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

by English Historical Fiction Authors

  Sources and Further Reading

  Ackroyd, Peter. Thames: The Biography. New York: Doubleday, 2009.

  Parish Register. “Watermen and Lightermen.” Docklands Ancestors Ltd. http://www.parishregister.com/watermen_and_lightermen.html.

  Weinreb, Ben, et al. The London Encyclopaedia. UK: MacMillan, 1983.

  The Original Jack the Lad: Jack Sheppard, 1702-1724

  by Mike Rendell

  Had you been around in London on 16 November 1724, there is a one in four chance that you would have been in the procession (some two hundred thousand strong) wending its way in a carnival atmosphere towards Tyburn Hill where the empty gallows were being prepared for a hanging. One in four, because the crowd represented at least a quarter of the capital’s population at the time, and they were all there to “honour” one man: the diminutive Jack Sheppard.

  Daniel Defoe is presumed to have been hard at work scribbling the final touches to a biography which was on sale “hot from the press” by the time of the execution. And the twenty-two-year-old Jack, his cart escorted by uniformed guards, paused long enough at the City of Oxford Tavern in Oxford Street to sink a pint of sack (sherry), no doubt bemoaning the fact that one of his prison guards had discovered a pen-knife secreted about his person and thereby scotched his chance of escape. And escaping was what Jack was good at, and why the crowds had turned out in their thousands.

  There is a series of three scenes engraved by George Cruikshank in 1839, over a hundred years after Sheppard died, to illustrate the serialised novel Jack Sheppard, by William Harrison Ainsworth. For there was no doubt that the baby-faced Jack Sheppard was a thief and was getting his just rewards from a legal system designed to protect the wealthy. But over and over again, he had thwarted justice with his daring escapes, and no doubt the throng wanted to see if he could pull off the final escape, the big one, from Death itself. There was to be no such luck, and the lad finally went to meet his Maker that day nearly three centuries ago.

  Sheppard had been born in 1702 into abject poverty in the deprived area of Spitalfields. His father died when he was young and his mother had little choice but to send him to the workhouse when he was six years old. Jack was lucky—eventually he was placed with a draper on The Strand called William Kneebone as a shop-boy. Kneebone took the lad under his wing, taught him the rudiments of reading and writing, and encouraged him to become apprenticed as a carpenter (a seven year indenture, which was signed in 1717 when Jack was fifteen). His master was Owen Wood whose premises were in Covent Garden.

  All went well for five years—Jack was an exemplary pupil who showed every aptitude for carpentry and hard work. Then, well, he went off the rails.

  Maybe it was too many visits to The Black Lion off Drury Lane; maybe it was the blandishments of the young whore, Elizabeth Lyon (otherwise known as Edgeworth Bess), whom he met there; or maybe it was the company he fell into while frequenting the establishment, and in particular the notorious Joseph “Blueskin” Blake or the duplicitous Jonathan Wild (who styled himself the Thief-Taker General, though in reality he was a thief himself, but one who turned in his acquaintances whenever it was opportune to do so).

  Whatever the reason, the fact was young master Jack turned himself to a life of petty crime, and soon there was no way back. For a while it was pilfering, helping himself to odds and ends from people’s houses while on carpentry errands. But by 1723 he had jacked in his apprenticeship and set up home with Mistress Bess.

  Naturally she wanted to be spoiled rotten; naturally she was not content with the proceeds of minor shop lifting; she wanted Jack to show her the good life. He turned to burglary (an offence which carried the death penalty). Mistress Bess was arrested after they moved to Piccadilly from Fulham; Jack broke in to the jail and rescued her!

  Jack and his brother Tom, aided by Bess, embarked on a series of robberies until Tom got caught. The previous year he had also been apprehended (and suffered the painful penalty of being branded on the hand). This time he shopped his brother Jack to save his own skin, and a warrant for Jack’s arrest was issued.

  Knowing this, and anxious to get his hands on the forty pounds offered as a bounty, Jonathan Wild betrayed Jack to the constables, and he was arrested and locked up in the very prison from which he had rescued Elizabeth. Within hours of his incarceration he had cut a hole in the ceiling (leg irons notwithstanding), climbed onto the roof, and dropped down to join a crowd who had gathered when news of his escape became known. Diverting attention by announcing that he could “see someone on the roof over there”, he calmly shuffled off in the opposite direction….

  In May 1724, Jack was arrested for a second time—caught while in the act of lifting a pocket-watch from a gentleman in what is now Leicester Square, and was taken off to Clerkenwell prison, where he was locked up with his mistress. A few days passed while Jack, active with a file, cut through the manacles which chained them both and then removed one of the iron bars on the prison window. He lowered himself and his buxom Bess down to the street on a knotted bed-sheet (no mean feat given his lack of stature) and off they went into the darkness.

  Things escalated—they tried their hand at highway robbery and burglary, stooping so low as to break into the home of his old employer and helper, William Kneebone, but the greedy Jonathan Wild was closing the trap. He found Elizabeth Lyon, plied her with alcohol to loosen her tongue, and by this means established where Jack was staying.

  Again he was arrested, again he was sent to prison—this time to the notorious Newgate, and guess what, he escaped from there as well!

  On 30 August a warrant for his death was being brought to the prison from Windsor—but by the time it arrived it was discovered that Jack had escaped. Aided and abetted by Bess, he had removed one of the window bars, dressed in female clothing brought into the prison by his accomplice, and made good his escape via boat up the river to Westminster.

  By now he was renowned for his escapades. He was every Cockney’s hero, Jack the Lad, whom no bars could hold. After all, he hadn’t killed anyone, he was the ultimate cheeky chappy who always got away from the law in the nick of time. Added to that, he was good looking in a baby-faced sort of way, young, strong, and very agile. This was the stuff of which legends would be made….

  Jack laid low for a few days but was soon back to his old tricks and on 9 September was captured and returned to the condemned cell at Newgate. His fame meant that he was visited by the great and the good—gawpers who wanted to say that they had met Jack Sheppard. All this time he was not just in leg-irons, but chained to iron bolts in the floor of the cell.

  Cheekily, he had demonstrated to his guards his ability to pick the padlocks with a bent nail and they in turn had increased the security by having him not just hand-cuffed but bound tightly as well. Having trussed him up like a turkey, they retired for the night…and Jack set to work.

  He couldn’t get rid of the leg-irons but he could free himself from the other restraints. He managed to break into the chimney, where his pathway was blocked by an iron bar. This he dislodged, using it to break a hole in the ceiling and as a crow bar to open various doors barring his way. At one point he went back to his cell to retrieve his bed clothes, as he needed these to drop down onto the roof of a building next to the prison. He waited until midnight, let himself into the building via the roof, and calmly walked out the front door (still in his leg-irons).

  The lad must have had a fair amount of chutzpah, because after lying low for a couple of days he was able to persuade a passer-by that he had been imprisoned elsewhere for failing to maintain an illegitimate son—and would he mind fetching some smithy tools? The passer-by obliged, and within a few hours Jack had broken his fetters and was off to taste a freedom which was to last all of a fortnight.

  It was at this point that the journalist Daniel Defoe was brought in to pen Jack’s story, which he did anonymously as The His
tory of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard.

  On the night of 29 October, Jack Sheppard broke in to a pawnbroker’s shop in Drury Lane, helping himself to a smart black silk suit, a silver sword, rings, watches, a peruke wig, and other items. He then hit the town, dressed in style, and passed the next day and a half drinking and whoring. Finally, in a drunken torpor, he was arrested on 1 November, dressed “in a handsome Suit of Black, with a Diamond Ring and a Cornelian ring on his Finger, and a fine Light Tye Peruke”.

  Back he was taken to Newgate, imprisoned in an internal room and weighted down with iron chains. His celebrity status meant that he was visited by the rich and famous, and had his portrait painted by James Thornhill, painter to his Majesty King George I.

  There was a clamour for his release, but the authorities were adamant: Jack must pay the price for his notoriety. And so it was that on 16 November 1724, a huge and happy crowd escorted Jack to the gallows, where he did what prisoners were supposed to do—hang. After a quarter of an hour he was cut down, rescued from any attempt by the vivisectionists to claim his body, and buried in the churchyard at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.

  That was the end of Jack Sheppard but not the end of his story. Pamphlets, books, and plays were written, all singing the praises of this swash-buckling hero. His name quickly became an icon, and his story inspired John Gay to write The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. It was hugely popular.

  Others piled into print and for the next one hundred years the tales based on Jack’s exploits were legion. It got so bad that at one stage the Lord Chamberlain’s office banned the production of any play containing Jack Sheppard’s name in the title—for over forty years—for fear that it would encourage lawless behaviour.

  Let us remember Jack Sheppard—a twenty-two-year-old who went to the gallows for offences which today would merit little more than a slap on the wrist or a spell in a Young Offenders Institutiion. The boy did wrong, but his memory lives on in our collective consciousness, kept alive by every tale of “the lovable Cockney rogue” and every mention of behaviour being that of “Jack the Lad”.

  In the Wake of James Cook

  by Linda Collison

  When we imagine the history of Great Britain, we think of the separate classes of people—peerage, gentry, the middling sort, and the servants—as being very static. To a large degree that was the case. Yet unlike many nations, in England some degree of upward mobility was possible (at least historically!).

  James Cook, one of five children born to the wife of a Scottish farm laborer in Marston, Yorkshire, was not born a gentleman with title or income, but he made the most of his talents and the most of his opportunities in life. Young James went to sea as a teenager, working aboard a collier out of Whitby, hauling coal from Newcastle. When the Seven Years’ War began, Cook joined the Royal Navy where he rose to the rank of captain on his merit.

  A self-taught cartographer, Cook’s talents were put to use making detailed maps of Newfoundland in battles against France which gained him the recognition of his superiors and also the recognition of the Royal Society. He was given command of the Endeavour, a re-named converted collier sent on a secret mission to look for a lost continent and to observe the transit of Venus, a measurement needed to estimate the distance of the earth from the sun.

  Captain Cook would command three scientific voyages of exploration across largely uncharted or poorly charted areas of the planet, making better maps and astronomical observations in great detail. He would not find the mythical continent geographers of the day thought existed nor would he find the Northwest Passage, but his explorations and his detailed charts were important to Britain, and the entire Western World.

  In the 18th century scurvy killed more sailors than did battles. Scurvy would not be fully understood until 1932 when ascorbic acid was identified. Yet none of Cook’s crew died from scurvy, in spite of prolonged voyages. Cook took a shotgun approach to prevention, ordering his crews to drink malt and spruce beer which he believed to have anti-scorbutic properties.

  Although these particular substances are now known to have no real effect in preventing the vitamin deficiency, what probably contributed greatly to the relative good health of his men was Cook’s insistence that the crew eat fresh, local foods at every opportunity (he was a “local-vore” way ahead of his time!). For a good scholarly article on 18th century ideas of scurvy remedies, see Brett Stubbs’ Captain Cook’s Beer: the anti scorbutic use of malt and beer in late 18th century sea voyages.

  For his contribution to the greater body of scientific knowledge, Captain James Cook was inducted as a fellow of the Royal Society, a rare honor in those days for the son of a farm laborer to achieve.

  By most accounts James Cook was a fair and humane captain, a superb navigator and cartographer, a dedicated explorer, and an all-round exemplary naval officer. He was a husband and father of six children, though absent for years at a time. Elizabeth Batts Cook, wife of James, lived into her nineties.

  Cook’s ships were not warships, and with few exceptions they were welcomed by most of the Island Nations, who were quick to embrace Western friendship and technology. But on his third voyage and circumnavigation, a string of misunderstandings and poor decisions led to a skirmish during which the famed navigator was killed by the Hawaiians. The event did not lead to war. On the contrary, the Kingdom of Hawaii remained on good terms with the British, incorporating the design of the Union Jack into its own flag.

  In October of 1999, my husband Bob and I had the opportunity of a lifetime. We signed on as voyage crew members aboard His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour, an Australian-built replica of the famed Whitby converted coal carrier, for a three-week crossing from Vancouver to Hawaii. The Endeavour replica is a floating museum that circumnavigated the globe twice, stopping at many ports along the way. She is now berthed in Sidney, Australia, where she occasionally circumnavigates the continent that Cook painstakingly charted.

  My three weeks living the life of an 18th century seaman led to a renewed appreciation for Captain James Cook, a man who was born without title, fortune, or influence but made the most of his life and changed the world.

  Three weeks as an 18th century seaman also inspired my first historical fiction novel Star-Crossed, published by Knopf, and my second book Surgeon’s Mate published in 2011 by Fireship Press.

  Right-Royal Comings and Goings at Weymouth, 1794

  by Mike Rendell

  Carved into the limestone near the town of Weymouth in Dorset, some 300 feet above sea level, is a picture of a man on horseback, 280 feet long. Not just any man, but reputedly King George III, and for over two centuries he has been there, commemorating the fact that the monarch used to visit the town regularly over a fifteen-year period.

  George III started his visits in 1789, encouraged by tales about how beneficial the sea air (and indeed sea water) would be to his fragile health. Year after year he came back, his final visit being in 1805. The figure was carved three years afterwards, so George never saw it. That hasn’t stopped all manner of stories about the King being offended because it shows him riding away from his beloved Weymouth, rather than entering it….

  The carving has been spruced up this year to coincide with the fact that Weymouth plays host to the Olympic Games sailing competition, and not before time as His Majesty has been looking decidedly grey of late!

  I thought it would be fun to look out the records of just one of His Majesty’s visits, to see exactly what he got up to. This may help any aspiring writers out there who would like to include a reference to the goings-on in the Royal household. Fortunately the records in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1794 are really very detailed and give a fascinating picture of the Royal court “on tour”.

  The record starts by announcing that on August 15,

  at an early hour in the morning, after a slight refreshment of tea, coffee &c the King, Queen, Prince Erne
st and the six Princesses left Windsor in two post chaises with the most loyal effusions of good wishes from the inhabitants for their safe return.

  Weymouth turned out to welcome the Royal party later that day: broadsides were fired by the sloops of war off the coast, while a cannon was fired on the Esplanade by way of a Royal salute.

  A melancholy accident happened to the two men firing the cannon, owing to their not sponging the gun properly, the cartridge took fire, by which one of the men had his hand blown off, and the other lost one of his eyes and was otherwise most hurt. The cloaths of the latter were set on fire, and were with much difficulty torn off time enough to save him from being burnt to death.

  Not the most auspicious of starts….

  The next day, a Saturday, saw the King take an airing on the Dorchester Road, while Her Majesty and the Princesses walked on the Esplanade and regaled Mr. Wild and his family, of Lulworth Castle, with a great share of her conversation.

  Sunday 17 August saw the King make an early start—by seven o’clock he was walking to the Look-out, getting back for his breakfast two hours later. The Royal party went to Melcombe Church to hear a sermon by the Rev’d Groves—they always attended church there, much to the dismay of the Princesses who found the atmosphere inside horribly warm and stuffy, on account of the great press of onlookers. By the evening, rain had set in and the King went for a damp walk, leaving his wife and children behind in their rooms.

  The fun started in earnest the next day at seven—His Majesty had a quick dip in the briny “in his old machine” before taking an airing on the road to Wareham. A replica of the bathing machine has just been restored and on 1 June was put back on the sea front. Rumour has it that when the King went for a swim a small orchestra was concealed in the next-door bathing machine so that they could strike up “God Save the King” as His Majesty emerged, like King Neptune, from the tumultuous waves!