Blythe Gifford--History

This month’s theme, Tragic Tales, summons visions of monumental disasters, but sometimes, history’s tragedies whisper, rather than shout.

Such was the story of John of Eltham, brother of King Edward III of England. He was a man of great promise, who committed bad acts and achieved great victories, died unmarried at twenty, was slandered after, and has since been forgotten.

I discovered him in writing HIS BORDER BRIDE. Because I feature characters born on the wrong side of the royal blanket, I needed a plausible parent for my hero. In researching the war between England and Scotland in the early 14^th century, I discovered that John played an instrumental military role in the conflict. In fact, he spent many months in Scotland, certainly long enough to father a son. John of Eltham Coat of Arms

He was four years younger than his brother the king and born in the castle of Eltham, hence his moniker. He was named Earl of Cornwall at the age of 12, the last son of a king to die an earl instead of a duke. Caught in the throes of the war between his father, Edward II, and mother Isabella, his growing years were turbulent. He was passed between his parents and even held in the Tower of London for a time before his brother, at age 17, led a coup against his mother and her lover and assumed the power that went with his kingly title of Edward III.

Information on John is scant, but what we do know suggests he was highly competent, and highly trusted by Edward.

He was named “Guardian of the Realm” when Edward III was out of the country; was asked to open Parliament in Edward’s absence, and was named Warden of the northern Marches, which gave him virtual autonomy in that portion of England.

At 17, he was a key commander in the Battle of Halidon Hill, a devastating defeat for the Scots. Later, he commanded an army in the southwest of Scotland that put down resistance to Edward Bailliol, the Scots king supported by his brother.

But all these “heroic” acts were recorded by historians on the southern side of the border. The Scottish saw him differently. So differently, in fact, that historian Tom Beaumont James writes that the tale of his death “challenges the distinction between history and story.”

To the Scots, he was a ruthless destroyer, who, among other crimes, burned the beautiful Lesmahagow Abbey when it was filled with people who had sought sanctuary from the wrath of the English troops. As Scottish chronicler tells it, this violation of the sacred laws of sanctuary so enraged King Edward that he killed his own brother in fury.

A tragic tale. One that my hero was told about his father. One that made him fear he had inherited the same bad blood.

John did die, suddenly, at age 20, probably from a fever. Edward buried his brother with all honors in a beautiful tomb in Westminster Abbey and had masses said for his soul regularly, hardly the act of a man who had killed his brother.

And there was one other fact about John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, that peaked my romantic imagination. Half a dozen brides had been proposed for him, including daughters of the king of France and of the king of Castile and Leon, but he never married and died without “legitimate issue.”

Ah! But what about illegitimate issue? History records none, so I was free to create one: a man who must face the terrible truth about his past and learn to make peace with it.

Note: This piece originally ran on unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com on August 23, 2010. It has been corrected to note that Edward III’s “coup” was against his appointed regent, not his father.

DYNASTIES: THE BEAUFORTS

By Blythe Gifford

For most writers of historical romance, the "mother of all dynasties" is the English royal family. Many of us have a vague notion of the medieval segment of the story: the Plantagenets, Lancaster, York, and the War of the Roses, the Tudors, and finally, the Stuarts/Stewarts from Scotland after Queen Elizabeth died childless.

The official family tree is hard to follow, but if you study the genealogy, you will discover that the Lancasters, the Yorks, the Tudors, and the Stewarts all have a direct and clear line of inheritance back to the Beauforts, the children of one of the Middle Ages' most romantic couples: Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

Many readers are familiar with Katherine Swynford because of Anya Seton's Katherine, published in 1954 and still in print today. It fictionalizes the love story of Katherine and John, who was a younger son of Edward III. (Now Katherine has finally gotten her due as two biographies have recently been published: Mistress of the Monarchy by Alison Wier, and Katherine Swynford: The History of a Medieval Mistress by Jeanne Lucraft.)

Among the facts we know is that John and Katherine were lovers for many years, she bore him four children, and the two finally married very late in life. After their marriage, their children, called the "Beauforts" after a French castle John claimed but did not hold, were legitimized. (It is a myth that the children were born there. Neither John nor Katherine ever set foot in the castle.)

Katherine was governess to Gaunt's children by his first two wives and most evidence suggests the siblings of the blended families (her children by her first husband, his children by his previous wives, and their bastard children) got on well.

John's son with his first wife, Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, became Henry IV of England and the founder of the Lancaster faction in the later War of the Roses. John and Katherine's second son, Henry Beaufort, held the post of Chancellor of England under Henry IV for a time, and subsequently served as Chancellor for his son and grandson, Henry V and Henry VI.

John, the eldest Beaufort son, held the title of Marquess and Earl of Somerset. Somerset served Henry IV, his half-brother, on several diplomatic and military missions. (His shield is pictured above.) Along with him, he often took Thomas Swynford, Katherine's son with her first husband.

The other two first generation Beaufort children were Thomas, who became Duke of Exeter, and Jean, whose second husband was Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland. The Yorkist kings descended from the Neville family, who have been known by history as "Kingmakers."

So the legitimized children took their rightful, active places in the power structure of England. But in 1407, new words were inserted into the Parliamentary document that had legitimized the them ten years before. The addition read that the Beauforts had all rights excepta dignitate regali, that is, all except the royal rights of succession.

Depending on which biography you read, these words were added by Henry IV or by his Council, but regardless, because the change was never ratified by Parliament, they were conveniently forgotten, or ignored, in the years to come.

The full story of the Beaufort family is too long to recount here. They were in and out of favor over the years, but when you follow Katherine and John's descendants, the path of royal succession is clear and direct.

-- From John's son by his first wife Blanche, Henry IV, comes the line of Lancaster (Red Rose) kings. Through Blanche, John held the title of the Duke of Lancaster.

-- From Katherine and John's daughter, Jean, you have a direct line to two Yorkist Kings: Edward IV and Richard III, both of whom were Katherine and John's great-grandsons. Their great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth of York, was the first Tudor queen.

-- From Katherine and John's oldest Beaufort son, John, you have a direct line to the first Tudor King, Henry VII. So the founders of the Tudor line, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, were both great-great-grandchildren of John and Katherine! In fact, this was clearly recognized at the time and because of consanguinity, the two had to get papal dispensation to marry.

-- Joan, who was John and Katherine's granddaughter, married James I of the Scottish Stewart kings. So when James VI of Scotland became James I of England many years later, it was, again, a direct Beaufort descendant who took the throne.

So today's English royal family name might more accurately be not Windsor, but Beaufort!

The words “medieval romance” conjure up notions of courts and castles, knights and horses. The truth is, by the late Middle Ages, there were thriving urban areas full of people who never lived in a castle nor galloped into battle.

My June release, INNOCENCE UNVEILED, takes place in such a city, Ghent, then in the duchy of Flanders, now located in Belgium. Although the city surrounded the Count’s castle, it had urban problems we recognize: crime, overcrowding, and dirty streets among them.

In the 14^th century, Flanders was the cloth-making powerhouse of the continent. Responsible for the second of the basic necessities (food, clothing, and shelter), the city imported the wool grown on the backs of English sheep by the ton. The export of this wool was so important to England (and the tax on it so important to the government) that the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords sat on a “Woolsack,” actually a sort of ottoman stuffed with wool, until just two years ago.

When they got this wondrous wool, the cloth makers of Ghent went to work spinning it into gold for their coffers. There was a guild for each part of the process: weaving, dying, and so on. The spinners (or spinsters) were the most poorly paid of the workers. (Need I add they were all women?)

The drapers were the hub of this activity. Like the “piecework” of the early days of the textile trade in this country, they sold and bought each segment of the process. For example, the draper would sell wool to the spinsters and buy back the yarn they spun at a higher price

The work rules of the guilds were as strict as our present day unions, designed to preserve quality of the goods as well as working conditions. Cloth with a particular “trade mark” (the origin of our modern word) developed a reputation for quality that kept the price high.

Technology continued to advance during this time. The spinning wheel was invented at the end of the century before my story. Though it was faster and more efficient (it cut the number of spinners needed to supply a weaver by half), it also created complaints about weak, lumpy thread, initially, too.

Because of the close economic ties between England and the Flemish cloth makers, the burghers, or the middle class, in Flanders found their economic and political interests tied to England’s, while the Count of Flanders was tied to the Court of Paris and the French king. Even language divided them, with the burghers speaking Flemish and the nobles speaking French.

But the economic power of the guilds had been turned into political power as well, and they had rights unheard of in other duchies. In fact, so important were the weavers, that the Encyclopedia Britannica states: “By the 14th century, however, the democratic craft gilds, notably that of the weavers, had asserted themselves; the citizens were divided for civic and military purposes into three classes; the rich (i.e. those living on capital), the weavers and the members of the 52 other gilds.” http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Ghent .

It is this powerful faction the hero of my book must woo to support King Edward’s claim to the throne of France. And what happened as a result of this tug of war changed not only the history of England, but the history of France and Flanders as well.

Among the sources for this article were the books of David Nicholas, The Low Countries and the hundred years' war, 1326-1347, by by Henry Stephen Lucas, and Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel, by Frances and Joseph Gies.

Here’s a link to a site on Richard II, during whose reign THE HARLOT’S DAUGHTER is set.

The wrong side of the royal blanket:

English Royal Bastards in the Middle Ages

Today, we think of illegitimate children as easy to identify. In the early Middle Ages, however, marriage itself was not well defined. Consent between two people could constitute a marriage recognized by the church. Unfortunately, such clandestine marriages could also easily be denied if they proved inconvenient. Thus, whether a child was “legitimate” or not often depended on the father’s desire to acknowledge the marriage and/or the child.

By the early thirteenth century, the church attempted to bring the act of marriage into the public arena, dictating a reading of the banns and a blessing in church. Eventually, the church became the arbiter when a true “marriage” had taken place. This was a gradual process, however, and in England, it wasn’t until 1843 that the presence of a church official became a requirement for a marriage to be legal.

Therefore, in the early centuries, there was not the same stigma attached to illegitimate birth as we know it, and a child’s success could depended on his or her talents as much as status at birth.

There was no doubt, of course, about the marriage of a king. Yet royal bastards were very much a part of life and history in medieval England. Some 40 illegitimate offspring of English kings have been identified between 1066 and 1485, with a nearly equal number possible or suggested. (Henry I is in a class by himself, responsible for half of the bonifides.) This number doesn’t include those fathered by princes or dukes, which surely would more than double the numbers.

If he chose to acknowledge an illegitimate offspring, the king could insure that child a life of privilege and power. Some of these lucky sons and daughters were treated as well as the legal issue. (Henry II’s wife Eleanor ostensibly raised one of his by-blows with her own children.)

This acceptance was driven by more than familial affection. An extra son was an extra ally. Many became military or church leaders. Though less prominent, the extra daughters were given in marriage to allies and foreign dignitaries in order to cement relationships. Thus, the bastard children of the king served the same function as legitimate children.

Yet this acceptance would only carry a bastard son so far. William the Conqueror might have been a bastard, but he was the first, and last, from 1066 to now to actually sit on the throne. (We are ignoring here that Queens Mary and Elizabeth were declared illegitimate by Parliament in Henry VIII’s multi-marriage quest for a male heir.) Even for non-royal children, by the twelfth century there was a clear legal distinction between bastards and legitimate heirs in the inheritance of property.

And for a royal bastard, of course, the prime “property” was the throne. After the death of the king, a bastard son could be a potential rival for the throne and a threat to his half-brother. Some managed to navigate the transition, but for many, the king’s death meant the end of a life of privilege and perhaps the end of life itself.

Such was the fate of Geoffrey Plantagenet, son of Henry II. Henry apparently thought his bastard son Geoffrey Plantagenet more talented than either of his legitimate heirs and used him as his first minister during his life. He prepared the way for Geoffrey to be a bishop of Lincoln, a role with as much secular as religious power in those days. (As a bastard, he had to receive dispensation from the Pope assume the office.)

But on his death, Henry had two legitimate sons alive and well: Richard the Lionhearted and John. Both eventually sat on the throne. Rocky relations with his half brothers forced Geoffrey into exile in Normandy.

By the fourteenth century, reported numbers of illegitimate children were down considerably, to one, two, or three per king. Some had no identified bastards at all.

History records nothing about children of the queens. By English common law, any child born to a wife was presumed to be the husband’s unless he was proven impotent or obviously not with his wife at the time of conception (e.g. at war abroad). As with so much history, most of what we know revolves about men’s stories.

Perhaps the most famous bastard family in medieval English history were the Beauforts. They were the children of John of Gaunt, a younger son of Edward III, and his mistress of many years, Katherine Swynford. (Their story is immortalized in Anya Seton’s Katherine, the book which sparked my lifelong interest both in this subject and in the fourteenth century.) When, at long last, he and Katherine wed, their four children were legitimized, but barred from being considered for the succession. Despite this prohibition, within four generations, the great, great grandson of this love match sat on the throne as Henry VII, founder of the Tudor line.

Blythe Gifford has turned a life long interest in English royal bastards into THE HARLOT’S DAUGHTER, October 2007, Harlequin Historical. For more, see www.blythegifford.com. Much of the information here comes from The Royal Bastards of Medieval England by Given-Wilson and Curteis.

Note: This article is adapted from one that was originally released in the e-newsletter “Romancing the Middle Ages.” To sign up for this monthly newsletter, contact RTMA@tinastjohn.com

THE KNAVE AND THE MAIDEN is set on a medieval pilgrimage. Here is an overview of that topic. Some of the items here will be familiar if you have read the book, but there are no spoilers.

Many of us believe that a person in the middle ages would spend a lifetime within walking distance of his or her place of birth. While that was undoubtedly true for some, many did travel on pilgrimage to visit a holy shrine.

The ultimate in pilgrimage, of course, was a trip to the Holy Land, which would take about a year round trip from England. Rome, Italy, and Santiago de Compostella in Spain, were also important destinations.

But plenty of sites tempted English pilgrims who did not want to cross the water. Canterbury, where Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170, is the most well-known. Only a few days’ ride from London, this was the destination of Chaucer’s pilgrims in his poem The Canterbury Tales.

But England was littered with other shrines, most of which have not stood the test of time. Because it was expensive and difficult to canonize a saint, these local sites existed beyond the official purview of the church, supported by testimonials of miraculous cures.

While there were many reasons for pilgrimage, the primary draw was the miracle of healing. The healing power was lodged in the relics of saints---bits of bone, teeth, or a sliver of the True Cross---which were sheltered and protected at the shrine.

Healing was not the only reason for the trip, of course. Some went in gratitude for God’s goodness; others as penance for sins. If you were rich enough, you could go on pilgrimage by proxy, paying a palmer to spare you the arduous journey.

Travel was definitely dangerous. Not only were there robbers and difficult terrain on the journey, but at the shrine itself, robbers waited to steal coin left for the saint, or even steal the relics themselves.

For protection, pilgrims traveled in groups, somewhat like a medieval wagon train. Despite the dangers, many treated the trip as a vacation, a chance to see the world and escape the scrutiny of family and neighbors. In an unsupervised group, some even whispered that pilgrimage was an opportunity for sexual license.

These rumors led the Church to flip-flop its position on pilgrimage across the years. During some periods, the Church discouraged pilgrimage all together. During others, rules dictated that pilgrims beg for alms as they journeyed, and never bathe or cut their hair. (Cynics might suggest that this would make them less attractive to the opposite sex, as well as more humble.)

Despite the piety and danger, there was joy along the route. Song was an important part of the journey, both in celebration and to pass the time. The guidebooks written to lead pilgrims across unknown country contain directions on where to find good wine, meat, and white bread, an indication that enjoyment came with the journey.

Most returned home with a souvenir, typically a pilgrim’s badge, made of lead, symbolizing the shrine they had visited. For Santiago de Compostela, the badge was a shell. For Canterbury, a bishop on a horse.