The Stuarts in 100 Facts

by Andrea Zuvich

  Needless to say, things didn’t go according to plan. Tresham’s brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, received a letter (probably sent by Tresham) warning him not to go to Parliament that day for ‘they shall receive a terrible blow. Alerted by the tip-off, guards went down to the vaults and had a look around. There, they found Fawkes right beside many barrels of gunpowder.

  When the other conspirators found out that their plot had foundered, and Fawkes arrested, Catesby tried to rouse other Catholics to rise up with him. This didn’t work out either, and he and the other plotters fled to Holbeche House. There, soldiers found them, a fight ensued and Catesby was killed. The others were hauled down to London to await their punishment. The men were all subjected to the traditional hanging, drawing and quartering. It certainly was severe, but the crime – treason – was considered really reprehensible. Fawkes, his body broken from torture, managed to jump off the scaffold, breaking his neck, and thus saved himself from the excruciating agonies that were to follow.

  So, next time you hear someone labelling Guy Fawkes an anarchist – you know better. Catholics, who were already being persecuted, suffered more unpopularity as a result of the Gunpowder Plot, and were demonised throughout the rest of the period.

  11. WOMEN DIDN’T WEAR KNICKERS

  Although this fact may come as a surprise, most women in the Stuart period didn’t wear knickers or panties (Samuel Pepys’ wife, Elizabeth, wore ‘drawers’, but this was not common). Much like in the Tudor period before, Stuart women wore an article of clothing called a shift – which can also be called a chemise or smock. A shift would generally be a long-sleeved, long shirted T-shaped garment that would end under the knee or mid-calf. There were gussets, or square or rectangular-shaped pieces of fabric under the underarms to facilitate movement. The entire garment would have been made from linen or cotton and sewn with linen or silk thread. As with most clothing, the richer a person was the more luxurious the fabric. There is a particularly fine example of a smock dating from 1615–30 at the V&A Museum in London, which has beautiful embroidery of flowers, butterflies, and birds along the chest and some bobbin lace.

  The undergarments were important because people didn’t wash their clothes (nor their bodies) as regularly as we tend to do now, and the shift would be washed more regularly. Wealthier women would wear a new shift daily and theirs would usually have more embellishments than poorer women’s shifts. So what did women do during their time of the month? They probably wore linen rags, which they would then wash, dry and reuse. On top of the shift, women would wear their stays – a shaping, supportive garment. Some clothing would have stays sewn into the bodice so these didn’t require the same additional support.

  12. THE STUART FAMILY HAD A NASTY HABIT OF LOSING THEIR HEADS

  Gruesome and savage, decapitation rightly fills most people with horror and disgust. In the Early Modern period, however, beheading was considered the most respectful way of administering death to a person of high rank. Within the Stuart family in the seventeenth century, nearly every other generation following Mary, Queen of Scots had a significant member of the family beheaded.

  Mary, Queen of Scots, the popular matriarch of the Stuart dynasty, had one of the most scandalous lives of the Tudor period. She is often referred to as a woman who followed her heart instead of her head, and this may be too unkind. Mary Stuart was born in 1542 in Linlithgow Palace, Scotland, to the French princess Mary of Guise and King James V of Scotland. James’s mother was Margaret Tudor, a sister of Henry VIII of England. Six days after Mary’s birth, her father died; this untimely event made her the Queen of Scots. She later moved to France and married Francis, Dauphin of France, and then became his Queen consort. Following Francis’s untimely death at fifteen, Mary returned to her native Scotland. She chose to wed her cousin Lord Darnley, which was probably one of the worst decisions she made. However, with Darnley she gave birth to a son, James. Following Darnley’s murder, she then married the Earl of Bothwell; following this, she was imprisoned in England for nineteen years. There, she was found guilty of conspiring to assassinate her cousin Queen Elizabeth and was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, in 1587.

  Mary’s grandson, Charles I, was beheaded outside the Banqueting House of Whitehall Palace in January 1649. Charles’s reign was significant because of the terrible and bloody civil wars that raged throughout his three kingdoms. Charles, whose reign had been a mixture of troubles mingled in with major personal blunders on his part, went to his death with great courage and dignity. Upon the scaffold, he told Bishop Juxon, ‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in all the world.’

  On Tower Hill today there are three plaques commemorating those who died on that hill throughout history. The most notable of the Early Modern period include those executed during the reign of the Tudors: Saint Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, and Guilford Dudley. This same place of execution continued to be used during the reign of the Stuarts and figures such as the controversial William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and, later, Colonel Algernon Sidney met their ends here. Charles I’s grandson, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, was also beheaded on Tower Hill in 1685 following his failed attempt to seize the throne from his uncle, James II.

  Not all Stuarts who lost their heads lost them to the executioner’s axe. A cannonball decapitated James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, an illegitimate son of James II and Arabella Churchill, during the siege of Philipsbourg in 1734.

  13. SAMUEL PEPYS WAS A LUSTY FELLOW

  Samuel Pepys (pronounced Peeps) is one of the most popular of historical figures from the Restoration, indeed of the seventeenth century. While he is now mostly known for his Diary (which he wrote in code), during his lifetime he was a naval clerk and later secretary of the Admiralty during the reigns of Charles II and James II. However, when William and Mary came to the throne, there was a major scandal about the costly neglect of some ships. This negligence and the subsequent controversy led to much finger-pointing and accusation. This necessitated the only work he published during his lifetime, Memoires of the Royal Navy, in 1689. This is extremely dry in comparison to his Diary but is nevertheless important because of the political scene in which its publishing proved necessary.

  Pepys’s Diary, on the other hand, has proved to be one of the most popular writings of the seventeenth century, and yet it was never intended to be read by anyone other than himself. Pepys wrote it in code in order to keep his thoughts private – and with good reason. Pepys was a man who went after pleasures of all kinds – he absolutely loved food, fashion, music and going to the theatre. The pleasures of the flesh were merely part of his ebullient character and his lust for life. Unlike some of his oversexed contemporaries, Pepys was not always successful when it came to attracting the opposite sex.

  As documented in his Diary, there were many instances in which Pepys lusted after women (other than his wife, Elizabeth). There can be no doubt that he ogled, he fondled, he groped and more, but the label of ‘pervert’ some have applied to Pepys may stem not only from his womanising. On his birthday in 1669, he kissed the mouth of the long-dead corpse of Queen Catherine of Valois.

  There is an instance where Pepys got frisky with a woman during a church service and she, being none too pleased about his wandering hands, threatened to prick him with one of her clothes pins. Pepys also had a bit of hopeless crush on Barbara, Lady Castlemaine, and an admiration for Nell Gwynn. Ship carpenter William Bagwell’s wife aroused Pepys’s lust. He led her to believe that if she granted him sexual favours then he would help her husband get a better ship.

  Probably the most memorable naughty episodes in his diary involved his pursuit of Deb Willet, his wife’s companion. A companion was a person who provided friendship and companionship for a lonely person. Unfortunately, Deb soon attracted Samuel’s attention. Elizabeth, ‘coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl with my hand under her petticoats; and indeed I was with my hand in her. I wa
s at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also …’ Caught in the act! Oh, Pepys!

  14. RICH OR POOR – PARASITES DID NOT DISCRIMINATE

  One of the most unsavoury facts of the Stuart Era is that most people during this time had to deal with parasites such as fleas on a regular basis. Rich or poor, high-born or low, everyone had to deal with fleas, lice, and even intestinal worms! Even kings were not immune. Some people, including King Charles II, took preventative steps to reduce the chances of lice infestations by shaving the hair from their heads and covering up with wigs. Some wigs, however, contained nits and were teeming with parasitic life. The diarist Samuel Pepys was really put out with one wig-maker when he found that one of his costly new wigs was full of nits.

  Fleas are generally believed to have been the conduit by which plague was transmitted, and several diseases are linked to them. While they were a major daily irritation, seventeenth-century persons could still find that there was something admirable in the flea’s resilience. English polymath Robert Hooke described the flea thus: ‘The strength and beauty of this small creature, had it no other relation at all to man, would deserve a description.’ The flea, as a vessel containing blood, could be surprisingly erotic, as you can see in this excerpt from John Donne’s metaphysical poem, The Flea. ‘Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.’

  Lice, both head lice and body lice, were another constant problem of daily life in the Stuart era. Lice, which are easily transmitted from person to person, were also harbingers of contagion and typhus was a common disease they spread. Fine-toothed combs were helpful in delousing hair. There have been archaeological excavations that have uncovered Early Modern combs that still have nits in between the teeth. Trouble didn’t stop with fleas and lice, however, for intestinal worms were a common problem as well. These would make life very uncomfortable. The study of parasitical worms, helminthology, started to get going in the seventeenth century thanks to the use of microscopes, which revealed quite a lot of things that humans had never known about before.

  Many people also slept on mattresses of hay, which were usually filled with other parasites (including bedbugs) that would feast upon them during the night while they slept. Also, if people had livestock animals such as pigs, they were usually able to wander around the house. Ticks were also around during the seventeenth century. Oh, and I nearly forgot about the leeches! These slug-like parasites were a Stuart-era physician’s friend. Bloodletting was commonly used to treat fevers and these little babies were used to purify the blood. When a leech sucks enough blood, it separates from the host. Leeches are still used today after certain medical procedures.

  As you can see, life in the Stuart era meant parasites were a human’s constant companions. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little itchy now.

  15. THE ROYAL SOCIETY WAS FOUNDED BY SOME OF THE BRIGHTEST OF THE STUART AGE

  The Stuart era was a remarkable period for scientific endeavour in which human curiosity mixed with reason and philosophy with experimentation. The Royal Society was founded during the reign of King Charles II and is undoubtedly one of the greatest contributions to our world. Edmund Halley, Robert Hooke, William Petty, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Elias Ashmole, Christopher Wren, were all a dream-team of physicists, natural philosophers, mathematicians and brilliant minds. Some people are apt to disparage the inclusion of royals in this list, but it would be silly to omit them because Charles, James, and especially Rupert had a great interest in science; the latter proved to be one of the most active members of the Society. Although the full origins and members of the Royal Society are still a source of controversy in the academic community, it was founded on 28 November 1660, the first meeting being at Gresham College.

  The Royal Society debated a wide variety of scientific topics including ventilation, bees, planetary movements and the properties of light and physics. Although a small number of people tend to disparage the achievements of the gentlemen-scientists of the Stuart age, one must remember that gentlemen in this period were encouraged to take an interest in a variety of things, and this is why so many men from this and the subsequent century pulled off that rare move of being very good at several pursuits. They may have been the greatest minds of the Stuart age, but that didn’t stop them from bickering among themselves. Newton had quite a few quarrels with his colleagues, especially Robert Hooke. Wren, on the other hand, was so good-natured that he got on well with most of his colleagues.

  Some of the Society’s experiments included activities such as incubating chickens’ eggs and observing comets (such as the Great Comet of 1664), and several members including Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle performed intravenous experiments on live dogs. In 1661, Robert Boyle published The Sceptical Chymist, but he’s best known for Boyle’s Law from 1662, which states that the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to the volume when at a fixed temperature, or PV = k.

  It is no wonder that NASA and ESA have named several missions, planets, asteroids, etc. after some of great seventeenth-century scientists. These include the Galilean moons (named after Galileo Galilei), the Kepler Mission (after Johannes Kepler), XMM-Newton (after Isaac Newton) and the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft (after Giovanni Domenico Cassini and Christiaan Huygens). Although some of these figures were not in the Royal Society, their ideas and research impacted the work of those who were.

  16. SOME PEOPLE THOUGHT ORANGE JUICE WAS DANGEROUS

  International trade made possible by companies such as the Dutch East India Company brought strange and wonderful foods as a result of their exploration (and some exploitation) of far-flung lands. Some of these include everyday items that many now take for granted: pineapples, drinking chocolate, tea, and coffee. I’ve looked in my kitchen cupboard and found all sorts of dried herbs and spices. The latter were quite costly back in the day, especially nutmeg – the trade in which was dominated by the Dutch.

  While these are normal household groceries now, seventeenth-century people were sometimes wary of trying these new foods and beverages. The diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys documented his concerns before drinking his first-ever orange juice. On 9 of March 1668/9, Pepys had a go. ‘And here, which I never did before, I drank a glass, of a pint, I believe, at one draught, of the juice of oranges, of whose peel they make comfits; and here they drink the juice as wine, with sugar, and it is very fine drink; but, it being new, I was doubtful whether it might not do me hurt.’ Needless to say, the pint-glassful of orange juice didn’t kill him. By 1699, however, orange juice was considered safe; Pepys’s friend John Evelyn recommended it as an ingredient in a few of the recipes in his Acetaria.

  Bananas, considered a staple breakfast food now, were never seen in England before 1633, when it was sold in London. As for drinking chocolate, we have the Irishman Hans Sloane to thank for that, for he first tried the beverage in Jamaica and brought it to England. Solid chocolate candy wasn’t around until the mid-nineteenth century. Ice cream was also introduced to Britain in the Stuart period, and this incredible novelty was often served to Charles I. Gin was also introduced.

  The Stuarts ate all manner of things that many today would find unappetising. Pigeon pie would have been made with pigeon meat, and cock ale was made by stewing a chicken in fermenting beer to create a beverage that was believed to be most nourishing. Salads tentatively began to appear, especially with enthusiastic proponents such as John Evelyn. Potages were a typical dish on the Stuart table. A potage could be made in a variety of ways, but it usually contained oatmeal, broth, herbs, and could be made with any meat that was available – chicken, mutton, or pigeon.

  Water during the Stuart period was of dubious cleanliness and so most people drank small beer – even children (it was not strongly alcoholic). In order to make beer, water was boiled which killed bacteria. White bread historically was something only wealthier people could afford to buy. For example, in
March of 1665, a ‘Wheaten’ loaf of bread was a penny, but a ‘White Loaf’, weighing the same amount as the brown loaf, was as much as three and a half pennies!

  17. WILLIAM HARVEY DISCOVERED BLOOD CIRCULATION

  Greek physician Galen (c. 129–c. 216/17 CE) was a major early physician whose works were integral to medicine from his time up to the Early Modern period. Galen’s beliefs about the human body and medicine were, in turn, heavily influenced by Hippocrates – an earlier Greek physician and philosopher from whom we get the Hippocratic oath, among other things. Galen incorrectly believed that the veins came from the liver.

  That was all well and good until Kentish physician William Harvey made the monumental discovery that blood circulates throughout the body. Born in the Elizabethan age in 1578, he was both financially privileged and naturally intelligent enough to warrant going to university. (Harvey, a Royalist, eventually became a royal physician to both James I and Charles I, and during the English Civil War, he observed the Battle of Edgehill in 1642.) He even studied abroad at the much-respected University of Padua, where he studied under Hieronymus Fabricius, who in turn had studied under Andreas Vesalius.

  The latter was a highly influential anatomist in the sixteenth century, and he is notable because he found fault with certain aspects of Galen’s work; this was made evident in his 1543 work, entitled On the Fabric of the Human Body. Galenic medicine, although an ancient system, had gone largely unchallenged for centuries. William Harvey was going to turn the medical world upside down. In contrast to Galen’s beliefs, Harvey theorised that it was the heart and not the liver that was the source from which the veins emanated.