Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors

by English Historical Fiction Authors

  According to historian Elizabeth Hallam, the inspiration for chivalric orders like the Order of the Garter came from “the imagination of a 12th-century Norman churchman, Wace, who added the story of the Round Table to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fictional history of King Arthur.” The stories of the Knights of the Round Table spread far and wide as other writers took Wace’s idea and elaborated on it. “During the 13th century knights in tournaments adopted the roles and fictional coats of arms of Arthur and his knights. ‘Round Tables’ were set up at many English tournaments,” and this playacting eventually “led to knights forming more regular tourneying brotherhoods: the golf clubs of their age.”

  Edward III, who was fond of holding these “Round Table” tournaments, eventually moved to create an official society that would mimic King Arthur’s legendary brotherhood of knights.

  The Order of the Garter was founded in 1344 (if we are to believe Jean Froissart), in 1350 (if we are to believe Geoffrey le Baker), or in 1348 (if we piece together some of the expenditures in the Royal Exchequer). This discrepancy in sources may seem amusing at first, until you realize that the date of establishment is only one of many knots historians must untangle as they weave together a history of the Order.

  Froissart, a contemporary of King Edward’s, gives us this glimpse of the establishment:

  At that time King Edward of England conceived the idea of altering and rebuilding the great castle of Windsor, originally built by King Arthur, and where had first been established the noble Round Table, from which so many fine men and brave knights had gone forth and performed great deeds throughout the world. King Edward’s intention was to found an order of knights, made up of himself and his sons and the bravest and noblest in England. There would be forty of them in all and they would be called the Knights of the Blue Garter and their feast was to be held every year at Windsor on St George’s Day. To institute the feast, the King called together the earls, barons and knights of the whole country and told them of his intentions and of his great desire to see them carried out. They agreed with him wholeheartedly, because they thought it an honourable undertaking and one which would strengthen the bonds of friendship among them. Forty knights were then chosen from among the most gallant of them all and these swore a solemn oath to the King always to observe the feast and the statutes, as these were agreed and drawn up.

  Geoffrey le Baker, also a contemporary chronicler, gives his own description of the establishment of the Order and highlights the importance of the garter in their knightly regalia: “All these men, together with the king, were dressed in robes of russet and wore garters of dark blue on their right legs. The robes of the order were completed by a blue mantle, embroidered with the arms of St George.”

  Nowadays, the garter is associated almost exclusively with women’s lingerie. How did it come to be the symbol of a chivalric order for an English king and his knights? Here we find yet another confusing tile in the mosaic of the Order’s history.

  One legend, written down by Polydore Vergil in 1534, gives this romantic rationale:

  [P]opular tradition nowadays declares that Edward at some time picked up from the ground a garter from the stocking of his queen or mistress, which had become unloosed by some chance, and had fallen. As some of the knights began to laugh and jeer on seeing this, he is reputed to have said that in a very little while the same garter would be held by them in the highest honour. And not long after, he is said to have founded this order and given it the title by which he showed those knights who had laughed at him how to judge his actions. Such is popular tradition.

  The romantic elements of the story continued to grow over time.

  By the end of the sixteenth century, Joan of Kent, the Countess of Salisbury (she who would later marry the Black Prince), had become the celebrated beauty whose garter fell to the floor while dancing with the king. And the chivalrous Edward responded to his jeering courtiers with the same words which he would make the motto of the Order: “Honi soit qui mal y pense—Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it.”

  How much stock should be put in this story is difficult to say. Some historians partially accept it, but state that the woman referred to was actually Joan of Kent’s mother-in-law (another Countess of Salisbury for whom King Edward was reputed to have a violent passion). Others discount the story altogether as a tale too fantastical and too anachronistic. Richard Barber, a historian of the latter school, writes:

  The word ‘garter’ is extremely rare, and indeed only appears once before the foundation of the Order…here it is applied to an item of apparel worn by fashionable squires to keep up their hose…. I have found only one piece of evidence of ladies wearing garters before the fifteenth century: in 1389, the prostitutes of Toulouse were to wear a badge of a garter by royal decree—once again, there is a suggestion of political mockery and propaganda [i.e. the French making fun of Edward III and his already-established Order].

  After arguing that the garter was not commonly worn by women during the fourteenth century, Barber goes on to say that the garter of this time period was a much different item of dress than we would think of as a garter today.

  The form of the garter, as shown in the earliest known representation, is also unusual: it is a miniature belt, with buckle and perforated tongue, hardly a purely practical item of clothing. Later garters were usually a strip of cloth or silk, tied in a knot. I would tentatively suggest that the design is connected with the knight’s belt, one of the insignia used in the ceremony of knighthood.

  Those who accept Barber’s opinion, that the symbol of the Garter was a masculine one, a piece of equipment typically worn by knights, must still find an explanation for the Order’s motto: “Honi soit qui mal y pense—Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it.” If the episode of a lady dropping her garter never occurred, then what motivated Edward to choose this phrase?

  A plausible answer to this question can be found in Edward III’s claim to the French throne.

  In 1328, the last son of the French king Philip IV died, leaving no male heir. Edward III of England, as the son of Philip IV’s daughter Isabella, considered himself next in line for the French crown. The French, however, had already chosen Philip VI, nephew to Philip IV and grandson to Philip III, to be their ruler.

  The laws of inheritance during this time period varied by country and were hotly disputed within France itself, but suffice it to say that there were more quibbles with Edward’s claim than the fact that he was English. In 1337, he invaded France in an attempt to take the French crown by force and began the conflict now known as the Hundred Years’ War. The Order of the Garter, whether it was founded in 1344, 1348, or 1350, came onto the scene during the first phase of this war, and all of its founding members were English nobility who would take part in the fight against France. Its motto—“Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it”—could very well be a gauntlet thrown at those naysayers who denied Edward’s claim to the crown.

  Although the real events surrounding the founding of this Order may never be totally proved, it is indisputably acknowledged that the Order of the Garter is the most famous and longest lasting society of chivalry in the world. On April 23, 2008, Prince William was appointed the one thousandth member of the group. Some of the vestments have changed to accommodate the more modern clothing of our own time, but at the ceremony where Prince William was invested one can still see the blue mantle described by Geoffrey le Baker. And if you look closely at the circular badge attached to that mantle, you will see that enigmatic motto still in use: “Honi soit qui mal y pense—Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it.”

  Sources

  Barber, Richard. Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince. Great Britain: The Boydell Press, 1978.

  Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Translated and edited by Geoffrey Brereton. London: Penguin Books, 1978.

  Hallam, Eliz
abeth, ed. Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry. London: Salamander Books, Ltd., 2002.

  The Plague

  by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  The nursery rhyme “Ring a Ring o’ Roses” has a lot to answer for.

  As far as can be ascertained, this emanates from 19th century America, but the popular modern supposition is now that it refers to the sufferings of the Plague, thus describing the common symptoms (rings of roses and a-tishoo), followed by falling down dead. Cheery! But entirely erroneous.

  Indeed, one of the greatest catastrophes ever to alter England’s history was neither war nor dynastic challenge. The bubonic plague which first arrived in England in the 14th century and is now known as the Black Death, originally also the Great Mortality and the Pestilence, changed the whole country and its population, the politics and almost every aspect of everyday living conditions. The absolute terror which this first sudden visitation wreaked on the whole of Europe can barely be imagined.

  But outbreaks of this dreadful disease reappeared sporadically and frequently over the next few hundred years until its final catastrophic visitation in England in 1665, after which it appears to have quite mysteriously died out. The bubonic plague has revisited some other countries, however, with occasional outbreaks even in the recent past, yet the actual sufferings of the people are now persistently misunderstood.

  Indeed, plague victims did not sneeze and quickly die. The rash did not consist of large florid circles, and actually the word posies in past history did not refer to small bunches of flowers, but to short poems. There are many firsthand contemporary references to this terrible disease and its effects, and also modern accounts both scientific and colloquial. Therefore, researching this particular subject is not too difficult.

  There are several related forms of the plague, and recently some experts have suggested that the original Black Death was not the bubonic but another similar kind, or even a combination of infections. Others argue that the affliction was indeed the bubonic type, but of a more lethal and unpleasant strain than is presently in existence. However, the symptoms are all sufficiently identical.

  The bubonic plague was not passed directly between humans and was contagious only via the rodent flea, but the flea was numerous in most human habitations, so the specific cause of infection mattered little. Besides, if the bacteria affected the lungs, this became pneumonic plague, and the sputum was then contagious human to human. Indeed, those thus infected, those desperate souls now dismissed by some writers as suffering from sneezes and the occasional bubo, did instead suffer from some of the most hideous and agonising symptoms I can imagine.

  Once the infected rats had died in large numbers, the fleas carrying the bacteria inevitably looked for other hosts. Humanity, living in close proximity and with generally poor standards of hygiene, was the next step.

  It seems there was a four to six day incubation period from the moment of actual infection, during which time this horrible condition, usually localised, occurred virtually every 15 to 20 years in some area or another. Where this occurred in highly populated areas (such as London) the death toll could still be alarmingly high.

  The threat of this appalling disease therefore continued and must have haunted people, especially those who saw it as a punishment from God. Throughout the final epidemic in 1665/6, definitely the worst since its very first arrival in the country in 1348, great pits were dug on the outskirts of towns to take the piled corpses. Many of these plague pits have later been uncovered in England, sometimes unearthed due to the subsidence of a building’s foundations unknowingly erected on this unsound ground.

  No one knows why the plague then died out in England. Hygiene did not noticeably improve for some time afterwards, and the supposition that the Great Fire of London in 1666 was the cleansing miracle is not supported by experts. But the plague has never devastated England since.

  Researching and writing about this dreadful suffering is heartbreaking. I cannot possibly contemplate the utter terror and hopeless misery caused throughout plague-affected areas during those 400 relevant years from the 14th to the 17th centuries, and the confusion, terror, and bitter loss experienced by both those poor souls afflicted, and by those left alive to mourn the mass deaths of their loved ones.

  And not a sneeze in sight.

  Scourge of Europe: The Religious Hysteria Created by the Black Plague

  by Rosanne E. Lortz

  Death has always been one of the most frightening prospects faced by mankind. The fear of death even has its own word to describe it—thanotophobia.

  In a society where a third to a half of the people around you have succumbed to death within the past year, the terror of knowing that you might be next can become overwhelming. It can drive a person to bizarre and unthinkable acts as he tries to ward off death’s icy grip from descending on his own shoulder.

  This is what happened in the mid-fourteenth century, during the years of the Black Plague. The world went wild with thanotophobia, and the country of England was no exception.

  Monty Python to the contrary, the Black Plague was no joking matter. The medieval chronicler Geoffrey le Baker wrote:

  Men who had been one day full of life, were often found dead the next. Some were afflicted with abscesses which erupted in various parts of their bodies, and which were so hard and dry, that even when they were cut with a knife, hardly any liquid flowed out…. Others had small black sores which developed all over their bodies. Only a very few who suffered from these survived and recovered their health.

  Such was the great plague which reached Bristol on 15 August [1348], and London around 29 September. It raged in England for a year or more, and such were its ravages, that many country towns were almost emptied of human life.

  For some, the proximity of the plague created the pernicious attitude of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Immorality, excess, and crime became rife in towns and cities, especially in the metropolis of London, as despairing people grasped after every last piece of self-gratification before death should come for them.

  Others, however, still nourished the hope that the plague might be avoided. Doctors tried the normal remedies of bleeding and laxatives and prescribed more outlandish cures such as drinking one’s own urine. It soon became obvious, however, that medicine had failed to find the answer. As corpse after corpse was thrown in the common burial pits, the only course left to the living was to repent of their sins, cast themselves on divine mercy, and entreat the angel of death to forbear.

  The fourteenth century, like the rest of the medieval period, was quick to consider any sort of disaster (natural or manmade) as a judgment from God. Earthquakes, fires, Viking invasions, Muslim conquests—all these things came about because of the sinful backsliding of God’s people. When the Black Plague, the greatest disaster in human memory, beset Europe, it was not hard for the deeply religious and deeply frightened populace to believe that God was exceptionally wroth with the world. Someone must intercede with the Almighty and prevail upon Him to stay His hand.

  The early Church had understood Christ to be the intercessor between His people and God the Father. But somewhere, in between the age of the Church Fathers and the era of the Hundred Years’ War, Christ, the “shepherd of tender youth,” had metamorphosed into Christ, the stern and implacable Judge. With Christ seen as the author of the plague itself, the desperate looked for a mediator in His kinder, gentler mother Mary.

  Across Europe, a sect known as the Flagellants began to gain followers. Wearing a uniform of a white robe marked with a red cross—much like the Knights Templar surcoat seen in so many period films—the Flagellants were a society of ascetic laymen determined to atone for the sins of the world. They gathered in groups of anywhere from 50 to 500 men, traveling around the towns of Europe and performing the ritual of publicly scourging themselves.

  The Catholic Encycl
opedia offers this description of the Flagellants’ activities:

  Twice a day, proceeding slowly to the public square or to the principal church, they put off their shoes, stripped themselves to the waist and prostrated themselves in a large circle. By their posture they indicated the nature of the sins they intended to expiate, the murderer lying on his back, the adulterer on his face, the perjurer on one side holding up three fingers, etc. First they were beaten by the “Master”, then, bidden solemnly in a prescribed form to rise, they stood in a circle and scourged themselves severely, crying out that their blood was mingled with the Blood of Christ and that their penance was preserving the whole world from perishing.

  After the Flagellants had gathered a crowd to watch their bloody performance, the Master would read aloud from a “heavenly letter,” trying to terrify the onlookers with its apocalyptic contents. Matthew of Neuenberg wrote:

  In this [letter], the angel said that Christ was displeased by the depravities of the world, and named many sins: violation of the Lord’s day, not fasting on Friday, blasphemy, usury, adultery. The letter went on to say that, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the angels, Christ had replied that to obtain mercy, a man should undertake voluntary exile and flagellate himself for thirty-three and a half days….

  The number was a symbolic one, standing for the thirty-three and a half years that Christ had dwelt in human form upon the earth. By identifying themselves with Christ, and taking on his sufferings as it were, the Flagellants could redeem the world from the death and destruction that had come in the form of the Black Plague.

  At first, the Church did not know what to make of this new sect. The clergy appreciated the Flagellants’ calls for repentance but also feared that this parachurch organization would provide a rival to the Roman Church’s authority. When the Flagellants began to speak out against the Church, blaming it for allowing the corruption that had brought God’s judgment, and also began to embellish their own teachings with flagrant heresy (e.g. denying the sacraments, professing their own ability to grant absolution), the Church reacted violently. Pope Clement VI commanded that the brotherhood be suppressed in whatever country they appeared throughout Europe.