to fill the vacancies. However again there was no danger of a collapse of the system. Society in general was also very resilient. There must surely have been an effect on the general population of seeing half the population die in such a short space of time, but Prestwich says it’s difficult to detect in the contemporary sources.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by reminding us that longer term effects were much greater – transforming society during the 15th & 16th Centuries.

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Shakespeare’s Mother: The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman

Shakespeare’s Mother: The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman was partly a biography of a specific woman – Mary Arden, the mother of William Shakespeare. But there’s not really enough surviving detail about her life to get the full picture from, so the gaps were filled in with more general information about the sorts of lives women (and men) of the time lead. The presenter, Michael Wood, did a good job of stitching the two sorts of information into a coherent whole, so it didn’t feel disjointed or patchy.

Mary Arden is an interesting person to look at the life of, not just because of whose mother she is, but also because of when she lived and what sort of person she was. She lived through a time of great change – she was born around 1537 near the start of the English Reformation, and died in James VI & I’s reign having lived through the whole of the Tudor changes of religion. It’s easy to forget that these changes all took place within a lifetime. Her personal situation also changed a lot over this time, showcasing some of the increased social mobility of the era.

Mary was born the youngest daughter of a relatively well-to-do husbandman, and had seven older sisters. Her family were part of the local gentry so in marrying her John Shakespeare was moving up the social scale. John & Mary Shakespeare were a part of the growing middle class in England. John was primarily a glover, but also involved in other trades. They marry in the 1550s, and begin having children – Mary was to bear eight children in all, of whom 5 survived to adulthood. William was her third child, the first son and the first to survive infancy. The programme used this as a hook to explore the dangers of childbirth in this period for both mother & offspring, and infant mortality (and the effect it would have on the parents).

John and Mary rose in the world both socially and financially during the early years of William’s life. John is a respected member of the Corporation of Stratford upon Avon and eventually even becomes Mayor of the town. They owned land both in the town and outside – Mary had inherited her father’s land when he died. Which is particularly interesting as she was the youngest daughter – perhaps she was his favourite? Perhaps she was the best at the financial management necessary to run the farm? John Shakespeare was also involved in less respectable financial trading. He leant money at interest (strictly forbidden by the church), and also got involved in the illegal wool trade. This was a very lucrative business – all wool trading was supposed to be done through Crown approved channels at Crown approved prices, and paying duty on the trade. So there was money to be made by a middleman who avoided the official routes. Michael Wood speculated that Mary was also involved in the trading – in part because as the person who would be at the house most of the time she’d be the obvious point of contact. And in part because there are indications she was good at financial management.

The wool trading was to be the Shakespeare family’s downfall. There was a clampdown on this illegal activity, and John Shakespeare was one of those who was caught. The family were financially ruined, and spent several years living in fear of their debts being called in. John stopped attending church or the meetings of the town corporation, because those were places where his creditors might find him to demand their money. This, of course, had social consequences for the family. They also had to sell off land to pay back the debts that were called in, and even take young William out of school. The family’s fortunes only turned around after William had moved to London and begun to make a name for himself (and money!) as a playwright and actor. Once he had money he provided for his parents and so Mary lived on into a comfortable old age.

I was mostly interested in the tidbits of information about Mary herself so that’s what I’ve discussed most in this blog post, but the programme also did a good job of covering the social situation & changes of the time. For instance it looked at what the religious and social changes actually meant to the ordinary person of the time. And at some issues specific to women – childbirth in particular as I mentioned. Also how women lived in general – housework, household management etc.

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 16)

Crime and Punishment

The last couple of chapters of this book before the conclusion feel like they don’t quite fit in the flow of the book, but Prestwich felt the subjects were important to cover. The first of these subjects is crime and punishment, and he begins by discussing how it’s difficult to be sure what the crime rates actually were in the 13th & 14th Centuries. There are several factors that complicate the ability of the historian to draw out statistics from the records that survive. One major one is that the population numbers aren’t known, for examples estimates of the population in “medieval London” vary from 37,500 through to 176,000 so expressing homicides as “% of population” is obviously problematic. Another issue is that we have no idea how much crime that was committed was actually reported to the authorities. And for those that are reported and go to court – do you count accusations of crime, or convictions? During this period there’s an 80% acquittal rate so that makes quite a large difference.

But even if accurate numbers are difficult to come by you can look at trends over the period. Civil war led to increases in crime, in part due to people taking advantage of the partial breakdown of government. Political disagreements could turn into outright criminal behaviour – in the 1310s the Earl of Lancaster was involved in what were effectively a couple of private wars both against another Earl and due to rebellion by one of his tenants. This resulted in killings and destruction of property, and a general increase in lawlessness. War in general also increased lawlessness because the administration was focussed on running the war rather than running the country. And wars also lead to an increase in lawlessness in another fashion – the army was often bulked up by releasing men from the county gaols to serve as soldiers. If the war was a foreign one then initially they would be overseas, but on their return crime would increase. Another factor affecting crime rates was the harvest – poor harvests led to increased crime. Almost certainly this was largely due to poor people needing to steal to survive, but contemporary chroniclers also blamed it on men turned out of noble households when money was too tight to pay them who didn’t know how to earn an honest living.

However, criminals during this era weren’t just thugs and desperate poor men. There were several notable gangs lead by members of the gentry – although Prestwich doesn’t mention it this section of the chapter brought the Robin Hood legend to mind. Members of the clergy were also involved in criminal activity. Although sometimes this isn’t so much that somebody actually was a cleric, instead it’s someone who has successfully claimed to be clergy so he’s tried in the church courts rather than the lay ones (punishments were less severe, see below). The senior clergy were also involved in the same sorts of crimes as the nobility – both the gentry gangs and the sorts of fraud and violence indulged in by the aristocracy. Women also committed crimes, but statistically speaking they were different sorts of crime – less violence and more things like receiving stolen goods. They were less often accused of crime in the first place – only about 10% of accusations recorded were of women. Prestwich doesn’t say, but I wonder if this is because women weren’t (entirely?) legally separate from their husbands or fathers.

Maintenance of public order was an important function of medieval government, and there were a variety of mechanisms to achieve this. I got a bit bogged down in the details when this section of the chapter and I’m not quite sure I’ve got a grasp on the big picture. I think Prestwich discusses country wide courts first. At the start of the period are courts called “eyres” which aren’t popular (I’m not sure why) and their use decreases over time – this was a regular visitation by royal justices to the whole country, which theoretically happened every 7 years. It appears you could pay a fine (collectively) to avoid having one sit in your town, and later kings were more interested in getting the fines than actually holding the courts. As they faded out of use other alternatives arose. One of these was that litigants could take civil cases to Westminster to the court of the Common Bench. The assizes circuits, which start from 1273, were another alternative for civil cases. Criminal case were passed to the justices of gaol delivery, or to specially commissioned oyer and terminer courts (“to hear and determine”). During this period there was also increasing use of Keepers of the Peace, a role that eventually developed into Justice of the Peace. These were local men, normally magnates or knights, who were employed to hold courts when the assizes justices weren’t able to complete their circuits (during times of war for instance when money would be diverted from domestic matters).

The courts were more effective in theory than in practice. Convictions did not often happen, wrongdoers might misuse the legal system to accuse their victims (frequently successfully to at least some extent). Although there is no widespread evidence for bribing or intimidating juries they often failed to convict people even when there appears to be much evidence for their crimes. Prestwich speculates that maybe in some cases they were put off by the harsh penalties that would be applied to a convicted criminal. Men could also escape severe punishment if they successfully claimed to be clerics, sometimes they had to take a reading test but more often they just had to have the bishop’s official agree with them. Which is obviously open to corruption! Clerics were tried in the episcopal courts which didn’t hand out as severe penalties as the secular ones. Some of the accused never appear in court, having fled before the case was heard – there’s generally a higher conviction rate in those cases.

Punishments varied. Hanging was the usual punishment for a felony. At the beginning of the period even minor thefts could end up with a hanging, but in 1279 a statute was passed setting a minimum value for imposing this felony. Pillorying was a common punishment for those sorts of minor crimes. If you refused to plead you could be punished by peine forte et dure, ie crushed by heavy rocks – which meant your family could inherit your property (unlike if you’d been convicted and hung). Imprisonment was also often used for minor crimes, or for when a fine could not be paid.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by noting that although the problem of crime & punishment during the period was great there was nonetheless no complete breakdown of law & order. He also relates an anecdote that hints at the romanticisation of crime that would lead to later legends like that of Robin Hood, or the concept of dashing highwaymen.

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“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 15)

Trade and Merchants

Trade, both locally and internationally, was an important part of the 13th & 14th Century English economy. Prestwich starts this chapter by talking about the types and volumes of trade during the period. The wool trade was the most significant – at its peak in the early 14th Century around 40,000 sacks of wool were exported per year, the equivalent of around 10 million sheep. This brought in large sums of money to the economy, in 1297 Edward I’s opponents were able to realistically claim that wool was half the country’s wealth. Wool was not the only commodity traded, the wine trade (of Gascony wines) was also important and other goods were traded too. These included cloth (mostly imports), dyes, timber, tin, lead, grain and many other foodstuffs. International trade was obviously affected by wars – not just because of breakdown in relations but also because the Channel crossing became more risky. Trade was also involved in causing wars, disputes between merchants (particularly at sea) could draw in governments.

Trade and the government were linked together in more than one way. Merchants could become prominent at court, and could influence politics. In part because the trade was important to the economy, so keeping merchants sweet was important. And in part because they could provide funds to the Crown, which was a role Italian merchants often filled. Trade was also subject to government regulation and interference, particularly the wool trade. At times the government would propose to seize wool and sell it themselves, so that the profit came to the Crown rather than the merchants – unsurprisingly not a popular move, and frequently the number of sacks successfully seized was far less than hoped for. Over this period customs duties became a more successful way to raise funds for the Crown, and in 1275 a permanent customs system was established. Taxing trade in this way meant that merchants were at times invited to parliament along with the knights and barons. Prestwich says that during Edward III’s reign there were attempts to negotiate customs with a separate assembly consisting just of the merchants – if these had proved successful then the shape of our government might look different today, with a third house to go along with the Lords & the Commons. However the merchant assemblies were an imposition from the King rather than a natural outgrowth of any sort of coherent merchant community. After a few experiments negotiation of customs duties was returned to Parliament.

The elite merchants of the era were Italians, they were in England primarily to trade in wool. As they could draw on the resources of their internationally trading companies they were able to take bigger risks than the English merchants. They were in a position to offer long term arrangements and even loans (often to monasteries) which would be paid back in wool over a long period of time – one such deal involved a monastery providing 140 sacks of wool over a 20 year period with the Italian company paying 20 marks per year (a good price from the Italian point of view). Although they couldn’t charge interest on loans (Christians were forbidden to do so by the Pope) they could accept “payments to cover costs incurred by making the loan”. They also profited from exchange rates – by making a loan in one currency and asking for repayments in another at a favourable rate to themselves. The larger Italian companies often got sucked into making huge loans to the Crown – these played an important role in financing the wars of the English throughout the period. And these loans played a big role in the bankruptcy of the companies who made the loans. Not always because the loans weren’t repaid in full, sometimes the changing political situation meant a company went out of favour (and lost business) because of close ties to hated previous regime.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by considering the English merchants of the time. Towards the end of this period the involvement of the English in large scale trade increased, although it’s not clear why this happened. Small scale trade is much harder to analyse historically – most of the records are about the wealthiest merchants, particularly those who lent money to the Crown. Tax returns can shed some light on smaller merchants in towns but even then it can be hard to tell the different between a manufacturer of goods and someone who is also selling the goods he makes. So overall not much is known about the English merchants of the time.

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