Showing posts with label 17th Century. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 17th Century. Show all posts

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By Any Other Name: Historic Roses

by Margaret Porter

Gallica roses, J.S. Holtzbecher
Google Art Project
The rose is one of the oldest plants in cultivation. It appears on frescoes found in Crete. On cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia. For many thousands of years it has been grown in China. It turns up in Greek mythology--Aphrodite anointed herself with rose oil. Herodotus mentioned a 60-petalled rose, and Epicurus had a rose garden. In Roman times, roses were omnipresent, requiring large-scale cultivation to supply demand. They were most famously used at the festival marking the ascent of 14-year old Emperor Heliogabalus (AD 204-224), who repeatedly showered his guests with roses.

In Christianity the rose became emblematic of the Virgin Mary and is found in many Madonna paintings. In Medieval times roses were grown in monastic gardens. They feature in courtly poetry--Roman de la Rose in French and Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle English translation of it. Medicinal gardens contained roses. They were used for hedging and enclosures. And they show up in English heraldry, stained glass, statuary, and coinage.

The following categories would certainly be familiar to characters in our historical novels:

Species roses. England's native roses are rosa canina (the dog rose), which has a distinctive apple scent, eglantine (often mentioned by Shakespeare), and various Scotch or burnet roses. These are still found growing in hedgerows. Over time they moved into the garden to be cultivated and were used medicinally. They tend to be extremely thorny!

Rosa canina, dog rose

Double Blush Burnet, Scotch rose

Rosa gallica, Provins Rose. An ancient type from the Middle East and Europe, grown and described by Pliny the Elder. Officianalis came to be known in England as the Apothecary Rose, and is mentioned in Culpeper's Herbal. It was used in conserves, perfume, and medicines. The Red Rose of Provins was chosen to be the Rose of Lancaster. Its striped sport, Rosa mundi, supposedly bears the name of King Henry II's mistress Rosamund. Another popular form is the Velvet Rose, also mentioned by Gerard, dating from before 1596.

Rosa gallica officianalis, Apothecary Rose

Rosa gallica violacea, Old Velvet Rose, La Belle Sultane

Rosa gallica versicolor, Rosa mundi


Rosa alba. This rose grew in Greek & Roman gardens, and like other types eventually arrived in Britain. King Edward IV designated Alba semi-plena as the White Rose of York. A notable pink version is Great Maiden's Blush, dating from before the Renaissance, both fragrant and beautiful, and possibly the same rose Botticelli presents in The Birth of Venus and other paintings. Alba maxima gained fame as the Jacobite rose, connected by legend with Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora MacDonald.

Rosa alba semi-plena, White Rose of York

Rosa alba incarnata, Maiden's Blush

Rosa damascena. Its most ancient form is Semperflorens, mentioned by Virgil and grown in Pompeii--for centuries this was the only known re-blooming rose in Europe. It was variously referred to as Autumn Damask, Four Seasons Rose, or Quatre Saisons. Long before the Crusades, when they found their way to England, damask roses grew in Persia and the Mediterranean. This type is still used for making attar of roses and other perfumes in the Middle East and Bulgaria. In the 18th century, Celsiana was a popular damask variety.

Quatre Saisons, the Autumn Damak

Celsiana, damask rose



Still Life by Maria von Oosterwijck, 1689
Wikimedia Commons
Rosa centifolia. Other names are Cabbage Rose, Rose de Peintres, or names incorporating 'Dutch' or 'Belgic'. It is distinguished by its abundance of petals, fine pink colour, and high fragrance. Its popularity increased as a result of its prevalence in 17th century Dutch and Flemish still life paintings as well as 18th century French art by Fragonard, Boucher, and others. The miniature form, Rose de Meux, was very popular in the 18th century.


Portland rose (also known as Damask Perpetual) prior to 1775. Reportedly 'discovered' in Pasetum, Naples. Associated, perhaps erroneously, with Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715-1785), Duchess of Portland, who studied natural history and botany and was a plant collector. At some point she supposedly received from Italy the Scarlet Four Seasons rose, eventually known as the Portland Rose or Duchess of Portland. Over time it gave rise to an entire class of repeating damask roses.

The Portland Rose

 Frustratingly, some roses defy categorisation. A favourite of mine, Shailer's Provence, aka 'Gracilis,' dating from 1796, is variously defined as: a centifolia, an early Boursault rose, a variant of chinensis, or possibly descended from rosa indica. It doesn't matter to me, I love it for its beauty and because I obtained the original cutting from my mother.

Shailer's Provence

When did roses bloom in England in past times? Gardening and horticultural books reveal exactly when certain specimens flowered.

May: cinnamon rose, monthly rose, damask rose, burnet-leaved rose, Scotch rose
June: damask rose, white rose, red rose
July: musk rose, monthly rose, American rose (perhaps the Virginia or Pennsylvania rose)
September and October:  musk rose, monthly rose

Where could one obtain roses? If you were extremely patient, you could grow roses from seed. Normally cuttings were taken and rooted in soil. Or one could dig up and transplant a specimen. Or you could buy young or established plants from a nursery garden, which might be as large as 50 to 100 acres. With the rise of nurserymen in the 18th and 19th centuries, catalogues of their entire stock were printed, and in them we find many plants familiar to us today. Here are some prices for types of roses mentioned in this article:


William & John Perfect, Yorkshire, 1777
 
Blush Belgic 1s
Damask 4d.
               Dutch hundred leav'd 1s.          
  Maiden's Blush 1s.
  Rosa mundi 4d.
Semi-double Velvet 1s.
Single Yellow 6d.

What might the purchaser do with the roses? Plant them, obviously, but in what manner? During the 17th and 18th centuries the rose was merely one of numerous garden specimens, typically planted in combination with other flowering shrubs and evergreens. In 1791 Richard Twiss designed a rectangular bed edged with box. Within this enclosure was a ring of low-growing roses--moss rose, musk rose, white Provence rose, Austrian copper, de Meux, centifolia varieties. These surrounded evergreens and other flowering shrubs (lauristinas, hibiscus, kalmia, azealea, tulip tree, and cherries).

Rose beds as a separate garden feature didn't arise until the importation of the recurrent Rosa chinensis from China, and the various hybrids produced from it. Extended flowering meant that the rose could take centre stage and it swiftly achieved prominence over all other flowers.

Celsiana by P.J. Redouté,
Wikimedia Commons
Empress Josephine's gardens at Malmaison in France are regarded as the world's first modern-stye rose gardens. Her innovative style, referred to as jardin a l'Anglaise, not only consisted of beds filled with shrub roses or standards (tree roses). Long-caned varieties clambered over pergolas, pillars, obelisks, and trellies. Her passion for roses inspired many a hybridiser, as well as the famous rose painter Pierre-Josepsh Redouté of the Netherlands, who immortalised the Malmaison collection in his monumental three-volume work Les Roses.

New discoveries, such as re-blooming Bourbon roses, brought about the great rose revolution in Victorian England and 19th century France, when hybrids were created by the hundreds. Tea roses, floribundas, and other later varieties all descend from the very earliest roses grown by our ancestors.


Rose Photographs: My own gardens

Sources:

Twelve Months of Flowers, Robert Furber, 1730
The Gardeners Kalendar, Directing the necessary works to be done every month in the Kitchen, Fruit, and Pleasure-Gardens, as also in the Conservatory and Nursery, Philip Miller, F.R.S., 1775
Every Man His own Gardener, Thomas Mawe 1784
The Roses: The Complete Plates, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, 2007
The Flowering of the Landscape Garden: English Pleasure Grounds, 1720-1800, Mark Laird
The Love of Roses: from Myth to Modern Culture, Graham Rose and Peter King, 1992

March 2015
Margaret (Evans) Porter is the award-winning and bestselling author of several historical fiction genres, and is also published in nonfiction and poetry. A lady landscape designer and rosarian is featured as the heroine of her novel The Proposal. Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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Until death - of loyalty at all costs

by Anna Belfrage

There is a picture in the National Portrait Gallery that I have always been particularly fond of. Originally, I was drawn to it more because of the formal garden in the background than the sitters in the foreground (this was when I was thinking BIG when it came to garden design), but every time I’ve visited the gallery, I have ended up standing a long time before this depiction of a seemingly happy and content family – mainly because they don’t look all that happy. The father looks somewhat shifty (but I love his flashy green stockings), the wife looks worried, and only the toddler leaning against his father’s leg looks alert and relaxed. So, dear readers, today I thought we’d meet the 17th century Capells – and especially Arthur Capell, the pater familias in the picture.

The Capells were relatively new to the world of the hoity-toity. Only a couple generations back, the Capells were merchants, and one William Capel was a London draper, became mayor and laid the foundations of the family fortune. By the time our Arthur was born in 1603, the family was well-to-do landed gentry and had been so for the last eighty years or so, long enough to distance themselves from their tradesmen roots.

Little Arthur grew up as the cosseted heir to a large fortune and as the member of a huge family, seeing as his grandparents had twenty children (and I’m thinking poor, poor woman…). His parents both died while Arthur was young, he spent some time in Cambridge and in 1627 married a young woman called Elizabeth Morrison who brought even more money to the Capell household. Upon the death of his grandfather in 1632, the not quite thirty-year-old Arthur became one of the richest men in England.

Despite all this wealth, Arthur was not much of a material boy. Devout and serious, he was a man for whom words like duty and honour meant something. So when he became an MP, he had a genuine desire to change things for the better – among other things he considered it important to ensure the King acted in accordance with Parliament’s directives. The King, rather obviously, did not agree. After all, Charles I had been raised believing in Divine Right. It is therefore not entirely strange that the first years as an MP, Arthur mostly voted with the Parliamentarians. But as the radicals grew more vociferous (and more radical), Arthur started feeling somewhat queasy. It was one thing to curb the King’s wilful behaviour, another thing entirely to question his authority – or his existence - altogether.

Arthur Capell
The fledgling Parliamentarian began drifting in the direction of more moderate men, and the King, being at times quite astute, made Arthur Baron Capell of Hadham and gave him a seat in the House of Lords – and what a dashing baron he was our Arthur, well over six feet tall and rich enough to flounce around in silks should he feel like it. (He mostly didn’t.) Thus, the former fervent believer in a king ruled by Parliament was seduced into the Royalist camp, and being Arthur, once he had sworn the King fealty, there was no going back. Given the times, this meant our Arthur was in for a long and hard ride, because as we all know, the discord between Parliament and King swelled until it exploded into Civil War.

In 1642 Lord Capell fought at Edgehill as a member of the King’s bodyguard. He had dipped into his considerable riches and equipped an entire regiment at the outbreak of the first Civil War, and he was to dip deeper and deeper into his personal wealth as the fighting progressed. While brave and audacious, creative when needed, it soon became eminently clear that he was not one of those men gifted with the skills required to make a great military leader. He lacked strategic vision and had a tendency to become bogged down in tactics, winning minor skirmishes while losing out in the bigger picture.

So in 1645, Lord Capell was instead sent to Bristol to serve on the council of the Prince of Wales. At this point in time, the previously so wealthy Capell was strapped for cash. His Essex estates were under sequestration, and only the fact that his wife had Parliamentarian connections kept his family in relative safety. In 1646, after fierce fighting in which Capell was wounded, what remained of the Prince’s advisors fled to Jersey and from there to France where the Prince was reunited with his mother.

Charles I
As Lord Capell was uncomfortable in the very Catholic household of Queen Henrietta Maria, he spent the coming months in exile in the Netherlands, but by 1647 he was back home where he was first placed under house arrest. By July he was back at Hadham Hall. Things, it seemed, were over: Parliament was in charge and the King was its prisoner. Well: as we know, Parliament was not exactly a united front, with deep divisions between Independents and Presbyterians. King Charles attempted to exploit this, and in November of 1647 he escaped, making for Isle of Wight.

The King had hoped to be well-received at the Isle of Wight. Instead, he was incarcerated – in comfort – at Carisbrooke Castle. He decided to further deepen the divisions among the Parliamentarians, and in December of 1647 he signed a secret treaty with the Scots: if they supported him, he promised to implement Presbyterianism throughout England for a minimum period of three years. (Good luck with that, one can’t help thinking, but given the way events unfolded, this would never be put to the test.)

In May of 1648, the Royalists rebelled, the Scots army – as per the agreement with Charles I - invaded, and disaffected Parliamentarians took the opportunity to join the fracas. In Essex, things exploded, and Lord Capell felt honour-bound to join the uprising, despite the potential risks to himself and his family. As the New Model Army rose to the challenge, the Royalists took cover behind Colchester’s walls, and just like that, one of the more memorable sieges of the Civil War had begun.

Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell rode north to deal with the Scots, and in Essex, Thomas Fairfax was charged with sorting out the pesky insurgents who had holed up in Colchester. "A walk in the park," I imagine Cromwell saying to Fairfax. "You deal with the pretty boys and I'll go and maul the Scots, okay?"

Initially, Fairfax attempted to breach the town by force. His men charged, were fought off, charged again, and voilá, they’d made it through the gates. A ruse, as it turns out, because suddenly the gates swung shut behind them and the men were trapped, shot at from all directions. It is said our Arthur was one of the men behind the plan. Whatever the case, Fairfax lost very many men that day, the Royalists substantially less.

The Parliamentary forces settled down for a long siege. Having discovered that Lord Capell was one of the leaders, they had his sickly son brought over from Hadham Hall to hold as some sort of hostage, parading him within sight of the city walls. There were loud protests at this behaviour, and the boy was released. I guess his father heaved a sigh of relief. The siege ground on, with the people behind Colchester’s walls soon reduced to eating cats, dogs, rats, leather – well, anything, really. The townspeople attempted to appeal to the Parliamentarian forces for food, but Fairfax was not giving them as much as a loaf of bread as he feared any victuals provided to the civilians would end up with the Royalists.

There were constant skirmishes, leading to loss of life and limb. The Parliamentarian forces ate their way into one Royalist position after the other, and for the men trapped in Colchester, things went from bad to worse, but they dug in and refused to budge, hoping the Scottish Army would succeed in trouncing Cromwell's army. Unfortunately for our trapped Royalists, it wasn’t Cromwell who hit the dust at the Battle of Preston. Instead, the entire Scottish Army was vanquished and the Second Civil War was thereby over – well, except for the stubborn men in Colchester.

Handsome Fairfax
In Colchester, the news were received in silent despair. Hungry and outnumbered, the only thing the besieged men could hope for was generous terms for their surrender – but frankly, in the present situation Fairfax had no reason to be generous. All he had to do was wait.  However, Black Tom Fairfax was a pragmatic man, less interested in spilling Royalist blood than in establishing some sort of peace, which is why he offered the common men quarter, while the “Lords and Gentlemen” who had led the uprising had to surrender unconditionally, with no guarantees as to how they would be punished.  For the sake of their men, Lord Capell  and his fellow commanders had no choice but to accept Fairfax’ terms, and on the 28th of August 1648 the Royalists capitulated, after more than eleven weeks.

Fairfax disbanded the weakened Royalist troops, hauled two of the commanders before a military court and had them executed at Colchester (which he felt entitled to do as they weren’t peers) and had Lord Capell and his remaining companions dragged off to stand trial for treason. None of the captured men held any hopes about coming out of this alive.

For some months, Arthur languished in the Tower. Meanwhile, the King was desperately attempting to negotiate some sort of truce, but while a majority of Parliament wanted to find a solution, Oliver Cromwell didn’t. In his opinion, the king was a tyrant and a danger to permanent peace – and the King’s recent secret agreement with the Scots proved his point. In early December of 1648, Oliver and his comrades “purged” the Parliament of those considered too lenient vis-à-vis the King. The remaining MP’s, the so called Rump Parliament, voted to indict the King for treason. A very novel – and shocking – approach.

As we all know, Charles I was found guilty and beheaded. Arthur Capell did not have to witness the death of his king – but he was more than aware that a second court was being convened, and that one of the defendants would be him. So Capell did what any man would have done, he escaped. Now, it may be worthwhile to point out that very, very few have escaped the Tower. But Arthur somehow got himself over the walls, jumped into the moat – and nearly drowned in the mud. Only his uncommon height saved him.

Ultimately, his burst of freedom was short-lived. He was recaptured in Lambeth, stood trial and was, as expected, found guilty. On March 9, 1949, he was beheaded in the Westminster Palace Yard. After he was well and truly dead, his head was sewn back on his body and his remains were dispatched to Hadham Hall to be buried – minus his heart, which at a future date would be presented to Charles II. I assume his wife wept, not only for her husband, but also for her family, now in substantially reduced circumstances. But that, sadly, was how life was during the Civil War and its immediate aftermath.

Eleven years later, Charles II was restored to the throne. And in 1661 Arthur Capell’s eldest son (also named Arthur) was made Earl of Essex, his father’s estates restored to him. A gesture, I believe, made more on behalf of the man who died for his king than for the son. Whatever the case, the Capells were back on top. And as to Arthur Capell Junior, well, I do believe he deserves a post of his own!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anna Belfrage is the successful author of seven published books, all of them part of The Graham Saga. Set in 17th century Scotland, Virginia and Maryland, this is the story of Matthew Graham and his wife, Alex Lind - two people who should never have met, not when she was born three centuries after him.

Anna's books are available on Amazon US,  Amazon UK, or wherever else good books are sold.
For more information about Anna and her books, please visit  her website. If not on her website, Anna can mostly be found on her blog.

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Witches and Midwives in Early Modern England

by Sam Thomas

English Historical Fiction Authors alum Sam Thomas is back to celebrate the launch of the third Midwife Mystery featuring Bridget Hodgson, The Witch Hunter's Tale. Return to Civil War York as Bridget faces enemies old and new, or if you're new to the series, pick up the first installment for just $2.99. But before you do that, here's the low-down on witches and midwives.

For many years, conventional wisdom has connected midwives and witches. The connection was first drawn in a 1487 book called Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) by a medieval clergyman named Heinrich Kramer. In Malleus, Kramer asserts the existence of “witch midwives, who surpass all other witches in their crimes… the number of them is so great that…it is thought they there is scarcely any tiny hamlet in which at least one is not to be found.” This accusation, coupled with a tiny number of cases in which midwives were accused of witchcraft, has cemented this into popular culture.

The problem is that the existence of the “midwife witch” is a myth – the number of midwives accused of witchcraft is vanishingly small. The truth is that midwives hunted witches, which is what I should like to discuss today.

The midwife’s connection to witches depends on a creature called the Devil’s Familiar, and even if you've never heard the phrase, you know what I mean. Imagine your typical Halloween witch. You know that black cat we envision hanging about with a witch? That’s the modern version of the Devil’s Familiar, Satan’s representative to the witch after she sells her soul. In the early modern period, the Familiar could be a cat, of course, but also a mouse, bird, mole, frog, or toad…nearly any small animal would do. According to demonologists, witches called on their familiars when they needed help, and some claimed that the witch could not practice magic without the familiar’s assistance. (Click on the image to the left for a closer look.)

So how does the midwife come into things?

According to common lore, in order to survive, the familiar had to suck from the “witch’s teat,” an unnatural growth usually found in a woman’s armpit or “secret places.” The teat’s existence was taken as evidence of a woman’s guilt, and who better to recognize such a growth than a midwife?

According to an account written in 1597, when a mother and daughter were jointly accused of witchcraft, the magistrates “agreed that certain women should search the mother and the daughter to see if they could find any such marks on them as are usually found on witches. The old woman they stripped, and found behind her right shoulder a thing much like the udder of an ewe that giveth suck, with two teats like unto two great warts, the one behind under her armhole, the other a handful off towards the top of her shoulder.”

This discovery – along with other evidence and the suspect’s confession – led officials to cast the poor woman into prison, where, “had she lived, she should have been executed.”

This is not of course to say that midwives made witch-hunting their primary business, for cases of witchcraft were both spectacular and rare. But it remains true that, as guardians of public well-being, midwives had an obligation to protect mothers and children, and in some cases that meant hunting witches.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam Thomas is the author of the Midwife Mystery series. You can learn more about the history and mystery of midwifery at his website.

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The Diggers - England's Early 'Commune'

by Deborah Swift

The Diggers were the first group of people to try and live in what we would nowadays call a ‘commune.’ Led by Gerrard Winstanley, the movement began in Cobham in England in 1649, but rapidly spread to other parishes in the southern area of England.

Scene from a film about Winstanley's life 'Winstanley'

The Diggers were one of a number of alternative factions that sprang up during the English Civil War which was a period of intense social and religious conflict. In the country, many of the gentry shut up their houses during the war and fled to London, leaving their servants and staff with no employment. Some turned to the warring factions of the army, but others, outraged at seeing the land left uncultivated and falling to ruin, began to question the ownership of the land. The situation was made worse by the fact that woodlands were felled to build blockades, and bands of undisciplined soldiers would plunder and steal foodstuffs, leaving country people with no stores, no winter fuel, and the prospect of fields with crops left to rot.


Gerrard Winstanley was the author of a number of religious tracts, and wanted to revivify the ideal of community life. The Diggers advocated equality for all, even equality between men and women, which was viewed as a radical idea in the seventeenth century. Their ideas also included the sharing of all goods and property, the replacement of money with bartering, and the ability to worship freely in whatever way one chose.

Winstanley's words on a modern banner

The name ‘The Diggers’ came from Winstanley’s belief that the earth was made to be ‘a common treasury for all’, and that all should be able to dig it, and provide themselves with what was necessary for human survival – food, warmth and shelter. The Diggers made several unsuccessful attempts to build houses in different locations, but were suppressed by the land-owning classes and dispersed by force, and the communities wiped out. Their most famous colony was on St Georges Hill.

Although the Diggers were a short-lived movement, their ideas had a far-reaching effect, sowing the seeds of communal living and self-sufficiency for future generations.

Shadow on the Highway (about highwaywoman Lady Katherine Fanshawe and her maid Abigail) includes several characters who are Diggers. I thought that the teen of the 1640's would be attracted by their ideals and their vision of a new future different from the one their parents had.

Shadow on the Highway is out now published by Endeavour Press
(ebook and paperback)

If you want to know more about the Diggers, the film 'Winstanley' (old but good) is available to watch on Youtube, or for the more academically inclined I recommend 'Brave Community' by John Gurney.



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