Empire of the Seas with Dan Snow

"Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World" is the title of Dan Snow's four-part documentary series currently setting sail on Friday evenings on BBC2, and jolly bracing it is too.

Dan is the son of Peter Snow, through-the-night BBC anchorman for many parliamentary elections, and I half expected Dan to roll out his dad's famous Swingometer to illustrate the shifts in the balance of sea power between Spain, France and Blighty.

As a former Boat Race man himself, Dan loses no opportunity to climb rigging, stand Winslet-like at the prow and man the wheel of various expensive-looking craft that the BBC has managed to borrow.

He also helps the modern Royal Navy to show off several of its more modern vessels, including a simulated raid by a large state-of-the-art fisheries protection vessel on a tiny defenceless fishing boat which the RN boat could easily squash by accident. Maybe there were no Somali pirates around to teach a lesson to...

The series charts the progress of the Royal Navy from the defeat of the Armada to the First World War, and therein lies one of the criticisms that have been aimed at the BBC. Why ignore the contribution of Henry VIII (and earlier regimes) in establishing the early Navy? Daly History Blog argues a similar point.

Cardinal Wolsey suspects that with such high production values (lots of helicopter flypasts as Dan sways on the topmast) the budget would only stretch to four episodes, so the early days had to be cut. See this previous post on Henry VIII's dockyards if you are interested in this period.

Another criticism is the sometimes slapdash treatment of the background politics (as opposed to the naval stuff proper). James Russell points out that the Armada was not simply a revenge mission for Drake's attack on Cadiz (as claimed in episode 1), but in fact it's key objective was to reverse the Protestant reformation and restore the Catholic church.

But Empire of the Seas is very good on how the expansion of the Navy was masterminded by men such as Sam Pepys . I agree with Molly Joyful's blog that the series isn't too gung-ho and highlights some of the less savoury episodes on the seas. These include the sad story of Admiral John Byng, also the subject of a previous post in this blog.

There is also a lavishly illustrated book to go with the series, written by expert naval historian Brian Lavery. Amazon UK are currently offering it at half price which at £10 is incredible value. That leaves a tenner spare for a bottle of rum to go with it.

Hendrick Avercamp and the Little Ice Age

A relaxing way to spend a cold winter evening is to pour a (large) glass of sherry and get stuck into a jigsaw featuring one of Hendrick Avercamp's wonderful paintings of 17th century Dutch winter landscapes.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has posted an excellent video podcast on Avercamp's paintings to go with its forthcoming exhibition "Hendrick Avercamp: The Little Ice Age". Curator Pieter Roelofs zooms in on details to show life on the ice.

Ghosts of Kew Palace

Kew Palace is a striking terracotta Dutch-gable style house in the grounds of Kew Gardens, London.

It was built in 1663 by a merchant and later leased by George III, who acceeded the throne in 1760.

It is not really a palace at all, but takes the name of a larger building commissioned by George III in the same grounds, but never finished.
You can still view the outline of the foundations.

Unfortunately George went mad before this palace was completed. His son the Prince Regent didn't fancy it, and Parliament opted to knock it down [the staircase ended up at Buckingham Palace].

The "Dutch House" as it was known was used by Queen Charlotte, and their family. An enormous dolls house is one of the exhibits - it needed to be large as they had 15 children. She died there in 1818.

The palace is open to the public and a painstaking restoration has left areas where the decorations are peeled away to reveal layers beneath. It is very atmospheric, expecially in the "back stairs" and upper servants quarters. Here clever audio-visuals create ghostly memories of the lives of those who once served the royal family [all photographs copyright this blogl

Pepys tries DIY...and regrets it.

Phil Gyford's Diary of Samuel Pepys blog is a fantastic resource, with many comments and annotations by contributors. In the entry for 7th February 1666, Pepys records what happens when he tries a little Do-it-yourself around the house.

Brrr.....

Temperatures are due to drop well below zero Centigrade in London tonight. Not cold enough to freeze the Thames, as in this painting of 1677, but still parky for these parts. We are used to being kept warm by the jets taking off overhead.

1677 was during the period of the so-called Little Ice Age, which brought very cold temperatures to Early Modern Europe. The Thames regularly froze over , and "frost fairs" were held on the ice.

During the Great Freeze of 1683-4 , the diarist John Evelyn wrote that 'Streetes of Boothes were set upon the Thames... all sorts of Trades and shops furnished, & full of Commodities..." (source: Museum of London).

More seriously, many communities in northern and eastern Europe were abandoned to the advancing ice. Something to think about whilst doing your Pieter Breughel the Elder jigsaw in front of a cosy fire....

The Devil's Whore....Our Friends in the Civil War

I am going to jump in to the debate on whether the current Channel 4 English Civil War drama, The Devil's Whore is any good. It seems to be picking up some award nominations, but that doesn't mean a lot.

The series is the work of Peter Flannery, who brought us the landmark drama Our Friends in the North . This followed the fortunes of four friends from Newcastle-on-Tyne between 1964 and 1995, so had a much longer span than Devil's Whore, with the characters' lives changing in reaction to the events around them.

In an interview on the current show's website he compares the two dramas: "There's a sense of friends bonding near the beginning of this, and then you watch how their lives play out through a time of political upheaval. So there's a great similarity. For a long time we called it Our Friends in the Civil War". Flannery hopes that Andrea Riseborough will win a BAFTA as Gina McKee did for "Our Friends". We'll see.

After the first three episodes I am still watching. This is in the face of one or two flaws that various reviewers have already spotted:

Many Civil War characters do not get a look-in. "Where are John Pym, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Denzil Holles and Edward Hyde?", asks Ronan Bennett in his review. And those characters that do feature are not properly introduced in terms of background and motivation; - oh look, there's Cromwell.

- The New Model Army seems to have shrunk to about 20 men and a couple of cannon. The Cape Town branch of the Sealed Knot must be short on members. So the battle scenes suffer from what Wacht Am Tyne calls "The Sharpe Effect".

- Some of the scenes look too much like South Africa, because they are. I didn't know the Drakensberg had moved to Ireland.

- The CGI devil looks like he has wandered in from another set

- In spite of the presence of a dedicated sex scene coordinator, Ted Vallance says in his New Statesman review that "This a series caught in two-minds as to whether to be a faithful, serious historical drama or merely an entertainment for those who get off on men wearing hose and doublets"

- It all seems rushed, and squeezed into too few episodes. The Civil War is too important (and long) to rush through in 4 episodes - compare Band of Brothers, which took us through the Normandy campaign almost as if in real time, so you feel involved. Michael Fassbender (Thomas Rainsborough) was in BoB by the way. I think Chronologi Cogitationes may be thinking on similar lines in suggesting that if we had followed one or two characters through the events it might work better, " but then they threw in Cromwell, Lilburne and Rainsboroughe" .

And Yet..
The committed acting keeps you watching, especially John Simm as the mercenary Sexby. He is as good in this as in Life on Mars. All the main players are good, and the small-group scenes have a lot of chemistry and are shot in authentic-looking interiors.

I also like the brooding and lawless atmosphere. Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone might seem unlikely influences, but in a background piece in Broadcast Now, director Mark Munden says: "I wanted to bring in elements of the modern revisionist western. In terms of its landscape, the piece was very much about isolated areas of civilisation, such as Oxford and London, within a wild lawless country. Sexby is like a mercenary gunslinger, [Leone's] 'man with no name'.

In the end, I agree with Julie Myerson on The Newsnight Review panel : Our Friends in the North was iconic; but The Devil's Whore ain't. In four episodes, it never could be, but if it gets people wanting to know more about this turbulent period it will have done some good.

more on The Devil's Whore:
Lady Byron at Factual Imagining has some useful links .
Another good review at The Story and the Truth .

Saint-Malo and the Infernal Machine

Photo: Sunset from the ramparts of Saint-Malo.

I have resolved to blog with renewed zeal to reward the interest of all my new readers. So we travel to north-western France, destination for Cardinal Wolsey's last holiday in late August, for the first in a series of vacation posts.

The overnight ferry from Her Majesty's Dockyard in Portsmouth to Saint-Malo is a good choice - you get to review the British fleet on the way out (at least the ships not yet sold to Chile) and arrive in the morning at the gateway to Brittany. Very civilised, even with the children intoning "are we there yet?" as we steamed past the Isle of Wight.

Most Brits will drive off the ramp and head west or south without looking at Saint-Malo, but this is a mistake, as this historic town has lots to offer. The impressive walled citadel was once home to pirates and privateers, although most of the buildings are reconstructions. Unfortunately Gen.Patton had a little trouble dislodging the Germans in 1944, and 80% of the original citadel was flattened.

What of the "Infernal Machine?". Until WW2, Saint-Malo was never captured, in spite of many attempts by the Brits to do so (we didn't like towns that hosted privateers and corsairs). In 1673, during William of Orange's conflict with Louis XIV, the Royal Navy tried using an old warship as a powerkeg and set it loose towards Saint-Malo.

There is a good description what happened next in this piece on Admiral Benbow, who was in command.

"The vessel took the form of a barque crammed with upwards of a hundred barrels of gunpowder, roofed over with a ceiling of planks and covered with thatch, faggots of wood, pitch, tar, resin; in short, anything that burned. On top of all that came the missiles. Canon-balls of iron and stone, bombs, iron chains and shells were wrapped in tarpaulin".

The ploy failed when the wind changed, and it blew up against some rocks with an almighty bang. The citadel was rocked and damaged, but the English did not attempt to take it (lack of enough marines).

More English bombardments in 1695 also failed to defeat the defences, which were later strengthened further by the great military architect Vauban.

Anyway, here's an earlier unsuccesful attempt to take a French castle!

Wanted: historian to rent 17th Century council house

Is this the perfect abode for an Early Modern blogger?

The BBC, Daily Telegraph and Times report on the search for a new tenant for Dutch Cottage, a cute octagonal thatch in Rayleigh, Essex.

It was built in 1621 by Dutch settlers,who were helping to drain nearby marshes.

The council rent is good value at £75 per week, but you also have to show tours around on Wednesdays. I guess these must be quite short..

Turmoil and Tranquility

The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich is putting its collection of Dutch and Flemish sea scenes on display. Turmoil and Tranquility runs until January 2009, and showcases one of the best collections of 17th maritime painting in Europe.
See reviews here, here and here.

Sam Pepys caught short

Samuel Pepys wakes at 6 a.m. on a freezing December morning in 1664.

No chamber pot to hand, and he needs a wee.

Does he :

a) hang on until one arrives
b) go and look for one
c) use the chimney

Read the answer here.

Bloody Events

This week is the anniversary of several Early Modern events that have something in common...blood

November 13th 1553 saw the trial for high treason of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Dudley, although they were not executed until February the next year. Poor Jane's sentence called for her to "be burned alive on Tower Hill or beheaded as the Queen pleases"'[source:Wiki]. Queen "Bloody" Mary chose beheading, which was nice of her.

November 13th is also the anniversay of the Battle of Turnham Green, 1642, an early stand-off in the English Civil War, in which the Royalists, having sacked the posh new waterside flats around Brentford, attempted to seize control of one of London's most important bus garages, but were rebuffed. The English Civil Wars site tells the story.

Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 14th November 1666 gives an account of an early experiment in blood transfusion. [Press the "Back" button now if you are fond of little doggies]. Eric at the Project History blog relates the grisly facts.

The Battle of the Kentish Knock, 28th September, 1652

An important 17thC naval battle from the First Anglo-Dutch War for today's post. The Kentish Knock is one of the sand bars off the entrance to the Thames Estuary, close to one of the usual anchorages of the English fleet at the Downs.

The background to the battle was the English Civil War, which had finally ended a year earlier when Cromwell's Parliamentary army defeated Charles II's supporters at Worcester in 1651.

The war had weakened England's control over commerce and trade, and escalating skirmishes between Dutch and English forces made war inevitable as the Dutch tried to challenge English control over valuable trade routes to the Indies, etc.

The Dutch were hampered by drunk crews and rebellious Zealanders who sailed home halfway through the battle, and the result was a victory for the Commonwealth of England, although the Dutch managed to withdraw with much of their fleet intact, chased by the English.

For more on the battle, see Wikipedia and this site.

note on dates: most sources have the date of the battle as 28th September, which is the date according to the Julian calendar used in England up to 1752; the Wikipedia entry uses the modern Gregorian calendar date of 8th October.

See also previous post on the later Battle of Sole Bay.

Continuing the nautical theme, Cardinal Wolsey's vodpod sidebar features sea shanties this week...the Japanese choir's rendition of "Whisky Johnny" is a hoot.

Pepys on Moscow

An evocative description of Moscow from Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 17th September, 1664.

".....walked into the fields as far almost as Sir G.Whitmore's, all the way talking of Russia, which, he says, is a sad place; and, though Moscow is a very great city, yet it is from the distance between house and house, and few people compared with this, and poor, sorry houses, the Emperor himself living in a wooden house, his exercise only flying a hawk at pigeons and carrying pigeons ten or twelve miles off and then laying wagers which pigeon shall come soonest home to her house. All the winter within doors, some few playing at chesse, but most drinking their time away. Women live very slavishly there, and it seems in the Emperor’s court no room hath above two or three windows, and those the greatest not a yard wide or high, for warmth in winter time; and that the general cure for all diseases there is their sweating houses, or people that are poor they get into their ovens, being heated, and there lie. Little learning among things of any sort. Not a man that speaks Latin, unless the Secretary of State by chance."

Moscow can be grim but the Russian sense of humour usually saves the day: check out the funny cosmonaut animation on this website for a heroically ugly hotel.

Wet wet wet! Early Modern floods....

With various parts of England currently bailing out after the recent storms and river surges (and more to come this weekend apparently), it seems appropriate to have a look back at how Britain's flood defences (or lack of them) fared in earlier times.

The "main event" in Early Modern times was the Great Flood of January 1607, depicted in the woodcut shown here. There are good features on this on the BBC Bristol and BBC Somerset sites. The latter has an atmospheric audio story of the 1607 flood ,which is best listened to with a howling gale outside and a glass of ale in hand. A tsunami-like surge up the Bristol Channel killed 2,000, mainly in Somerset.

An interesting source for historical flood events is the Chronology of British Hydrological Events, hosted by Dundee Univ. "Recent years have seen an increased awareness of the varaibility (sic) of hydrological behaviour"...a nice scientific understatement.

Anyway, the searchable database threw up these quotes from primary sources, Early Modern and earlier...

Hertfordshire, 1695: Ralph Thoresby, in his Diary writes:- 'May 17th, morning, rode by Puckeridge to Ware, where we had some showers which raised the washes from the road to the height that passengers from London that were upon the road swam and a poor higgler was drowned, which prevented our travelling for many hours, yet towards evening adventured over the meadows where we missed the deepest wash at Cheshunt, though we rode to the saddleskirts for a considerable way, but got safe to Waltham Cross.' "

London, 1668: on 23rd May, 1668, Samuel Pepys writes in his Diary: "About six in the morning took coach, and so away to bishops Stortford. The ways mighty full of water, so as hardly to be passed. "

Stratford-upon-Avon, 1588: "The worst flood recorded occurred on the 18th July, 1588, just before the Spanish Armada, when a sudden rise in the river, 'higher than ever yt was knowne by a yeard and a halfe and something more', carried away all the hay in the Avon valley, breaking both ends of Straford's bridge and leaving a trail of devastation all along the river course, from Warwick where houses were broken down to Welford and Bidford, with consequent loss of life and goods. According to a contemporary account the water rose a yard every hour from eight till four o'clock in the day, and it depicts in graphic detail the plight of the three men who, going over Clopton Bridge, 'when they cam to the midle of the Bridge they could not goe forwardes and then returned presently but they could not go backe for the watter was soe risen'." [Warwickshire Avon]
Source: Levi Fox (1953) The Borough Town of Stratford-upon-Avon

London, 1216: "It is recorded that in 1216 people have rowed through the Great Hall of Westminster whose floor lay covered in fish as the floods receded"
Source: http://www.riverthames.co.uk/

Cardinal Wolsey in Shakespeare; The Globe burns down during "Henry VIII", June 1613.

Shakespeare's last English history play, performed in 1613, was initially titled "All is True". By the time of the publication of the 1623 folio, however ,it had aquired a longer-winded title The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth. Shakespeare probably collaborated with John Fletcher on this play, as he did on others.

According to the Oxford Shakespeare, the play was just into its first run at the Globe, Southwark, in June 1613 when the firing of a cannon ignited the theatre's thatched roof and burned it to the ground. Oops. The were luckily no serious casualties.

See below for a selection of lines or quotations spoken by Cardinal Wolsey in Shakespeare's "Henry VIII".

Act 2 Sc 2:
Wolsey (aside to Gardiner, the King's new secretary, later Bishop of Winchester)
"Give me your hand. Much joy and favour to you. you are the King's now."
Gardiner (aside to Wolsey)
"But to be commanded for ever by your grace, whose hand has raised me."
Act 3 Sc 1
Wolsey (to Queen Katherine)
"Madam, you wrong the King's love with these fears. Your hopes and friends are infinite."

Act3 Sc 2
Wolsey (aside)
"Anne Boleyn? No, I'll no Anne Boleyns for him"

Act3 Sc 2
Wolsey (aside)
"...Again there is sprung up an heretic,
An arch one, Cranmer, one hath crawled
Into the favour of the King
And is his Oracle."

Wolsey (to Henry)
"....My endeavours have ever come too short of my desires..."

Wolsey (facing his downfall):
...This is the state of man. Today he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do...."
Wolsey (to Cromwell):
...Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my King, He would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies."

Click this link for more Cardinal Wolsey quotes

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

According to Historyorb.com, on 26th February 1616 the Spanish Inquisition delivered an injunction to Galileo.

The Galileo entry on Wikipedia reveals that 'this was an order not to "hold or defend" the idea that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still at the centre'.

Anyway, a good excuse to print some of Cardinal Wolsey's favourite lines from Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch:

Ximinez (Michael Palin):
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise....
Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency....
Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...
and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope....
Our four... no...
Amongst our weapons... Amongst our weaponry...
are such elements as fear, surprise...
I'll come in again.

Here's a link to the sketch on YouTube

Scots sell Charles I to English Parliament for 40 pounds, 30th January 1647

Scots sell Charles I to English Parliament for 40 pounds, 30th January 1647.

Charles I had entrusted himself to the The Scottish Presbyterian army at Newark after escaping from the siege of Oxford in April 1646. He was kept under guard at Southwell while the Scots decided what to do with him. Eventually Charles was delivered to the Parliamentary forces later in 1647; it was a further two years before his eventual execution in January 1649.

Some important medieval ransoms (with Wikipedia links for more details):

The most famous monarch held for a King's Ransom was of course Richard I (the Lionheart), held to ransom 1192-1194 held by Henry of the Holy Roman Empire. His mother Eleanor of Aquitaine worked to raise the 150,000 marks demanded (around 100,000 pounds, maybe two to five times the annual Crown income at the time, depending on which account you read), by heavy taxes on the church and people. These taxes could be up to a quarter value of property owned, but it was worth it to get rid of nasty King John.

Bertrand du Guesclin, brilliant 14th century French soldier during the Hundred Years War, was captured by the English at Auray in 1364. Charles V of France paid his ransom, but he was captured again whilst commanding French mercenaries against Peter the Cruel of Castille (who had enlisted the help of Edward the Black Prince of England). Du Guesclin had the last laugh against the English as in subsequent campaigns he re-captured sizeable chunks of French territory for the home side. He died on a campaign in the south in 1380.

A little later on, James I of Scotland, held to ransom 1406-1424 by Henrys IV and V of England, was treated as a royal guest. James married the Earl of Somerset's daughter before his return to Scotland, where he reigned until 1437; although he pushed through many good reforms in Scotland , he made enemies and unfortunately James was assassinated aged 43.

Reader suggestions on further historical ransoms welcome...

Pilgrims in Boston Spot a UFO. Today in History, 1639

The first UFO sighting in the U.S.A may have taken place on 18th January in 1639 (and again in 1644), when Pilgrims saw "A Great Light in the Night" in Boston.

Here is an extract from an article by Christopher Pittman from 2000, which is based on a book by John Winthrop, 'The History of New England, 1630-1639'.

"One night in March of 1639*, James Everell ("a sober, discreet man"- Winthrop) and two companions boarded a little boat and set out for a trip on the Muddy River in Boston. They had been moving downstream for about a mile when the night's mysterious events began. The three men were suddenly confronted with the appearance of a huge, bright light hovering in the sky. The light "flamed up" as it hovered and appeared to be about "three yards square." As they watched, the light "contracted into the figure of a swine" and moved "swift as an arrow" in the direction of Charlton. For two or three hours, the unidentified light moved back and forth in the sky between Everell's location and Charlton. When the light finally disappeared, the men noticed to their dismay that they had somehow been carried against the tide back to the place where they had started their trip! Governor Winthrop noted, "Divers[e] other credible persons saw the same light, after, about the same place." Some witnesses said the light was occasionally seen shooting out flames and sparks, and indeed, two UFOs matching that description were again seen in Boston in 1644."

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

Having nearly set light to Cardinal Wolsey's garden with fireworks last night, here are some interesting journalistic pieces from recent years on Guy Fawkes and Co.

From Alex Renton, an article from 2000 titled Who the Hell is this Guy Anyway?

AN Wilson's 2001 piece Guy Must Stay on his Pyre on why Guy Fawkes will be remembered long after Bin Laden.

Clive Aslet from 2002 has Five places to visit in London from Guy's time.

Finally, this Gunpowder Plot website has this popular ditty:

Ladies and gentlemen you'll never grow fat,
If you don't put a penny in the old Guy's hat.

Guy, guy, guy!Stick him up on high;
Hang him on a lamp post
And leave him there to die.

Nice.

Charles II sells Dunkirk to the French, 27th October, 1662.

For this week's post we go back to Charles II's sale of Dunkirk to France on 27th October, 1662. The price was a reasonable 2.5m livres, or around £400,000 (partly paid in installments).

The map on right "Plan de la Ville et Citadelle de Dunkerque" dates from the early 18thC, but the original drawing is believed to date from 1662. This is from the excellent University of Jerusalem Geography dept. historic cities website.
Samuel Pepys makes several mentions of the Dunkirk sale in his diary ("This day come the King's pleasure-boats from Calais, with the Dunkirk money, being 400,000 pistolles." 21-Nov-1662), and there are further contributions from readers of the Pepys diary retro-blog.

Link to previous posts:
Samuel Pepys learns his uncle has died
Indians sell Manhattan Island for $24 in cloth and buttons, 1626