Naturally, Edward tried to blame my sweet, innocent daughter, but that only compounded his guilt. Diot, slow-witted but ever loyal, fearfully confessed that she thought Edward had already tried to poison his master, which the good physician, Hugo Bayus, claimed he had suspected from the start. Gossip is a powerful weapon. It’s been known to send men to the gallows.
But at least Master Edward had the comfort of not being alone in his final agony for, rest assured, I was there, waiting for him, when his spirit finally left his tortured body. As I told him, it’s never wise to make enemies of the dead, for you have to spend the whole of eternity with them. And, believe me, his torments were only just beginning, for that old hag, Eadhild, took quite a fancy to young Edward, so much so that she forgot about me.
As for my beloved daughter, I’ll say only this – remember, if you ever take your gaze from a witch, even for a moment, she will vanish.
Historical Notes
The weather-lore, anti-witchcraft charms and spells that head each month and chapter are taken from medieval ecclesiastical writings, recorded British folklore, and from medieval spell books, known as grimoires.
Poison – Throughout history there have been many alleged incidents of people being murdered by means of clothing impregnated with poison. King John of Castile was said to have been killed by a Turk who put poison in his boots and Henry VI was rumoured to have been murdered through the wearing of poisoned gloves. A certain Madame de Poulaillon confessed to having dipped the tail of her husband’s shirt in a solution of arsenic to bring about his death, though he got wind of the plot and had her arrested before harm was done.
To find out if she really could have killed her husband in this way, Dr Lucian Nass shaved the rump of a guinea-pig and gently rubbed it with an arsenic preparation; it died two days later, showing symptoms of arsenic poisoning. This suggests that a combination of the friction of impregnated clothes or bedding against skin, with body heat and sweat, might allow small quantities of certain poisons or hallucinogens to be absorbed, which would, over time, accumulate in the body to cause illness, delusions and eventually death.
Witchcraft – In England, during the reign of Saxon King Athelstan, murder by witchcraft, which included the use of spells and charms, was made punishable by death. As with all crimes, trial was often by ordeal. William the Conqueror reduced the sentence to banishment. The death penalty for practising witchcraft was not reintroduced until 1563, but even then the crime had to involve injury to people or their livestock before a sentence of death could be passed. But people accused of witchcraft in earlier centuries could find themselves accused of the far more serious crime of heresy, which carried the death penalty.
The inspiration for the character of Pavia/Catlin in this novel came from the trial records of a wealthy Irish woman, Alice Kyteler, who in 1324, with eleven members of her family, was accused of seven counts of witchcraft and sorcery. Bishop Ledrede claimed that Alice was the leader of a group of witches, who held nocturnal meetings at which they sacrificed to the devil and used spells to entrap and murder men. It is the first recorded instance of a woman being accused of gaining her supernatural powers through sexual intercourse with the devil.
Alice had had four husbands and the accusations of witchcraft were initially brought by the sons of the first three, who swore she had murdered their fathers for their money and was attempting to kill the fourth. This charge seems to have arisen because the sons of the first three marriages had been disinherited in favour of her favourite son William Outlaw. Petronilla, Alice’s maid, was burned alive at the stake for heresy after confessing under torture, but Alice herself escaped and vanished without trace.
The last witchcraft trial to be held in England took place in 1944. Helen Duncan was arrested in Portsmouth on 19 January 1944 and prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. It was alleged that she had used witchcraft to obtain military information, predict the sinking of a ship, and pretended to conjure the dead, using a parrot medium called Bronco. The prosecution claimed that she regularly produced ectoplasm and, though court witnesses offered to show how easy it was to fake this, the judge refused to allow the demonstration and Helen was found guilty and sentenced to prison for nine months.
After her release she returned to conducting séances, but in 1956, the police raided the premises when she was in a trance. She collapsed and died. The official cause of death was diabetes, but her supporters claimed her death was caused by damage to her psychic energy from being suddenly brought out of a trance.
Friars of the Sack – The Friars of the Order of the Penitence of Jesus Christ, were commonly known as the Brothers of Penitence or Friars of the Sack because of the shapeless, sack-like robe, made of coarse cloth, they wore with wooden sandals. The order was founded in Italy and came to England in 1257, opening a house outside Aldersgate in London. They had friaries in France, Spain and Germany, but lost them in 1274, when Pope Gregory X banned all begging friars, with the exception of the four mendicant orders of Dominicans, Franciscans, Austin Friars and Carmelites. But the English Friars of the Sack continued in defiance of the pope, surviving until the Reformation under Henry VIII. They lived an austere life, begging for all their needs, refusing to eat any meat and drinking only water.
In Lincoln there are records of a friary belonging to the Friars of the Sack in Thorngate, to the west of Stamp Causeway and south of St Hugh Croft. It must have been established some time before 1266 because, in that year, the friars were granted part of the common land of the city to enlarge their oratory. But they appear to have left this site by 1307 when the Abbot of Barlings tried to acquire it. It is not known if this was when they left Lincoln, but they seemed to have vanished from the city by the time of the Black Death in 1348.
Florentines – The incident of the theft of goods from Lincoln merchants actually took place, though it was in 1375. Members of the societies of Strossi and Albertini of Florence left Lincoln with £10,000 worth of goods (nearly half a million pounds today), which they had not paid for, almost ruining the local merchants. The mayor and bailiffs seized the goods of Florentine merchants living in the city who were members of the same society, among them Matthew Johan. The Florentines appealed to the King who ordered their goods restored, but the Lincoln and Florentine merchants eventually came to an agreement to enable the Lincoln merchants to recover the money owed to them.
Lincoln – Sheriff Thomas (1351–1398) is recorded variously as Thomas de Thimbleby of Poolham, Thomas Thimelby and Thomas Thimotby de Iruham. It is common to find great variations in the spellings of names of this period. He married Dorothy Swynford, and in the 1800s it was claimed she was one of the daughters of the infamous Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt’s mistress. But there is no evidence that Katherine had a daughter named Dorothy, so it is unlikely they were related.
In 1380, the old guildhall in Lincoln, where Robert first sees Catlin, was in a bad state of repair. The townspeople eventually took matters into their own hands and pulled it down around 1389, fearing it might collapse and crush people. In a letter to King Richard II in 1390, the mayor complained that certain of the townspeople were refusing to contribute to the cost of building a new one. The King commanded that everyone should be made to pay, but the money raised seemed to have been misappropriated: in 1393 Sir John Bassy, mayor of Lincoln, was ordered by the King to investigate what had become of the funds to build the new guildhall and pave more of the Lincoln streets.
The new guildhall was eventually built over the Stonebow gate, which was the southern gate to the city in both Roman and medieval times, but the complex of buildings was not finally completed until 1520. It is still in use today as the city’s council chambers and occasional court room, while the dungeons of the adjoining prison house the city’s treasury. Visitors can take guided tours around this fascinating ancient building.
The tower in the city wall, where Catlin and her lover meet, had ceased to be used as a defensive tower by the 1380s and, in 1383, was lease
d by the mayor and people to John Norman with a plot of adjoining land in Butwerk. He was allowed to use it ‘without interference’ unless ryderwak was invoked: if the city came under threat in time of war or civil conflict the tower could be commandeered for defence. Sadly, it is no longer standing.
But the Greestone Stairs, built before 1200, are still in daily use in Lincoln. Originally known as the Greesen from the Old English word for ‘steps’, it is a long flight of stone steps outside the city walls that linked the medieval dwellings of Butwerk, at the bottom of the city near the river, to Eastgate in the upper part. The steps led through the postern archway (the rear gate) into the cathedral grounds. For part of the way, a broad stone track still runs alongside the steps, once used by ox carts and for dragging goods up and down. The Greesen is today reputed to be the most haunted street in Lincoln and numerous locals and visitors have reported feeling someone grab their ankle as they ascend the steps, causing them to fall heavily. They have the bruises and cuts to prove it!
The two children who came between Jan and Godwin in Greetwell and were seen by Nonie are also well-known Lincoln ghosts. The pair are said to haunt the river Witham. When she is first seen, the little girl appears alone, staring frantically into the water. She vanishes but reappears, further down the river, this time walking happily hand in hand with a younger boy. It is believed the girl jumped into the river in a desperate effort to rescue her little brother, who had fallen in, and both drowned.
Peasants’ Revolt – A shortage of tenants and workers in the years after the Black Death led landowners to try to cut their costs and solve their massive debt problems by raising rents, taxes and tolls while keeping wages at pre-plague levels. They also tried to re-impose forced labour on men and women who were descended from serfs or villeins. This led to a series of violent uprisings by the poorer classes right across Europe, and violence against people and property erupted in one town after another as the fire of rebellion spread. Chief among the rebels in Lincoln were tenants of the estates of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. The imposition of a new poll tax proved to be the match that lit the flame of revolution in England. Many people initially tried to get out of paying by not recording members of their household or servants.
Sir Robert Hale, prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem and owner of several wealthy estates, was appointed as overseer at the Exchequer; when examining the registration returns he discovered that between 20 and 50 per cent of the population who should have been paying the poll tax were not recorded. Realising the local bailiffs were massively under-recording, he appointed commissioners to go out with sergeants-at-arms to check. There was outrage that some of the commissioners subjected young girls to crude and violent physical examinations to find out if they were virgins. As these rumours spread, men who could do so were forced to pay the tax for their young daughters or sisters even though they were not fifteen, rather than subject them to this violation, which, of course, was exactly what the commissioners wanted. This added to the fury of the populace.
The massacre of the Flemish merchants and the sacking of the Savoy Palace, belonging to John of Gaunt, were among the most widely recorded incidents of the rebellion in London. At the Savoy, one of the rebels was thrown onto the fire by his own comrades and burned alive for suspected looting. By mistake, several barrels of gunpowder were also thrown onto the fire, causing an explosion that trapped thirty rebels in the wine cellar. Their cries for help could still be heard a week later. They finally died, still trapped beneath the rubble.
In order to impose order on the streets and to identify and punish the rebels, a Commission of Array was set up in Lincoln, consisting of wealthy landowners and nobility, all of whom were to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.
Timeline of the Events of the Peasants' Revolt
1380 – November
A poll tax was imposed of 12d for every man and woman over the age of fifteen. Two-thirds to be paid by the end of December, the rest by June.
January
Only a fraction of the revenue anticipated had been collected. The records were checked and it was found there had been widespread evasion of the registration for the poll tax.
March
Commissioners with sergeants-at-arms were sent out to inspect returns and check households; the date for final payment was brought forward from June to 21 April.
30 May
Royal commissioners arrived in the town of Brentwood in Essex to enforce poll tax collection. But the citizens refused to pay the tax and chased the commissioners out when they tried to arrest ringleaders. Over the next few days disturbances broke out throughout Essex and Kent.
10 June
Violence erupted in Essex and Kent. There were attacks on property, particularly abbeys and buildings belonging to anyone connected with the legal profession. Rebels from Kent occupied the city of Canterbury.
11 June
Fourteen-year-old King Richard II arrived in London, having travelled by barge from Windsor, as Kent and Essex rebels marched on the city.
12 June
The rebels and the city fathers met for discussions at Blackheath. King Richard and his household took refuge in the Tower of London.
13 June
A meeting between King Richard and the rebels at Greenwich was aborted at the last moment, when Richard’s advisers forced him to turn back, fearing for his safety.
The Savoy Palace owned by John of Gaunt was destroyed.
14 June
At Mile End Richard negotiated with the rebels and agreed to their demands, but inadvertently encouraged the hunting down of ‘traitors to the people’, which resulted in the rebels executing some of his closest advisers, including Archbishop Sudbury and Robert Hale, and the massacre of the Flemish merchants.
Violent rebellion broke out in Norfolk.
15 June
King Richard and Wat Tyler met at Smithfield, but Tyler was killed and the rebels were led into a trap. Law and order was restored in London and the rebels were escorted from the city.
The prior of Bury St Edmunds was murdered and the archives of Cambridge University were destroyed.
16 June
Violence increased in St Albans, and the Suffolk rebels took Ipswich.
17 June
Judge Edmund Walsingham was murdered at Ely. Peterborough Abbey was attacked, and the Earl of Kent was sent to round up the rebels in Kent.
18 June
Rebels attempted to march from London via Lincoln to attack York. They were stopped by townspeople when they tried to cross the river Ouse at Huntingdon. Norwich was attacked by the rebels.
20 June
Commissioners were sent into East Anglia to rout the rebels.
22 June
John of Gaunt took refuge in Scotland.
23 June
Rebellion broke out in Scarborough.
26 June
Bishop Despenser routed the rebels at North Walsham in Norfolk.
2 July
Richard II cancelled all of the charters freeing the villeins, which he had granted on 14 June, and reinstated the rights of the lords and landowners.
5 July
Orders were given for Commissions of Array to be established to organise the King’s faithful subjects to resist the rebels.
15 July
One of the rebel leaders, John Ball, was executed at St Albans. Between July and November, when the amnesty was finally signed, hundreds of Englishmen were arrested on the say-so of neighbours, chance remarks overheard in inns, or servants taking revenge on masters.
5 September
A Commission of Array in Lincolnshire was ordered to send evidence of rebel crimes to Chancery. The ex-mayor and MP Hugh de Garwell was named but later pardoned on payment of a fine, on the grounds that he hadn’t killed anyone.
9 December
The appointments of existing commissioners in Lincolnshire were revoked as they couldn’t be trusted. New ones were appointed.
Glos
sary
Ambry – In the context of a house or castle, this was a cupboard, which either hung on a wall or stood on the floor in the chamber or hall where the master of the house or his guests slept. Food, such as cold meats, pies and pastries, was placed in the ambry at night, so that the master, mistress or any guests could help themselves to a snack, known as a reresoper, without disturbing the household. This was often necessary to settle the stomach after a night of hard drinking. An ambry can be distinguished from other cupboards used for storage of vessels or linens because it was pierced or had bars at the front, originally covered by cloth, to allow the circulation of air. It was also known as a livery or dole cupboard, because in larger households it contained the amount of food deemed enough for the guest’s retinue.
Attainder – means ‘tainted’. A felon found guilty of a capital offence was subject to forfeiture, which meant that all their property and possessions were forfeit to their feudal lord, or to the Crown. But an Act of Attainder could additionally be brought against the felon, so that their descendants, in perpetuity, were never again allowed to enter contracts, bear a title or own land. In effect, they lost all rights as a free man or woman on the grounds that they had tainted blood. Attainder was usually used by kings to punish nobles found guilty of treason or of the murder of someone close to the King, but could be invoked by men of lower rank who were wealthy enough to pay for the legal procedure.
The Vanishing Witch Page 52