For articles in part one, click here:

Articles appearing in this section, in the order they appear:

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction: Real Spanish Plots
The Search for Leigh Abbey, Part One
The Search for Leigh Abbey, Part Two
What is an Eleanor Cross?
Early Explorers in the New World: The Men of Bristol and Others
Wych Witches
Details from Maps of the New World
Devil's Turnips
Adventures of the Merchant Adventurers: Europe, 1569
Dovecote—a great place to find a body!
Monstrous?
Queen Elizabeth's Royal Progress: 1573

Question and Answer Column
April 2002
November 2002
Spring 2003
Fall 2003
Spring 2004

"Truth is Stranger than Fiction: Real Spanish Plots"

In Face Down Among the Winchester Geese, Sir Robert Appleton is involved in a plot to advance the interests of King Philip II of Spain. I won't give away the details here, but suffice it to say that such plots were common in Elizabethan England. Nothing I could dream up comes close to the real thing, either.

Philip II was married to Elizabeth's sister, Queen Mary (Tudor, not Stewart). When Mary died in 1558, he immediately proposed himself as a husband for Elizabeth. She declined and added insult to injury by at once returning England to the church her father had founded, putting an end to the Catholic restoration Philip and Mary had worked so hard to establish. The obvious solution, from Philip's point of view, was to aid any effort her subjects made to overthrow their new queen.

What schemes did Philip hatch to get control of the English throne? There were rumors early on of plans to have his teenaged son, Don Carlos, marry the woman next in line for the throne. Depending upon one's religion, this was either Mary, Queen of Scots (Catholic) or the Lady Catherine Grey (Church of England). Philip probably considered both possibilities, assuming Lady Catherine would convert if doing so would make her queen. If such a marriage had taken place, Philip would have advanced his daughter-in-law's claim by charging that Elizabeth was illegitimate. Unfortunately for him, both ladies chose other husbands. Lady Catherine ended up in the Tower of London for marrying without the queen's permission and she and the two sons she subsequently bore her husband were removed from the succession.

After Mary Queen of Scots became Elizabeth's prisoner in England, there were a number of plots to rescue her, overthrow Elizabeth, and make Mary queen of both England and Scotland. Philip wasn't directly involved in the Northern Rebellion of 1569 or the Ridolfi Plot of 1571, but he no doubt knew what was in the works. By 1583, however, he was definitely attempting to overthrow the queen. The Throgmorton Plot came to light in that year and as a result the Spanish ambassador, Bernardo de Mendoza, was expelled from England. The Babington Plot in 1586 led to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1588, of course, Philip tried to invade England. When the Spanish Armada was defeated, he had to go back to spies and plots.

By then, another female, Lady Arbella Stuart, was Elizabeth Tudor's heir. Those descended from Henry VII, first monarch of the Tudor dynasty, were almost all women. Arbella was the daughter of the son of the daughter, by her second marriage, of Henry VII's daughter, Margaret. Margaret Tudor was Mary Queen of Scots' grandmother. The 1591 plan was to kidnap Lady Arbella, marry her to Rainutio Farnese, son of the Duke of Parma, and put the two of them on Elizabeth's throne. Needless to say, it did not succeed.

Spies played an important role in plots and uprisings. Called "intelligencers" and "searchers of secrets" in the sixteenth century, they were first organized in England by Sir Francis Walsingham. Or rather, he's the first spy master we know of. In the Face Down series both Robert Appleton and Walter Pendennis are "intelligence gatherers."

Both English and Spanish spies kept busy gathering intelligence throughout the reign of Elizabeth. In 1570, Henry Norris, Queen Elizabeth's envoy in France, reported that there were three "ordinary spies in England, all Spaniards." He named them: John Delgado, in the ambassador's house, Peter Benavides, "who resorts thither," and Diego Ridiera, "tall, eyed like a cat, whose charge is to go about England." He also mentioned one other, "a man who has but one eye and a cut over the face, the one part thereof burnt with gunpowder, who is sent to work treason to her Highness." Not long after that report, Hugh Owen, who had been a secretary to Henry FitzAlan, 12th earl of Arundel, until 1571, was gathering intelligence on England for Spain from a safe distance–he was based in Brussels.

The English secret service organized by Sir Francis Walsingham came into existence in about 1569. The first recorded budget for intelligence work, seven hundred fifty pounds, appears in records for 1582. Both William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and his son Sir Robert Cecil, also headed extensive spy networks during, if not before, their tenures as Principal Secretary to Queen Elizabeth. In 1586 a memorandum set out guidelines for selecting agents to be sent to Spain–no foreigners, no Englishmen related to Spaniards, and no "well-meaning subjects" known to frequent that country. In order to succeed as a spy in Spain, an agent had to be recommended by a Catholic in England, but this could be managed by seeking out and making friends with an imprisoned priest or other Papist. The potential spy was instructed to claim to be malcontent, troubled by his conscience in matters of religion, and desirous of living in a Catholic country.

In my novels, I have Sir Walter Pendennis function as a spy master before Walsingham established his network, but who's to say someone wasn't supervising other agents before Walsingham? After all, the very nature of spying is secrecy. And the idea of gathering intelligence was certainly not new to the sixteenth century. Nor was it the exclusive preserve of men. Catherine de' Medici, queen mother of France, supposedly used sexually alluring female spies to ferret out enemy secrets. On the assumption that this could be true, I created the character of Annabel MacReynolds, who appears briefly in three books in the Face Down series.

Anyone interested in reading more about spies and spying in Elizabethan days should look for the following books:

Alan Haynes, Invisible Power: The Elizabethan Secret Services 1570-1603 (1992)
Albert J. Loomie, The Spanish Elizabethans: The English Exiles at the Court of Philip II (1963)
Alison Plowden, The Elizabethan Secret Service (1991)

"The Search for Leigh Abbey ~ Part One"

In the sixteenth century, travelers often hired a local resident to guide them from one village to the next, since maps were rare and often inaccurate and signposts were not much help if you could not read. On narrow, winding country lanes, especially those running across a moor, it was easy to get lost. It still is.

Since my journey involved finding many out-of-the way places in a short period of time (two weeks), I realized early in the planning stages that I'd need the same kind of help. This trip would have been impossible without Julian Spencer Rouse of Echo Tango, The Exclusive Travel Service (www.echotango.co.uk) and his faithful Toyota Previa van, "Hippo." Hippo took us across fords, over narrow bridges, and between hedgerows so close to the road that they scraped the mirrors on both sides. Julian got us to every location on my list–Warwickshire to Yorkshire and Northumberland and Scotland, south again through Cumbria to Lancashire, Shropshire and Cornwall, then Somerset, Hampshire, Sussex and Kent–and added a few extra glimpses of city and country besides.

What sixteenth century houses did I visit? The manor houses were Haddon Hall, Hardwick Hall, Hardwick Old Hall (ruin), Rufford Old Hall, Speke Hall, Cotehele, Barrington Court, Montacute, Athelhampton, Penshurst Place, and Ightham Mote. Only one place on my original wish list had to be left out. That was Knole, home to a rare breed of deer. They preferred to err on the side of caution and remain closed this summer. We saw little evidence elsewhere of the Foot and Mouth problem. A few squishy mats to walk across, and that was all.

We also visited two town houses, the John Knox House in Edinburgh and the Old Post Office in Tintagel, both wonderfully evocative, two palaces--Hampton Court and Holyroodhouse--and four castles--Warwick, Warkworth (ruin), Lancaster, and Edinburgh.

There isn't room here for a full account, but I will make a start. Haddon Hall in Derbyshire still retains many of the characteristics it had in the sixteenth century, in particular the hall and kitchen are set up for that era. The movie Elizabeth, which I despised for its historical inaccuracy, was filmed at Haddon Hall (among other places), so I suppose I'm going to have to break down and watch the video all the way through. Maybe with the sound off. Unfortunately, National Trust and English Heritage properties forbid photography inside the houses. My husband and I took a few shots anyway, although not anywhere that a flash might harm a painting or old textiles, but for the most part I scribbled down notes about things that I thought might relate to Leigh Abbey–how the paneling looks, the way the L-shaped, spring-fed water trough in the kitchen has three chambers and is rigged to keep the water depth in all three at one inch.

The lower courtyard is wonderful, actually an inner courtyard surrounded by the house, as I imagine the inner courtyard at Leigh Abbey to be. Although the formal shots in the guidebook don't show it, my videos and still photos reveal the unevenness of the cobblestones. Walking on them gave me a new appreciation of living in the sixteenth century, when all floors were stone, wood, or dirt, and likely just as uneven. Studying photos I took also gives me a sense of size I found hard to grasp from professional photos that did not have people in them. My husband paced off the size of the courtyard for me. He says it's about one-third the size of a football field. Not the way Susanna would describe it, but it helps me visualize now that I'm home again.

We went from Haddon to Hardwick, although both the Old Hall, now a ruin, and Hardwick Hall, "more glass than wall," were built late in the Elizabethan period. Susanna wouldn't have had such a grand abode but it was interesting to see both, especially the ruin, where we could take pictures and climb to the top of the tower to look out over the countryside.

At this point there was a break in visits to houses. We'd reached Yorkshire and the scenes involved in Face Down Before Rebel Hooves. We spent two nights in Edinburgh, and saw some of the Border country. I'm not sure when I'll use those locales again, but I'm certain I will. After all, Catherine continues to have Scots connections.

In Edinburgh, partway along the Royal Mile, is a gem, the John Knox house. Whether Knox ever lived there is questionable, but it is definitely of the period. For an example of a 1560s town house, it can't be beat. It belonged to a goldsmith, and would have been luxurious for the time, and by our modern standards, it is tiny. My description of the place Robert lived in Edinburgh in Face Down Upon an Herbal wasn't far off the mark, but I have a feeling the house Susanna lived in during Face Down Among the Winchester Geese may have been just a trifle bigger than it should have been. Or maybe it just seems that way because I'm looking back with modern eyes. In any case, next time I have my characters in a city, I'll have a better idea how to portray their accomodations.

Back on the trail of country manor houses, we next stopped at two in Lancashire, Rufford Old Hall and Speke Hall. Rufford Old Hall, a "black and white" timber-framed house built around 1530, has been extensively remodeled in the years since, but the hall and kitchen remain from the sixteenth century. I took several shots of the old part of the house while sitting in the garden, as Susanna might have done in her day, enjoying the June sunshine and contemplating growing things.

"The Search for Leigh Abbey ~ Part Two"

In the last Face Down Update, I began to recount our visits to Elizabethan houses in my effort to discover what Leigh Abbey, Lady Appleton's home in Kent, might really have looked like. We left off at Speke Hall in Lancashire, a wonderfully preserved black-and-white house with some very distinctive features. For one thing, there are hallways, unusual in houses that early. Most of the time, Elizabethans had to go through outer rooms to reach inner rooms, which meant there was never the kind of privacy we're accustomed to today. Another unique feature was an inner courtyard containing two giant trees, one said to be 1000 years old. They are named Adam and Eve. When the house was new, in 1565, Liverpool was a fishing village with 138 houses and 690 inhabitants. Now Speke Hall is an oasis in a modern industrial city, situated right next to the newly renamed John Lennon Airport.

From Lancashire, we went on to Shrewsbury, where there are numerous Elizabethan houses, some original and some constructed in the Victorian era to resemble earlier buildings. Several pubs date from the sixteenth century and have the sagging walls to prove it. The next day we made a brief stop in Bristol, then went on to Boscastle and Tintagel in Cornwall, all three of which are sites in Face Down Across the Western Sea.

Also in Cornwall is a lovely stone house, Cothele, built in the Middle Ages and improved in the 16th century, then left alone. It is preserved as it was when the family moved to another location in the 17th century. The gardens are also extensive and include a dovecote and a chapel in the woods.

At Tintagel, in addition to the castle and cliffs, there is the "Old Post Office" which is actually a 14th century house. This was a wonderful surprise, a smaller manor house with no pretensions and few changes over the centuries. The stairs are narrow and winding, a real challenge, and the ceilings are low. Together with the John Knox House in Edinburgh, this provided a look at the sort of place someone from the merchant class might have lived in.

Three later Elizabethan houses, much more grand, were next on the agenda–Barrington Court, Montacute, and Athelhampton. Barrington Court is furnished with reproduction furniture, which gives a wonderful sense of what it was really like to live there in Tudor times. One room has a wooden baby walker.

At Montacute House I had a chance to view a number of Elizabethan portraits, including many on loan from the National Portrait Gallery. Some of these are life size or larger. The house itself is much too elaborate to use as a model for Leigh Abbey.

Then there was Athelhampton, with another dovecote. We were able to explore both inside and out and it is huge, but all the doves are long gone. Athelhampton's great hall has a door hidden in the wainscot. These days it leads to the wine cellar but the guide said it may originally have been the entrance to a priest hole.

The next house on our list was one Susanna probably visited. Penshurst Place belonged to Sir Henry Sidney, whose wife was Lord Robin's sister. Their son was Sir Philip Sidney the poet and soldier. Penshurst is a sandstone house with square "bricks" in the floor of the hall. Although this is a medieval house renovated in the 16th century, there is no fireplace in the great hall, only a fire pit that is about 6'x6' in size. One other fascinating feature is a "peep" through which one can look down into the hall from above. The gardens are extensive and parts have been restored to a fair proximity of the way they'd have looked in the 16th century. All of these big Elizabethan country houses are sprawling places, and in most only a small portion is open to the public.

After leaving Penshurst, we traveled through the woods, literally, to the fascinating Ightham Mote, a small black-and-white manor house which inspired Anya Seton's historical novel, Green Darkness. Our last stop was the small village of Barfrestone, at the geographical location of my fictional Leigh Abbey. It consists even now of no more than the Norman church, a pub, and a few houses.

Did I find Leigh Abbey? No, not in any one real place. But I did find parts of it at Haddon Hall, Speke Hall, Cothele, Athelhampton, and Penshurst. Leigh Abbey, as it is portrayed in Face Down Below the Banqueting House, my current work in progress, will contain bits and pieces from all those places.

To see photographs, some of which relate to Face Down Before Rebel Hooves and some of which are part of the Search for Leigh Abbey, click here:

"What is an Eleanor Cross?"

Face Down Beneath the Eleanor Cross in paperback has on its cover what appears to be a Celtic cross. The artwork on the hardcover edition shows little more than the steps leading up to the Eleanor Cross. In fact, the "Eleanor" or "Queen's" Crosses were elaborate market crosses erected in 1290 by Edward I to commemorate the resting places of the body of his queen, Eleanor of Castile. Each place the funeral procession stopped on the way from Harby, near Lincoln, to London, was marked by one of these memorials. The most famous Eleanor Crosses were in Westminster (Charing Cross) and London (Cheapside Cross).Most of the crosses, including the Cheapside Cross, were destroyed by the Puritans during the time Oliver Cromwell ruled Britain.

There are still three original Eleanor Crosses in England, at Geddington, Northampton, and Waltham. My travels did not take me near enough to see any of them, but below is an 1806 sketch of the one at Geddington. If you click on this illustration, you should go to a website about Geddington which contains a recent photograph of the same cross.

"Early Explorers in the New World: The Men of Bristol and Others"

In Face Down Across the Western Sea, my characters investigate many of the early voyages to the New World. All of these stories were believed in the sixteenth century, no matter how far-fetched they may seem to us today. In part, Englishmen accepted that there had been contact with the land on the other side of the Western Sea (the Atlantic Ocean) because, for many centuries, fishermen had sailed in that direction and come back with fish to sell.

John Cabot sailed from Bristol, and is generally believed to have made a North American landfall in the fifteenth century, but others from that port also went to the New World. Some even brought back savages to display at court. For those who want to read more about some of these voyages, I recommend Ian Wilson's The Columbus Myth (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1991) and Giles Milton's Big Chief Elizabeth (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). Peter Firstbrook's The Voyage of the Matthew (BBC Books, 1997) and the PBS series of the same name also do an excellent job of showing what early voyages were like.

By now you're probably wondering what all that has to do with Susanna, Lady Appleton, especially since Susanna doesn't do travel over water well. In fact, she never leaves solid land. Face Down Across the Western Sea is set in Cornwall, where Susanna and Sir Walter Pendennis have been asked by the queen to gather together a number of scholars and determine whether or not England has a claim to the New World that predates that made by Columbus for Spain. Naturally, there is a murder, and some conflict between continuing characters. I don't want to give too much away, but I will tell you that Rosamond, the late Sir Robert Appleton's illegitimate daughter by the woman who later became Sir Walter's wife, plays a pivotal role.

While I was in England last summer, I had a chance to explore two replicas of fifteenth and sixteenth century ships, the Matthew and the Golden Hinde. I also visited the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, where the remains of the Mary Rose, raised from the Solent after some four centuries underwater, are being preserved and studied. The thing one notices most about all three ships is how small they are by modern standards. There was no privacy, and very little room to carry supplies. It would take a brave man (or woman) indeed to sail off across unknown seas in such a small vessel.

"Wych Witches"

In Face Down Under the Wych Elm, my story of women accused of witchcraft in Kent is entirely fictional, and in fact the accused are not witches at all, but in order to write the book I had to make a careful study of the early witch trials that did take place in England. They differed in many respects from those going on in Europe, mostly because the English trials were not coducted by the church. Burning was the punishment for heresy and on the Continent, witches were customarily burnt at the stake, but in England witchcraft was a civil offense and witches were usually hanged.

In the sixteenth century just about everyone believed in the power of the supernatural. They'd have found scientific explanations for disease more difficult to accept than the verdict that a man was bewitched to death. To tell the truth, I'm stretching to make Susanna as much of a skeptic as she is.

The real witch trials referred to by Susanna and others in the novel took place in Essex in 1566, the year before my story takes place. There was a chapbook written about them at the time. It makes the trials sound more like episodes in a soap opera than legal hearings. Three women were accused, linked by a familiar, a feature of most witch trials in England from that point on.

Mrs. Elizabeth Francis was first to be charged, with bewitching the infant child of William Auger. To save herself, she confessed to being a witch, although she continued to deny the specific charge against her. In her confession she said she'd learned the art of witchcraft from her grandmother, Mother Eve, who had given her a cat named Sathan.

No, that isn't Sathan above. But it is an Elizabethan cat. This is a detail of a drawing based on the portrait of the Earl of Southampton in the Tower of London. His faithful cat supposedly climbed the walls to be with him during his imprisonment.

To get back to Elizabeth Francis: according to her confession, her cat helped her seduce one Andrew Byles, but when Byles refused to marry her, she caused his death. After that, Sathan got her another lover, Christopher Francis, who did marry her. Typical of Elizabethan records, by the way, we only know her married name. What family Elizabeth came from, or what Mother Eve's surname was are not recorded.

Elizabeth and Christopher Francis had a daughter, but Elizabeth ordered Sathan to kill the child. Later Sathan made Christopher lame, also on Elizabeth's orders. Then, some fifteen or sixteen years after she'd aquired him, Elizabeth grew tired of Sathan and gave him to a neighbor, Agnes Waterhouse.

Apparently the jurors took this confession with a grain of salt. By my count, Elizabeth committed two murders, but she was only sentenced to two years in gaol, one for bewitching the infant and a second for bewitching someone named Mary Cocke. She was also obliged to make four appearances in the pillory.

It appears that after she served her sentence, Elizabeth Francis was released. She appears again in the records, however, in 1579, when she went on trial a second time for witchcraft. This time she was charged with bewitching Alice Poole to death, and for that crime, Elizabeth was hanged.

But what about Agnes Waterhouse, Sathan's new owner? She was also brought to trial in 1566, and her picture decorated the cover of the chapbook written about the case.

"Mother" Waterhouse was accused of bewitching William Fynne, who had died in November of 1565. She denied that she'd ever successfully killed anyone with witchcraft, but like Elizabeth she confessed that she was a witch and admitted she'd used Sathan to help her cast spells. Sathan, however, doesn't seem to have been much help. When last seen, he'd turned himself into a toad. "Mother Waterhouse" was hanged for Fynne's death on July 29, 1566. Her daughter, Joan, was also accused of witchcraft, specifically of having bewitched a twelve year old girl. The girl claimed she'd seen a black dog (Sathan again?) just before her right arm and right leg were afflicted. Joan "put herself on the county" and was acquitted.

This, then, was the state of witchcraft in England at the time of Face Down Under the Wych Elm.

"Details from Maps of the New World"

One of the most fascinating aspects of doing research for Face Down Across the Western Sea was studying contemporary maps of the Americas. Not only did mapmakers guess at coastlines and other geographical features, but they felt free to embellish their work with inventive drawings of the inhabitants. Creatures of the sea came in for creative depictions as well. Notice the dolphin, which is referred to in my novel.

There is a modern map in the book to give you an idea where various places are. The place names have changed considerably over the centuries. But what you see above is typical of the maps of the sixteenth century. This is a detail showing North America. It is one by Mercator, which is in Susanna's possession in my story.

One of the other maps referred to was that of Sebastian Cabot, published in 1544. Some of my favorite bits and pieces come from that one. Cabot attempted to show the natives of the Americas, but he had little idea what they looked like. Dressing American Indians in toga-like costumes was a common practice in sixteenth century illustrations. Showing animals was also in vogue.

"Devil's Turnips"

For those who enjoy the herbal poison angle in the Lady Appleton mysteries, there's a great little killer plant in Face Down Before Rebel Hooves. Devil's turnip is one of the names for bryony. Dangerous just to touch, bryony's sap causes itching and painful blisters, the root is poisonous if taken internally, and a dozen berries will kill a child. Forty are enough to be fatal to an adult. It is the large, fleshy root, however, that most often causes problems—it can easily be mistaken for a turnip. Fortunately for Susanna Appleton, the devil's turnips also have a distinctive smell, an acrid, unpleasant odor.

The devil's turnips do have some redeeming qualities. Hang the root in both garden and house if you want to keep bad weather away. And to relieve pain you can mix the juice with banewort. Of course, since banewort is another name for deadly nightshade, pain may not be the only thing you eradicate.

Writings by early herbalists sometimes confused white bryony (tetterberry), red bryony (devil's turnip) and black bryony, and just to make things more interestng, tetterberry is also another name for wild nep. In Rebel Hooves, Susanna is mistaken when she says the root of the devil's turnip is black.

"Adventures of the Merchant Adventurers: Europe, 1569"

What is Nick doing in Germany in Face Down Before Rebel Hooves? What has Walter been up to since he was last seen in Face Down Beneath the Eleanor Cross? International politics provide answers to both questions. In December 1563, as a result of English troubles with Spain, Netherlands ports were closed to English trade. The Netherlands (or Low Countries) consisted of seventeen provinces which acknowledged the rule of Philip II. Although trade resumed that time, it was halted again in 1569. English merchandise was seized and English merchants arrested. By then the Merchant Adventurers had set up an alternate base of operations in Hamburg, a free city on the Elbe and Alster Rivers and near the North Sea. English merchants received permission to trade there in July, 1567. The Baltic trade consisted of exported cloth and imported timber and naval stores. The first "Cloth Fleet" set sail from London in early May of 1569. It returned to England in mid-August, at which time the second fleet left. In Hamburg, a strict Lutheran city, the English were considered "heretics" and had to hold Church of England services in the Merchant Adventurers' headquarters.

For the purposes of my plot, I chose to involve Nick in setting up the Merchant Adventurers' businesses in Hamburg. This took him out of the country at the end of Face Down Under the Wych Elm and he's been gone from England most of the time between that book and Face Down Before Rebel Hooves. On his last visit home, however, he persuaded Susanna to come visit him, in spite of her "little problem" with travel over water.

As for Walter Pendennis, he's been absent from Susanna's life for an even longer period of time, having left England to pursue a diplomatic career in mid-1565. His assignments have been in Poland and in Sweden. As the story opens he's on his way home, having completed one last mission in Augsburg. His wife, Eleanor, doesn't want to go back. She's hoped all along he'd get one of the really prestigious posts–France or Spain–but things haven't worked out that way.

England sent envoys and ambassadors to various royal courts, some on a permanent basis, others for short terms. France and Spain were the most important posts, and the best paid. Of less importance were places like Poland and Sweden.

The King of Poland from 1548 to 1572 was Sigismund II (Sigismund Augustus). He was also Duke of Lithuania, which included the province of Samogita. Why do I mention this? Because an English woman, Catherine Willoughby d'Eresby, Duchess of Suffolk, was regent there during the period when Mary Tudor was queen of England. Sigismund II was a Roman Catholic, but tolerant of Protestantism.

Poland had marriage ties with Sweden, Walter Pendennis's second assignment. Sweden wanted badly to be allied with England. Two successive kings, Erik and John, proposed marriage to Queen Elizabeth. She was smart enough to refuse. Both were . . . unstable. Erik XIV was deposed in 1568 by his brother John III.

Erik and John had a sister, Cecilia. As a condition of her marriage to the Margrave of Baden in 1564, she insisted on a wedding journey to England. She remained in England until April 1566 and even gave birth to her first child there, finally leaving just ahead of creditors. Eleven years later, when Cecilia was a widow, she received a marriage proposal from Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's "Lord Robin." She turned him down.

One of Cecilia's waiting gentlewomen, Helena von Snakenborg, stayed behind to become a maid of honor to Queen Elizabeth. In 1571, she married the widowed Marquis of Northampton, a May-December wedding quickly followed by Northampton's funeral. Readers may recall that the previous Marchioness of Northampton, Bess Brooke, appeared in Face Down Beneath the Eleanor Cross. Bess is also a character in my earlier, non-series novel, Winter Tapestry.

There are no extant portraits of Bess, but here is one of Helena.

"Dovecote---a great place to find a body!"

One of the short stories in Murders and Other Confusions is titled "The Body in the Dovecote." I visited two dovecotes and actually went inside one of them during my research trip to England back in 2001.

In the 16th century, the birds kept in dovecotes were a source of food. In fact, in the winter and early spring months, pigeons might be the only source of fresh meat. Young doves or pigeons (squabs) supplied fresh meat all year long. Older birds were also used to lay eggs.The birds were also bred for their manure, and for the saltpetre in the dung. Saltpetre was used to make gunpowder.

One dovecote, built in 1530, could house nearly 3000 birds in 1300 double nests. Most were smaller, but a great household might have more than one dovecote. The one at Cothele in Cornwall has stone walls three feet thick. Inside are thirteen rows of nest holes with thirty holes in each row. Each nest is about 18 inches deep and 12 inches across at the back.

"Monstrous?"

The inspiration for one character in the short story "Confusions Most Monstrous" was something I saw at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. The wax model shown in the photograph below is of a woman who had a "monstrous growth" on her forehead. It's hard not to be creeped out by such things today. Imagine how people would have reacted in a society that still believed in witches, demons, and spells!

"QUEEN ELIZABETH'S ROYAL PROGRESS: 1573"

As recounted in Face Down Below the Banqueting House, Queen Elizabeth went on a royal progress in 1573. She traveled to parts of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent. Although she never really planned to visit Leigh Abbey, which is a fictional house in Kent, she was certainly in the area at the time.

Such trips were necessary. Not only did the queen wish to meet her subjects, but the royal palaces needed to be vacated so they could be cleaned.

On this particular progress, Queen Elizabeth set out from Greenwich on July 14, a Wednesday, and went first to the Archbishop of Canterbury's house at Croydon, where she stayed for seven days. On July 21, she proceeded to Orpington, the house of Sir Percival Hart, Knight of the Body to Henry VIII, where she stayed three days. On one of those days she made an excursion to the house of Mr. Thomas Fisher at Plumsted. After that she went to her own house, Knole, for five days, thence to Birlingham, home of Lord Bergavenny, where she stayed three days, thence to Sir Thomas Gresham at Mayfield. Next was Eridge, another of Lord Bergavenny's houses, for six days. Mr. Culpepper's house at Bedgbury followed, for one day, then Mr. Guildford's house at Hempsted for three days, and then to Rye for three days. After leaving Rye, she went to Sissinghurst to Mr. Baker's house for three days, then to Boughton Malherbe to Mr. Thomas Wotton's for two days. Next came Mr. Tufton at Hothfield, for two days, then the queen's own house at Westenhanger for four days. She left there on the 25th of August and dined in Sandown Castle. Next she visited Dover, where she was met by the Archbishop of Canterbury. She spent six days at Dover Castle before going on to Sandwich. After several days there, she proceeded to Wingham, where she dined, and then went on to Canterbury, where she was the guest of the Archbishop. After fourteen days at Canterbury, the queen went on to Faversham for two days, then to Sittingbourne and Tunstall. She arrived in Rochester on the evening of September 18. She stayed for four days at the Crown Inn. The progress was now winding down. After a two-day visit to Cobham Hall, she went to her palace at Dartford and then returned to Greenwich.

For further reading on travel in Tudor England:

An Elizabethan Progress by Zillah Dovey (1996) gives a detailed account of Queen Elizabeth's progress through East Anglia in 1578.

John Leland's Itinerary, edited by John Chandler (1993) was compiled during the reign of Henry VIII. Leland traveled over most of England. This edition is lavishly illustrated and annotated.

The Questions and Answers Column

April 2002

Question:Did they really have crutches and wheel chairs in the sixteenth century?
Answer: Yes. Henry VIII, who had an ulcerated leg, used some sort of chair on wheels, and the illustration below dates from the fifteenth century.

Question:Why do you spell Mary Queen of Scots surname Stewart when other sources use Stuart?
Answer: Mary and her son James VI were part of the Stewart dynasty in Scotland. Stuart was the French spelling of the name. Both were used in documents of the time. It was only after 1603, when James became King of England as James I, that Stuart became the preferred spelling. Scots in Scotland in the 1560s, when Sir Robert Appleton was there, would have called her Mary Stewart.

Question:I thought divorce got easier after Henry VIII broke from the church in Rome but in Face Down Before Rebel Hooves you say no one could get a divorce in England anymore. Why was that so?
Answer: Henry broke with Rome to get a divorce for himself, but for his subjects it was another matter entirely. Without the Catholic Church to grant dispensations and annulments, there was no system in place for ending a marriage. A few attempts were made to have Parliament dissolve a marriage, but that wasn't easy to do. Under Elizabeth, you married for life.

Question: Both times of day and seasons seem a little off in historical novels. Why is that? I'm confused about dates too.
Answer: Concerning time, most people didn't have clocks or watches, although both had been invented. When England was Catholic, the canonical hours were used to tell time. Matins was midnight, Lauds was 3 AM, Prime was 6 AM, Terce was 9AM, Sext was noon, None was 3PM, Vespers was 6PM, and Compline was 9PM. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, people avoided using those terms. Some told time by the sun and others by cockcrow. First cockcrow was at midnight, second cockcrow halfway to dawn, and third cockcrow at sunrise. Dawn was reckoned at 3:30 AM in summer and around 7AM in winter. Bedtime was at 9 in winter and 10 in summer. And you're right, the seasons were different, too, coming several weeks earlier than what we now use in North America. Spring began in February, summer in May, autumn in August, and winter in November. Law and university terms continued to be fixed by the church calendar–Hilary Term (beginning in January), Easter Term (beginning after Easter), Trinity Term (beginning after Whitsunday), and Michaelmas Term (beginning in October). Calendar reforms were ongoing throughout the century. In 1582, the rest of Europe adoped a new calendar and skipped ahead by ten days in an effort to realign church holy days and the seasons, but England resisted conforming to this system until the middle of the eighteenth century. To add to the confusion, England also continued to call Lady Day (March 25) the start of the new year, although New Year's Day celebrations were held on January 1st. Some books use double dating (February 22, 1567/68) while others pick just one. This creates a great deal of confusion and even some very scholarly books occasionally get a year wrong as a result.

November 2002

Question: I was intrigued to read in Face Down Across the Western Sea a passage describing Sir Walter's library with the books on the shelf spine inward. Do you know anything more about why this was done? It doesn't seem very practical.
Answer: Apparently furniture makers didn't come up with the concept of the bookcase until the seventeenth century. In the sixteenth, most books were stored in chests. If they were kept out because they were being used, rather than because they had jeweled bindings their owners wished to display, the titles were written on the edges of the pages, so the books were stacked spine in for easy of identification. I assume the leather bindings were considered too valuable to deface with ink or embossed titles.

Spring 2003

Question: "What in the world is sussapine? A fabric, but what kind?"
Answer: As with many archaic terms, the definition of sussapine is a little vague. It is described as a costly silk textile. Truthfully, I chose it as much for the sound of the word as the specific meaning. It has such a delightful historical feel to it. Some other silk textiles in use at the time were sarcenet (a fine soft silk of taffeta weave), caffa (a rich silk cloth similar to damask), brocade (a rich silk cloth embroidered in gold and silver; later brocade meant any fabric with a raised, figured pattern), satin (a glossy silk fabric with a smooth surface) and taffeta (a rich, thin silk used for doublets).Both silk thread and finished fabric were imported throughout the sixteenth century. By 1599, looms were being used to knit silk stockings, waistcoats and other garments. Most people, of course, wore less expensive fabrics, usually linen, wool, or blends. Cotton at the time meant any cloth made from the cotton plant, which was imported as a raw material from Smyrna and Cyprus.

Question: "Were there etiquette books in those days? Or was it assumed that if you were a member of the upper classes, you would automatically know how to behave?"
Answer: There were etiquette books to tell you how to do everything from using a napkin to asking a lady to dance. Most were also instructional manuals for a career in courtiership. Among those which can still be read today are the translation of Castiglioni's The Courtier by Sir Thomas Hoby and The Boke named the Governour by Thomas Elyot. Another book, Hugh Rhodes's Boke of Nurture, or Schoole of good manners included specific instructions not to pare nails at table, pick teeth with a knife, blow on the soup to cool it, or dip meat in the common salt cellar. And, oh yes--no elbows on the table, if you please!

NOTE: Elyot's book and Hoby's translation are both on line at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/

Fall 2003

Question: "I've noticed in most medieval stories that baths are seldom mentioned. The stench must have been horrible."
Answer: People in those days would have smelled awful to modern noses. They wore a lot of heavy perfume to help cover up the stink, and I suppose they were also used to it and didn't notice most of the time. Most people didn't understand the health benefits of cleanliness and many were superstitious about the dangers of immersing themselves in water. It's generally believed that Elizabethans were accustomed to washing hands and faces regularly, but baths were rare enough that the queen's habit of taking a bathtub with her on progress and taking regular baths was regarded as a bit odd. There were bathtubs made of leather for traveling. Others were made of various metals and of wood. They took a great deal of water to fill and it had to be heated on an open hearth. From a purely practical standpoint, a bath, even a cold bath, was not something you could manage every day. I expect some people washed themselves off in streams, but the majority didn't know how to swim, so that certainly wouldn't have been common either. In medieval times there were still public baths in England but they were usually combined with brothels and by Elizabethan times there weren't any left. There were still brothels, just no baths attached to them. There were a few spas, in Bath and at Buxton, where people went for their health. They sat in huge pools and drank the waters. The pools don't seem to have been used for either washing or swimming.

Question: "All the men connected with Susanna are very wealthy, but where do they keep it? Do the moneylenders also serve as bankers? If they used letters of credit, what was to prevent forgeries?"
Answer: Generally wealth was in land and livestock rather than ready cash, and this is the case with Nick Baldwin and Robert Appleton. Walter Pendennis didn't inherit land but he bought an estate as soon as he was able. There were no banks yet. Merchants often held money or valuables for each other, although that sometimes led to confusion and litigation. For merchants like Nick, letters of credit were the primary means of sending money from place to place. In addition to signatures, seals pressed with signet rings were used to identify the sender. Barbara Winchester's Tudor Family Portrait (1955) is an excellent account of the lives of a merchant family of the period.

Spring 2004

Question: What exactly was the royal Court? When people went to Court, did they have to find their own food and lodging or were those part of their salary? Were they paid a salary?
Answer: Strictly speaking, Court was wherever the queen was. All the royal residences had pretty much the same floor plan for the royal apartments. There were three of them, each leading into the next. As I understand it, the general public could get into the outermost (Presence) chamber and hope for a glimpse of the queen, although there would have been guards to discourage the riff-raff. In the inner chambers, admittance was restricted to those with an inside track. The Privy Chamber was where the queen took her meals and she used the Bedchamber, during the day, for private audiences. There were 400-800 people who were regularly part of the Court, plus their servants. When Henry VIII had a queen, she had a separate household of 150 or so. At any given time, Queen Elizabeth generally had in attendance 4 ladies of the bedchamber, 7 or 8 gentlewomen of the privy chamber (paid £33 6s. 8d. per annum), 6-8 maids of honor, and 3 or 4 chamberers (paid £20 a year). There were also 39 unpaid "ladies of honor" during her reign, who appeared with her on ceremonial occasions. The maids of honor lived in a dormitory under the supervision of a "mother of maids" and were each allowed to have a maidservant, a horse, and a dog. When the Court was on the move, beds were at a premium. Elizabethans didn't really have our concept of private rooms anyway, so only the wealthiest nobles had apartments of their own. Servants often slept on the floor in an anteroom. There were no halls with doors leading off them the way we have today, either. You might have to go through several other rooms to reach the one you were sleeping in. Those four posters with the bed hangings might provide the only privacy you were going to get! As near as I can tell (I haven't done a lot of research on the Court since Susanna has an aversion to going there), relatives lobbied to get their kinfolk invited to take positions at Court. There was money in it only because those seeking favors, or an audience with the queen, would offer bribes/gifts to those in her service in the hope of gaining their help.

Fall 2004

Question: What's next in your new series? Will there be two years between the events in each book as there are in the Face Down novels?
Answer: I have a much tighter time frame for the Diana Spaulding Mysteries. They all take place in 1888 and there are weeks, not years, between the books. Deadlier than the Pen is set in March 1888. Fatal as a Fallen Woman starts about three weeks later. "The Kenduskeag Killer" is set between these two books and I am working on another short story, featuring Diana as sleuth, that takes place during those same three weeks. The plan for the Diana Spaulding Mystery novels at this time is to do four books in all. Fatal as a Fallen Woman is finished and I'm currently working on the third book, which is set in the Sullivan County Catskills of New York State (where I grew up) in mid-May 1888. In the fourth book, Diana will return to Maine. It will be mid-June by then.

Question: Would you break into syllables Lord Glenelg's name (from Face Down Upon An Herbal)?
Answer: It's Glen Elg, equal emphasis on both syllables. I took it from a town in Maryland where a friend of mine lives, but its origins are Scots and I liked the hard sound of it for a villain's name.

Question: I'm fascinated by the herbal remedies of the Elizabethan era. I wonder just how successful the herbals were in relieving the maladies you mention? Do you have an herb garden?
Answer: I'll answer the last part first—I'm a terrible gardener. Every plant I touch dies. Fortunately, I'm great at research. As for Elizabethan herbals, they weren't terribly accurate. They included as much superstition as they did "scientific" or medical information. Some of them didn't even get the illustrations right. Many of the early herbalists (all men) just copied what had been printed before, relying heavily on Pliny the elder and other ancient authorities. For those of you with a particular interest in herbs and gardens, the fall 2004 issue of Mystery Reader's Journal contains an article by me on sixteenth-century gardens. Look for it in the "Author! Author!" section.

---

If you would like to be notified when Face Down Update and Deadly Tidbits, a twice yearly newsletter, is posted, and receive other, occasional, notices of what I'm doing, please send an email to me at emerson@megalink.net.

Please use the subject line "Face Down Update"
to avoid being accidentally deleted as spam and
include the email address you want me to add to my mailing list.
Starting in Spring, 2007, the newsletter will be an html file that can be printed or read here at my website.

To read the most recent issue, click here:

© 2008 Kathy Lynn Emerson. All rights reserved.
Last updated 2/2/08