Richard Attenborough 1923-2014

Goodbye Richard, you were one of the good guys in many ways and gave your all to what you believed in.  You were a fine actor and director as well as contributor to all our lives.  What interests me is who may have been influences that played at least a small part in your later life.

The picture above is the staff of the Wyggeston Boys Grammar School in 1933.  In the second row and standing, sixth from the left is "Doc" Outram, short and slight with a small moustache and eighth, Cecil Dunford, taller and bigger, with a button upped jacket.

Outram was an English teacher who believed in the power of words and the beauty and strength of the English language.  Dunford was a distinguished minor artist, with an eye for landscape, distance and colour and also an artist veteran of the First World War.

You did them proud.

Riders In The Sky

Grunge, nominally Gerry Murphy, but in full Marmaduke Llewellyn Gerald Iain Smith-Jones-Murphy-Mactavish, the 14th Earl of Gorbals, was sitting in his cubicle trying to restore the family fortunes by banging away at a computer keyboard.  There was a decision to make, and he paused.  He was sure that the coding he preferred was good and much better than the alternative. Grunge had created it and knew it was sound.

But the management operating software development committee had decided categorically that the one invented by the Managing Director's auntie had to be installed, or else.  Apparently it was based it on a well-known knitting pattern that she used to solve all her problems by concentrating her empathies.  The methodology had already had great success in dealing with weaknesses in the date and time setting on her personal computer. 

Grunge would have liked to enjoy other ways of earning his money or living, but the family land and fortunes had been dissipated by a series of unlucky decisions by his immediate forefathers.  They had been foolish enough to combine a social conscience and a reliance on Trust lawyers together with a quaint belief in the Scottish system of justice.

The money had all gone and none at all knew where or how it had happened.  Generations of ruthless ambition, measured violence, abuse of law, and absurd risk taking had been abandoned to seeking advice from the incompetent, small minded, and very seriously bent.  In the new century there was only one thing for it, software engineering, and in this Grunge had made an even bigger mistake.

Grunge had chosen America because it had cheap food and big women, but the expenses were high and unpredictable.  He had come to feel nostalgic for the bite of a real Scottish midge.

So, with a caution that was unknown to his forebear at the Battle of Flodden, who had ridden single handed at the English cannon and disappeared in a mess of blood and flesh, Grunge leaned over his cubicle and asked his supervisor.  "OK its now the committee code to go in, will you check me."

After a few minutes of enduring the sneers and threats, the routine for holders of a Green Card, Grunge managed to extract an answer.  “Hey, ******* ****, you ******* greasy limey, just do as your ******* told and no ******* questions.  ******* do it and ******* do it ******* now, and ******** you do ******* not ******* leave until it is ******* checked and by ******* you, ******* personal, OK ******* get me?”

His supervisor, recently arrived from Ecuador on a forged American passport, was an avid believer in the study of Hollywood films for the teenage market segment as a means of cultural absorption. So Grunge nodded, proceeded to tap away, and it was done. 

Night came and he was on his own, even the illegal migrants had left, and it was time to run the system to see if everything was as it should be.  After a short while there was a loud bang as the local power station blew up.  Grunge noticed a bad smell about the office.  When the emergency power plant in the basement had kicked in the backup power and the lights returned he found he was looking at a middle sized square built man dressed in loose woollen shirting and skins.

At first Grunge thought he was one of the latest Balkan recruits to the maintenance department, until he noticed the horse.  Grunge breathed deeply, which was a mistake, as the man smelled a lot worse than the horse.   "Can I help you?" he asked.  "Indeed you may, what is this place and why am I here?  Am I called before my gods?"  The language was a little formal, but it did show that the auto sensing verbal translation function in the operating system was in place.

Grunge told him his name and the company he worked for, but the man seemed at a loss.  "I am Attila,” he said, and this is "Villumgates, my horse."  "Hi Vill, Hi Attila!"  Replied Grunge, "And what brings you here?"  "I was standing peacefully outside my yurt thinking of a swift gallop to a well fleshed maiden I saw lifting her skirt, when a swirling purple mist came over me and here I am.  Is this heaven or hell?"

"More like the latter, we are short on human resource development, but really just an ordinary outfit devoted to making money and apologising for the breakdowns in our software.  But where do you live?"  "On my horse with my men most of the time, I own the plains beyond the Urals to China, but have recently embarked on a vigorous programme of mergers and acquisitions."

"Hey, are you Attila The Hun?"  Grunge realised that Auntie’s time function had properties that were entirely unexpected.  The man spat, it made a mess on the screen, Grunge clicked his tongue, it could be organic yoghurt and that was a lot of trouble to remove.  "No, no, no, Attila The Fun, those Romish monks, they make a simple error in calligraphic transcription, and all over Europe they get it wrong.

Every place we go to with our Great Horse Show we have to explain it all over again.  That organisation needs a good takeover, delayering, and shakeout."  "But I thought you rushed about fighting, murdering, raping, looting, having sex, and destroying everything in your path?"

Attila sat down on Grunge's seat, imposing on it a layer of grease; the horse gently chewed its way through the various handbooks on the desk.  Grunge did not mind the horse; he was probably improving their inner meaning.  Attila looked at him squarely in the eye for a few moments, Grunge tried to smile, but found it difficult.

Attila asked him, "So when you go to a show what do you want to see?"  Grunge thought for half a second, "Fighting, murdering, raping, looting, sex and destruction."  "Good egg, look, old boy, let me put you in the picture." said Attila.  Grunge felt the language function needed some more work.  "It's like this, we put on a show, now the peasants."

Grunge winced, he hoped the audio surveillance was now off; this was deeply politically incorrect.  In the company mission statement all were equal, except when it came to bonuses, salaries, stock options, medical insurance, and perquisites.  "They like lots of bangs, noise, blood, and things that rarely happen down on the farm.  Oh, and people getting their clothes off.  The church doesn't like it, as our increasing takings have been impacting severely on their own marketing and expansion programme.  They have tried to piggy-back our operations by creating alleged saints and martyrs where we have performed.  They have a very nice line in horrible and tragic deaths, but we still have the cutting edge in the transcendental experience trade."

Grunge riposted, “Don’t forget they have a good tourist trade based on relics.”  As a good Free Presbyterian, Grunge felt it odd to be supporting the Church of Rome, but someone had to these days.   “Holy cow,” Grunge wondered what Attila was going to come up with, but was wrong, “hocus pocus, that is exactly where we have the client.  We do not expect a customer to crawl miles on his or her knees to look at a bit in a box.  All spectators get their own personal relic there and then.  Our shows are designed to create enough fatal casualties to enable full distribution of a certified item to the paying entry.”

"I see, but that's not the story I've heard"  "Well you have heard wrong, then, I have been trying to get our marketing department to get into scrolls and books for the record, but they say that is for the nerds, a bit of polo with a head always gets the crowds in."  "So you are getting the better of the Church then?"  "Not all the time, we had this prime booking in Rome, but we couldn't get past all the singing nuns who they sat down in the road."  "Couldn't you have ridden over them?”  "Gadzooks no,” Grunge made a note.

"Think of the horses’ fetlocks man, those are prime expensive animals, some bony nun could do a lot of damage."  This was getting heavy so Grunge decided to try something, he tapped a few keys, and another power plant in Massachusetts vaporised.  There was a momentary glitch in the power and lighting, but Attila and Villumgates had gone.

In the afternoon of the next day the Executive Director for Human Capital and Personal Identification tapped on Grunge's side panel.  He was moving from leg to leg which was always a bad sign.  "The surveillance tapes from last night, you had an unauthorised visitor, he seemed to be an oddball, we hope you can explain, there were one or two things which breached the guidance for verbal communications instructions, and there are gaps in the tape, so we are assuming substance abuse and all manner of other things on the advice of the legal boys.  Oh, and the horse is a problem, allergy risk and liability and all that, any problem we take the money out of your company pension entitlement."

Grunge breathed in hard yet again, it was recommended by his personal trainer, and realised that the Executive Director made heavy use of male fragrances; on the whole Grunge preferred Attila.  It was going to be difficult, but a logical and sensible explanation would have been regarded as a sign of guilt.

Toughing it out was the sub text of any discussion.  So Grunge decided to be more or less frank and open for once, "Our new project seems to have a Time Travel function, thanks entirely to your innovation, or rather the MD's Aunty.  That was Attila the Hun, he wasn't totally happy with the situation so I let him go home, I'm sorry he forgot to sign in and out.  His visit was entirely involuntary and unplanned, and subject to unforeseen circumstances so of course I deny liability.  That rests with the designer of the knitting pattern." 

The Executive Director looked very sour, "So, you want to be clever, so show me what you did."  "Just the routine checking procedure on the new codes?" asked Grunge.  "OK I'm going to run it, soon, I’ll be back when I’ve had my pills."  "Look, are you sure?  Last time it was only Attila, the circus entrepreneur, who knows what you will get next?"  "Listen you, I do not like bull and baloney, and this time you are going to answer some questions."

As his superior pushed his way past to the rest room, Grunge thought it was time to go for late lunch.  It was over a year since he had taken time to eat out during the day, the question was where.  It needed to be a place as far as possible in the shortest time.  He remembered a quiet place high in the White Mountains that might be a safe distance, and he could pick up some of the ball game on TV.  If the worst happened he could cross the State line, or run for Canada.

Grunge ordered a rib-eye steak with eggs benedict and fries to come at the Arnold Memorial Inn and settled down to watch the rest of the game on the giant TV screen that dominated the 18^th Century style dining room.  After only a short while there was a twitching of the lights and power, then a generator took over, and the TV resumed.  At first there was a purple haze on the screen and then when the picture emerged there appeared to be crowd trouble at the Fenway Stadium.  A mob was on the park, and strangely for demonstrators, they appeared to be mounted.

Grunge’s first reaction that it was a mounted police undercover unit sent to deal with the players who had threatened a strike over the brand name of the sponsor of their boxer shorts, but then he realised that he had seen the leader before, although it was the horse he recognised first.  It was Villumgates.

One of the Boston players was unwise enough to begin shaking his bat at Attila, who stood in his stirrups, waved his sword and called the play to his men.  They began to put on their show with a will and with a degree of organisation and brutality that surpassed anything the crowd had seen since the World Ladies Wrestling Championships.

It wasn’t long before the coverage was cut and the advertisements began to roll.  After a few minutes a man in positive mode apologised for the loss of picture and promised a screening of “Spartacus”.  “What the hell?”  said the barman, “It was only the second innings.”  Grunge thought for a few minutes and decided a lot of beer would go well with the meal, but after he had spent a few minutes on the laptop first.  “Could I book in for a couple of nights?” he asked the barman.

The TV coverage of the ball game at the Fenway was the most amazing thing the viewers had ever seen, the little they saw.  The trouble was that the sponsors were unable to book a return match, which gave rise to criticism of the programming in the media sections.  When Grunge returned to the office he learned that the software project had been discontinued and that a large number of lawyers seemed to have been appointed and were running around looking over the shoulders of staff that Grunge had never seen before.

None seemed to know what they were doing, which made for an air of normality, and Grunge knew he had about a very short time to act.  Occupying the cubicle reserved for the Chairman’s niece, a lady not his relation, and who never appeared, but drew a Vice-President’s salary and bonuses, he set to work on a pile of knitting patterns, and scribbled bits of paper littered about by the M.D’s Aunty.  He was lucky, just having completed his work, entered the copyright, and established Intellectual Property Rights when he was found.

A posse of personal assistants dragged him to the Conference Room where he was confronted by a team of lawyers.  A long speech was made by the most senior, a lady, who had lived almost thirty years, and Grunge learned he was surplus to not just company requirements but potentially the human race were there to be any insuperable difficulties.

Blood will out and Grunge lost his temper.  He was then made an offer of an unexpected vacancy in Columbia, with immediate effect, apparently new software was need urgently by local exporters who had persistent problems with the documentation for the transport of their goods.

Grunge asked for an absurd package of pay and bonuses, to be followed by a final payoff determined on the most lunatic optimism of the company’s share price.  There was a silence.  Then, while the lady was telling him that he was a fool, he took out the knitting pattern and began tapping into his laptop.  She froze and then agreed.

It had taken time for Grunge to rebuild the good will and popularity of the large luxury hotel in the Scottish Borders with its own fishing rights in the Tweed, extensive riding facilities and paddocks, and small distillery in the old gymnasium.  He had bought it for a song at the urging of his bride, Griselda, who he discovered through her web site “Curvaceous of Clackmannan” one of the most popular on the net.

An outbreak of e-coli during an Italian Gourmet weekend had ruined the previous owners.  Normally, this would not have mattered but the deaths of a Premier League footballer and his television presenter partner had caused some excitement. 

As a rich man Grunge could indulge his private interests, and begin to use his title with pride.  It all helped trade.  As he was told by his advertising agency, the Gorbals title was instantly recognisable and both streetwise and credible.

His New Real Nice Person approach to living with the avoidance of damage to immune systems by excessive exercise and the purification and cleansing of the body by large doses of his personalised cask strength single malt whisky, with its high level of iodine traces, drew an appreciative clientele.

Additionally, its superb anti-septic properties meant he never had to worry about food poisoning. For the first time in his life he really enjoyed his work, moving smiling about the dining room and exchanging jokes and patter.

Sometimes, he was asked the secret of his success.  “It came straight from the horse’s mouth” was always the enigmatic reply.

A Moulder Of Men

As a contrast to the families of the high elite of the 15th and 16th Centuries here is a sketch of the life story of one of the workers of the 19th Century who believed in social and political improvement and rose to high status within his class and faith.

Peter Turner Winskill had a varied and public career in terms of his employment, and as a significant figure in the Temperance Movement. His was a writer, publicist, campaigner, and was a strict Primitive Methodist by faith.

Peter attended the National and Barrington Elementary School in Houghton during the 1840’s, and he says he had a period as Pupil Teacher, but was not allowed to go on. In 1900 he still felt there was a serious injustice done. In 1851 he is an Apprentice Mason, but then he moved in 1852 to Middlesbrough and became an Iron Moulder, his occupation in 1857.

In 1858 he is in Ripley. He then seems to have moved to other work for his income and in the Temperance Movement. In 1861 he is listed as an Assurance and Commission Agent at Belper. For a period in the mid 1860’s he has returned to Durham, and is living at Bishop Wearmouth, Sunderland.

By 1871 he is an Auctioneer and Stationer at Clay Cross. At that time a Stationer, who supplied stamped legal documents, was required to register with the Commissioners of the Revenue. Later that year he moved to Warrington.

From the 1850’s he was active in the Temperance Movement and undertook a variety of work, as well as writing. In 1881 in Warrington he is still an Auctioneer, but in 1882 moves to another post in Liverpool, described in 1893 as a Book Agent, and he was there until his death as the consequence of a stroke in 1912, when he was described as a retired Insurance Agent.  Peter was buried at Warrington Cemetery in an unmarked grave with two of his children.  Elizabeth, his wife,  for whom he had doubtless relied on for much support and help, had died in the early months of 1904.

In the 1850‘s Iron Moulding would be regarded as a highly skilled trade. In 1892 he was saying that for 40 years he was known as a Teetotal Middlesbrough Iron Moulder, a trade known for heavy beer drinking by its nature. Certainly, this was how he was employed at an early stage in his life, but he moved on to take advantage of his education and connections.

As a Temperance Worker, Peter seems to have been one of the hard line Total Abstinence men, but it is difficult to be definite because of the many schisms and divisions in the movement in the half-century he was active.  Peter’s occupation in 1857 was still that of an Iron Moulder, but in 1861 he had moved on.

As the years went by it could be that less time was spent in the day job and more on his Temperance activity funded by expenses payments. His original employment may have given him scope for promotion as a result of the rapid growth of the Iron industry at this time.

Then the founding of the Temperance Insurance Societies in 1857 because of the heavy extra charges levied by the then Life Societies on teetotal life policy holders; total abstinence being claimed by them to be life threatening; could have led to other work.  The locations given for the births of his children could reflect either possibility.

From his writings it appears that Peter was in Middlesbrough in the spring of 1852 when a dozen young men were brought together to form the Middlesbrough Young Men’s Auxiliary Temperance Association. In 1859 he was living in the Alfreton area, which could be Ripley, as above, when a prominent lecturer was unable to take a large meeting, and Peter took his place at the last minute. As a consequence of a successful meeting the Alfreton Temperance Society was formed which affiliated to the North of England Temperance League that had been established the previous year.

In 1863 he was speaking at the meeting of the League in Newcastle, and acting as supply, that is substitute agent, from time to time.  In 1867 Peter and his family moved to Sunderland and he had begun to write. On the death of James Rewcastle, a major figure in the movement, Peter wrote several items.

One development in the period was the foundation of the Temperance “Lifeboat Crews” in Staffordshire, which spread to other Industrial districts, especially the North East. They were essentially social clubs that modelled their organisations on the structure of the Lifeboat service on the coast, and spent evenings in discussions and in singing. They were popular in Sunderland, and Peter composed a songbook “The Sons of Temperance and Teetotal Lifeboat Crew Melodist etc.”, printed in 1868. This was followed in 1870 by “Winskill’s (No.2) Band of Hope Melodist”, printed in Northampton.

In the 1850’s the Independent Order of Good Templars had been founded in America, as a Temperance organisation. There had been historical speculation on the Medieval Order of Crusading Templars in the previous decades, as part of the revival of interest in the Middle Ages. Some of this had become embodied in many Freemason’s Lodges, which then were enmeshed with the drink trade; hence the meaning of “Good Templars” for the Temperance Movement.

The movement spread rapidly in America, probably because of its open recruitment policy for both men and women. In 1871 the Good Templars began in England, and that year, Mr. James Gall Campbell, one of the moving figures, travelled from Sunderland to Clay Cross in Derbyshire at his own expense (the comment is instructive), to initiate Mr. and Mrs. P.T. Winskill into the movement. Brother Peter Winskill was made the first Worthy Chief Templar of the First Lodge of Derbyshire.

Later in 1871 Peter and family had moved to Warrington, and by the end of that year he had formed six Lodges in the town with over 300 members. In 1873 several similar organisations came together to form the United Templar Order and in the last three months of that year Peter was on the road as Organising Agent and Lecturer. He spoke at Warrington, Widnes, Runcorn, Leeds, Stockton-on-Tees, Sunderland, Shields, Jarrow, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Gateshead, Hexham, Southwick, Trimdon Grange, Trimdon Colliery, Wingate, and numerous other places according to his own account.

Peter did not speak only in earnest; apparently he was often called on to recite the ode “The Old Arm Chair”. In the 1950’s a Folk Song was made of this piece which was quite popular and frequently played on the radio. By the 1880’s he was writing more and the relevant journals of that period would need to be studied, including those of the Primitive Methodist Church and the Band of Hope.  In 1881 he published a subscription edition of his own work “The Comprehensive History of the Rise and Progress of the Temperance Reformation from the Earliest Period to September 1881”.

In 1891 Peter produced a history of the Temperance Movement in Liverpool and Warrington. All this work culminated in 1892 in his four volume “The Temperance Movement and It’s Workers”, published by Blackie of Edinburgh. Peter was also in correspondence with many notables connected with the movement, Dr. F.R. Lees contributed an introduction to the 1892 book.

Peter’s activities were across the work of the Temperance Movement. In 1889 the Liverpool League was reformed as the Liverpool Temperance Electoral Association and John Paton and Peter canvassed four of the nine Liverpool constituencies. In 1890 the Liverpool and District Direct Veto League was formed.

In October 1891 the North of England Temperance League met at Middlesbrough in the course of a campaign to recruit a million new members to the Band of Hope. Peter went on to conduct a week's mission at Great Ayton. Clearly, by that time he had become one of the major figures in the movement in the North.

What his role may have been and how he reacted in the Great Arsenic Scandal in Liverpool in the late 1890’s is an intriguing question.  A firm of maltsters preparing the raw materials for brewers in Liverpool were using processes and methods that resulted in exceptionally high levels of arsenic in their products.

The results were an epidemic of arsenic poisoning and a large number of deaths of beer drinkers in Liverpool in the late 1890’s, which culminated in a Royal Commission in 1901.  Together with other known forms of adulteration of beers, including in America using cobalt to keep the head on the drink, there was ample scope for reform.  It converted many to the cause of Temperance, albeit others to whisky.

In the final years of his life he lived in Liverpool a short distance from a Lyons Tea Room in the town centre popular with people of the Temperance inclination.  One of the waiters, a recent immigrant from Austria who had married an Irish girl, was obliging and attentive.  His name was Alois Hitler.

A Little Bit Of History Part Two

This second part deals with the family of Carew of Beddington.  They were a branch of the main Carew family and rose to the heights of society  by means of marriages and closeness to King Henry VIII.  It adds more background to the period and indicates its complications and the risks.

SIR NICHOLAS CAREW

Nicholas was three times Sheriff of Surrey and a Member of Parliament in 1439.  He is thought to be a supporter of the Duke of Exeter, fought in the Wars of the Roses, and at the Battle of St. Albans.  In consequence he was twice pardoned for being on the losing side, probably at some cost to his purse.  He was Sheriff of Surrey in 1440, 1444, and 1448.

He married Margaret, daughter of Sir Roger Fiennes of Herstmonceaux in Sussex, a leading figure of the period.  Sir Roger was a veteran of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, Treasurer to King Henry VI, and Constable of the Tower of London.  Margaret’s mother, and Sir Roger’s wife was Elizabeth Holland, sister of Sir John Holland of Northamptonshire.

The Holland’s were a major Lancashire family, one of whom, Sir Thomas Holland, rose swiftly by marriage to Joan,  the daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, son of King Edward I. Sir Thomas became  Earl of Kent, and it is thought that Sir John Holland was one of a cadet branch of that family.

The Fiennes family arrived in England in 1066 as Kinsmen and Companions of the Conqueror, and take their name from a place close to Guisnes near Boulogne.  Two forebears are known to have been present at the Battle of Hastings, of the nineteen known for certain.  They were Count Eustace of Boulogne, and Hugh de Grandesmil.  An ancestress, Sybil de Tingries, circa 1170, was heiress to the Dukes of Ponthieu, and descendant of the Emperor Charlemagne.

Sir Nicholas Carew died in 1548 and he and Margaret had six known children:

1.  Nicholas Carew, who married Margaret Langford.  He died aged 30 on 3^rd August 1466 leaving three year old son, Nicholas, and three young daughters.  The son died young, but after 1474, and Margaret remarried; to John Carent, and contested the probate on behalf of her three daughters, and the litigation being in the hands of the Crown Attorneys took a long time to come to a conclusion.

2.  JAMES CAREW

3.  Isabel, who married a Bukton.

4.  Rose.

5.  Margaret.

6.  Emmeline.

JAMES CAREW

As a younger son whose own inheritance from his brother and nephew was delayed by a series of lawsuits, he found his own fortune in a marriage to a double heiress of high standing.  She was Eleanor of Hoo, who shared with her three sisters and half sister the estate of her father, Sir Thomas of Hoo, Lord of Hoo and Hastings, Knight of the Garter, and son of the Sir Thomas of Hoo who had distinguished himself at the Battle of Agincourt.

Eleanor’s father, Sir Thomas of Hoo had married twice, the second being to Eleanor of Welles, a co-heiress of Lionel, Lord Welles, one of the leading Lancastrian magnates of the period.  The Hoo owned extensive lands in the counties of Sussex, Kent, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire (Luton Hoo), and Norfolk.

There are Hoo chapels at both the Parish Church of Luton, that now houses the organ, and at St. Paul’s Walden where the Hoo chapel shares a prominence with the memorials to the more recent Bowes-Lyon family who are amongst their descendants.  The marriage of James to an heiress of the Hoo gave entry to the complicated life and world of the landed elite of the 15^th Century.

Sir Thomas of Hoo, Lord of Hoo and Hastings, was a major figure during the early reign of King Henry VI active in both government and military expeditions.  During one campaign in France in the Caux area in Normandy five thousand peasants died, and twenty thousand more were driven into Brittany causing misery and chaos on a large scale.  This may have been a punitive expedition in retaliation for and to deter the persistent raiding and slave taking of the French and other Corsairs and Pirates along the south coast of England.

He was made Baron, and Knight of the Garter.  A daughter, Anne, by his first marriage to Elizabeth of Wytchingham in Norfolk married Sir Geoffrey Boleyn of Blicking.  They were the great grandparents of Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, and so forebears to Queen Elizabeth I.   The tomb of Anne of Hoo is in the chancel of Norwich Cathedral.  Above on the arches are the arms of her family and ancestors, including Hoo and St. Leger.  During her reign, Queen Elizabeth I paid a state visit to Norwich and was enthroned in Norwich Cathedral facing the tomb as a mark of respect.

Sir Thomas of Hoo was succeeded by his half-brother, also Sir Thomas of Hoo who also left no male heir, so the Hastings title later was given to William Hastings the chief minister to King Edward IV.  William Lord Hastings was executed by King Richard III.  Sir Thomas of Hoo died in 1455, and was buried at Battle Abbey near Hastings.  At the time of the Reformation, when the Abbey was destroyed, the Fiennes family, then low on funds, and unable to complete the family tomb at Herstmonceaux, removed the Hoo effigies and recycled and repainted them to become memorials to the Fiennes.

Sir Thomas’ second marriage to Eleanor Welles, the daughter of Lionel, Lord Welles, brought close connections to the Plantagenet Beaufort family through the second marriage of Lord Welles.  This Eleanor was the daughter of Lord Welles first marriage to Cecilia Waterton of Methley, Yorkshire, grand-daughter of the Sir Robert Waterton who rode with King Henry IV and the Teutonic Knights in the Crusade of Lithuania, before Henry overthrew King Richard II.  Waterton was Constable of Pontefract Castle when the deposed King Richard II died there.

Lionel Lord Welles was also a Knight of the Garter and his second wife, Margaret, widow of John, Duke of Somerset, was the grandmother of King Henry VII.  Lionel’s son by her, John, was made Viscount when he was given the hand of Cecilia, daughter of King Edward IV in marriage on the overthrow of King Richard III at the Battle of Market Bosworth in 1485 in which John had a leading role.  Lionel was one of the thirty thousand casualties at the Battle of Towton, near Tadcaster in Yorkshire, in 1461, and is buried with his first wife, Cecilia, in the Waterton Tomb at the Parish Church of Methley, in Yorkshire.

James Carew, on the other hand, lived out his life until 1492 on one or other of his Sussex manors whilst the nobility engaged in their wars of attrition.  When his elder brother, Nicholas, died he left one son, who died young, and three daughters, and it was litigation amongst these that held up the inheritance of Beddington.  James and Eleanor had one known surviving child, RICHARD CAREW, who had an inheritance that brought him close to the ruling monarchs.

SIR RICHARD CAREW

Richard was Knighted by the Kings own hand in 1497 on the field of Blackheath where a force, hastily assembled from the local counties, faced an army of 15,000 Cornishmen in arms over the levels of taxation.  In 1501 he was Sheriff of Surrey, and in 1509 was Lieutenant of Calais.  Also, he was Master of the Ordnance, and in 1520 had responsibility for the arrangements for the Field of the Cloth of Gold, when King Henry VIII and his Court met with King Francis of France for a long period of feasting, tourneys, and political negotiation.  Richard is said to have died from overwork as a consequence.

He married Malyn or Matilda, the daughter of Sir Robert Oxenbridge of Brede Place in Sussex, who was the widow of William Cheney of Sheppey, also connected to the Boleyn family.  There are five known children of the marriage:

1.  Margaret, who married John St. John.

2.  Elizabeth, who married Sir Thomas Fettiplace.

3.  Anne Carew who married Nicholas Leigh of Addington

4.  Sir Nicholas Carew (see below), 1496-1539.

5.  Mary, who married Sir William Pelham.

Sir Nicholas Carew, picture above by Holbein, was one of the major figures in the court of King Henry VIII.  He was at Court at a young age, and was with his father in Calais.  Groom of the Privy Chamber, Keeper of Greenwich, Esquire of the Body (one of the six Companions to the King), Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex 1518 and 1519, Master of the Horse from 1515 until his death, Nicholas was one of the King’s closest men, and King Henry attended his wedding to Ann Bryan in 1514.

He was a notable figure at the tournaments that were such a feature of the reign of King Henry.  He was in attendance on the King at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and served in the expeditionary force to Picardy in 1522.  Also, Nicholas was a Member of Parliament as a Knight of the Shire for Surrey.

By the end of the 1520’s stresses had become evident in the Court.  The publication of the New Testament in English by Tyndale and the rise of Protestant feeling, the great question of the King’s Divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and the serious budgetary problems arising from the King’s expenditures and wars that had spent the surplus accrued by his father, all began to tear at the old relationships.

Nicholas was sympathetic to the cause of Queen Catherine and her daughter Mary, despite his blood relationship to Anne Boleyn.  Also, he had become close to the French during a period as Ambassador there from 1527, King Francis asked King Henry to make Nicholas a Knight of the Garter as a personal gesture.

The death of Queen Catherine in 1536, the beheading of Anne Boleyn in the same year, and then the death of Queen Jane, with the fiasco over Queen Anne of Cleves, all contributed to the uncertainty.  Moreover, the health of the King had begun to deteriorate; contenders for the succession had begun to jostle for position, and the King’s paranoia worsened.  Worse for Sir Nicholas, the King had embarked on a scheme to make most of Surrey a Royal Hunting Forest, and the lands of Sir Nicholas were largely in Surrey.

It is said that Nicholas fell into final disfavour because of his connections with the Pole family and the Marquess of Exeter, on several of whom the axe fell, as well as his close connections with France.  All these had become suspect to the King.  On a visit to the Great Hall at Beddington, the King could not fail to see the large shield bearing all the full achievement of arms of the Carew lineage over several generations.  These included families of Plantagenet blood, and in descents of lines that were wholly legitimate, and superior to that of the questionable Beaufort ancestry of the King’s.

When King Henry VIII declared his marriage to Catherine of Aragon void, and decreed that the Princess Mary was a bastard, he raised the ghost of the Beaufort issue of the children of John of Gaunt by Katharine Swynford.  Additionally, it is likely that the Carew descents from the Kings of Wales and Scotland were superior to those of the King, as well as the French ancestry embedded in the Plantagenet.

Sir Nicholas was only one of a number of men in this position, any of whom might attempt a coup if they could raise the necessary support, just as King Henry VII had done in 1485.  So King Henry VIII had cause for constant vigilance, and in time this became an element in his tyranny, and cost many people their lives.  Sir Nicholas was arrested, brought quickly to trial, and executed in March 1539, as yet another victim of the King’s suspicion and intolerance of criticism.

Sir Nicholas Carew and Ann left a son and four daughters, one of whom Anne, married Sir Nicholas Throckmorton of Coughton Court, Warwickshire, one of the chief ministers and ambassadors of Queen Elizabeth I in the early years of her reign.  Their son and heir, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, added the name of Carew to his own, and their youngest daughter, Elizabeth, also known as Bess, became one of the Maids of Honour to Queen Elizabeth.

As such she was a personal favourite in whose interest the Queen took a close interest.  In 1592 however, she became with child by Sir Walter Raleigh, married secretly, and as a consequence found herself confined to the Tower of London with her husband.  In order to try and win back favour he made further expeditions to the America’s.

These were not successful and he fell more out of favour in 1603 when King James came to the throne.  Raleigh returned to the Tower in 1606 until his execution by beheading in 1618.

There is a legend that he was finally buried at Beddington, despite the belief that he is at St. Margarets’, Westminster.  Bess kept his head in a red bag that was always with her and lay on her bed at her death in 1647 at the age of 82.

Note

So much of history seems to have a certainty and logic in what we are told.  It was very different.

           

          

A Little Bit Of History Part One

In recent years there has been a great deal of fiction, non-fiction, TV and other drama about the Tudors and the times before, including that of King Richard III.

In these and in many histories the needs of the media and the academic formats etc. leave out a great deal, notably of the detail and the many lesser but often critical people involved.

This is the first of two posts about families at the centre of all that happened and who played a major role.

Lionel de Welles, Lord Welles

Lionel was born in 1406, was Knighted at Leicester in 1426 with King Henry VI, by John, Duke of Bedford, the third son of King Henry IV, and became a Knight of the Garter in 1456, with a stall in St. Georges Chapel at Windsor Castle, and his banner above it.  As major supporters of the Lancastrian faction during the Wars of the Roses, the family were deeply involved in the developing conflict.

The “Roses” have come to be a myth about it being a contest between Lancashire and Yorkshire.  In fact the Dukes and Earls of Lancaster had their main base at Pontefract Castle, and the Honour of Pontefract, their major holding was a substantial territory in mid Yorkshire.  Similarly the Dukes of York had major inherited holdings in Lancashire.

The first marriage of Lionel was to Cecilia, in 1417, to the daughter of Sir Robert Waterton of Methley and Joan of Everingham, daughter of William de Everingham and Alice, daughter of Lord Grey of Codnor..  Sir Robert was the son of Sir Robert Waterton and Cecily Fleming, daughter of Sir Robert Fleming of Methley.

Both of the Sir Roberts’ died in the same year, 1424.  The elder Sir Robert was a trusted retainer of both John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and his son, Henry, later King Henry IV.  He was Constable of Pontefract Castle at the time of the imprisonment and subsequent death of King Richard II there.

He was a close adviser to King Henry IV (Bolingbroke), and during the period of Bolingbroke’s exile from England, went with him on the Crusade of Lithuania where they rode with the Teutonic Knights, a major military order, and developed the military skills for the eventual coup that displaced King Richard II.  After the Battle of Agincourt, the Duke of Orleans was kept there for a time, but allowed parole to hunt and visit the local magnates.

Lionel was with King Henry V in France in 1430, summoned to Parliament in 1432 and was a royal councillor from 1434.  From 1437 to 1444 he was Lieutenant of Ireland.  His marriage to Margaret, widow of the John, Duke of Exeter, married him into the royal family (see below), and in 1451 to 1455 he was Lieutenant of Calais with Edmund Beaufort, his brother-ion-law.

On 13 May 1457 Lionel was elected Knight of the Garter.  He took the Lancastrian Oath of Allegiance in 1459 and was with Margaret of Anjou, The Queen at the Battle of St. Albans in 1461, and then at Towton (see below).

There were five children of the marriage of Lionel and Cecilia Waterton:

Richard, Lord Welles, see below.

Eleanor, who married Thomas of Hoo, Lord of Hoo and Hastings, whose daughter, also Eleanor, married Sir James Carew of Beddington in Surrey, see the Hoo and the Carew summaries and later family descents.

Cecily, who married Sir Robert Willoughby of Eresby, and left issue and descendants.

Margaret, who married Sir Thomas Dymoke, beheaded 1469, and then Robert Radclyffe and who left issue by her first marriage and descendants.

Katharine, who married firstly, Sir Thomas Laund, and secondly, Robert Tempest.

After the death of Cecily, Lionel married Margaret, daughter of Sir John Beauchamp of Bletsoe, a branch of the Beauchamp family of the Earls of Warwick.  Lionel and Margaret had a son, John de Welles, see below.  Margaret was the widow of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and grandson of John of Gaunt, and Duke of Lancaster, the 4^th son of King Edward III.

So Lionel became step-father to Margaret’s daughter by her first husband, the Margaret Beaufort who married Owen Tudor at a young age and whose son Henry became Earl of Richmond and then in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth he overthrew King Richard III to become King Henry VII.

In 1461 at the Battle of Towton, near Tadcaster where 30,000 are said to have died, the greatest known total in any battle on British soil, Lionel was killed and was buried in the magnificent Waterton tomb at Methley with his first wife Cecilia and her grandparents.

Richard de Welles, Lord Welles, married firstly, Joan, daughter of Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, and left no known issue.  His second wife, Margaret, daughter of Lord Strangeways, was the mother of his son, Robert de Welles, and a daughter, Joane.  Lord Strangeways was beheaded at Huntingdon together with his brother-in-law, a Dymoke.

Robert de Welles married Elizabeth, daughter of Lord Bourchier, but was executed at Doncaster in 1470, without issue.  His father, Richard, died at the Battle of Loose Coat Field in 1471.  Joane married firstly, Sir Richard Pigot, and secondly Sir Richard Hastings, who later took the Welles title.

John de Welles fled to Brittany when King Richard III usurped the throne in 1483 from King Edward V, one of the Princes who died in The Tower.  John returned in 1485 as part of the expedition when King Henry VII took the throne at the battle of Bosworth.

John was rewarded with the title of Viscount and a marriage to Cecily, a daughter of King Edward IV, but died without issue, and is buried with Cecily in Westminster Abbey.  In 1532 the title Lord Welles fell into abeyance, no descendants being in a position of enough political power or wealth to persuade King Henry VIII for the grant of title.

Part 2 will deal with the family of Carew of Beddington.

Now Is The Winter?

Beaten to the draw by family, Newgate News and media reports on the subject of the Bardarbunga Volcano in Iceland having a nasty itch, there is plenty out there to look at and wonder.

Will it be small (cue media on misery stalks the airports), moderate, (cue media in total panic mode), or large (cue time to say your prayers to the relevant deities)?

According to the sources the last big one from this volcano was in the year 1477.  With our present interest in King Richard III who was then a very ambitious Duke of Gloucester it makes an interesting coincidence.  He lived in busy times.

What the histories do not seem to say much about is what impact this geophysical event on weather, crops and the rest, notably on population and survival among the poorer classes.  We have only scraps of information.  But what we do know is that a run of bad winters meant disaster in that age.

How this would be then compared with now is difficult to estimate, or to predict especially in detail in terms of effect, location and overall economic implications.  One major issue is who will be making the key decisions and how which brings us to the politics and the politicians.

In this context, Diane Coyle in her blog "The Enlightened Economist" in the post of Tuesday 19 August deals with the question of decision making in "Mission Impossibility".  It offers the uncomfortable thought that it may not be possible to make the right decisions in terms of what voters may want.

Quote:

Kenneth J. Arrow's path breaking "impossibility theorem" was a watershed innovation in the history of welfare economics, voting theory, and collective choice, demonstrating that there is no voting rule that satisfies the four desirable axioms of decisiveness, consensus, non-dictatorship, and independence.

Unquote.

The last quarter of the 15th Century was a time when a good many wrong choices were made.  Quite how far climate conditions had much, if any, effect is not known.

What we can be sure of is if there is a big one the chances are it could mean a bad winter or two or three and our systems of government and the men who run them are neither prepared nor capable of dealing with the, literal, fall out.

What is worse is that if Keith Arrow is right it is not possible for them to make the right decisions in the fields in which they operate.

If it is really cold, then we might be able to walk or ski from Dover to Calais.

Bomb First Ask Afterwards

It is said that in war the first casualty is truth.  Quite who said it first and in what context is a matter of academic conflict which has yet to come to blows, but just give it time and the right, or rather wrong, people.

A modern development is that the theories of war, winning and losing and dealing with such conflicts have been imported into management theory, sales methods and the ideologies and belief systems of politics.

These have now become intertwined to such a degree that many people have given up trying to work out what is going on, why and no longer trust their leaders.  So when Presidents, Prime Ministers and such proclaim or explain the instinct is to check that you still have your wallet in your possession.

Currently what is alarming is that to add to this our Leaders seem possessed of a naivety that is astonishing and perhaps indicates their levels of ignorance and their assumption that somehow they can exercise control when they cannot because they simply do not understand.

This is often the theme of many of the better informed and thinking sources commenting on many aspects of our times and futures.  Much of this is now out there for anyone to look at via the net and I mean serious commentators who are informed in several fields.

If in many academic subjects, it is possible to go back to the original sources and moreover read their research papers, often at a cost perhaps.  It is intriguing to plot how research can be taken, firstly by specialists and then sometimes by the media.

A prime example of muddle headed and ill informed political utterances is David Cameron's latest statement on matters in Iraq.  In fairness he has taken over a disaster area left to him by the sofa government of Blair and the weakness of the Foreign Office.  But to date neither he nor his ministers have grasped either the scale or the complexity of what is happening there.

There is little help and less sense coming from Washington DC, often the case when elections and potential change of people is imminent.  Charting the history of the last century in terms of the needs of the US electoral system would be intriguing.  It might offer the reasons why so many blunders have been made.

What is happening it that the Coalition Government has now lost track of where the economy is going and a number of key areas of domestic policy.  Just as when Macmillan was in trouble he would head for the airport to do his world statesman routine, so now Cameron goes foreign in his major interests claiming essential UK interests.

But fifty plus years ago, we might have had the men, the ships and the aircraft but not the money now we have even more debt but many fewer men, ships or planes.  If in the late 1950's we were no longer a world power we are now not far short of not being a real power at all, just an interfering bad and bossy neighbour.

Our claim to be such a power is in reality just a part of a sales pitch to enable us to sell military hardware, tourist attractions and chiefly, dodgy financial products to even dodgier regimes and oligarchs.

But I do not think that the earnings returns on money invested in bombing people in the Middle East is ever going to return the profit that our governments have assumed in the past.