Tudor architecture: Today's trendy is tomorrow's timewarp?

Tudor architecture is actually something people have some amount of familiarity with compared to some of the stuff I will blog about here. Although I am not sure examples of it always date to the period, that familiarity is at least something for me as a HUGE enthusiast of all aspects of the time period to find common ground on. There are some interesting reasons for the fact that Tudor architecture is widely recognizable, which I will touch on. There are also quite a few myths about it (which probably happens any time there is culturally spread information), and I will probably work on this post a while to systematically deal with the myth vs. reality issues that are interesting to hardcore folks in a way that also informs beginners.

As far as illustrations go: I would love to start travelling to take my own photos of some of these buildings, and maybe draw some of my own illustrations. In the meantime I may be a little guilty of 'hijacking bandwidth' or whatever it is called. But I will do it sparingly to be cautious. That is one reason why I don't have as many illustrations of this post as I would like.

There is a certain stereotyped look of Tudor architecture, such as the picture of the house I included in the margin of the blog. My sister-in-law (who grew up in a village around Cambridge I think) said it looked like some of the typical houses near there. And tell the truth I don't know whether that house is 'original' to the Tudor period or not. It could be, it definitely has some of the features. One of the things about it that makes me think possibly yes is the reverse-pyramid style. During the Tudor era it was the very beginning of urbanization where workers moved to cities for employment rather than working land, and thus they flooded the infrastructure of towns before they could accommodate it easily. This made the building real estate on the street level very valuable, and as things went upward they could afford to get wider, even though this probably was extra tricky to do structurally.

But this building may be newer because it turns out that very few of the buildings that give Tudor architecture its reputation are original, they are more likely to come from Tudor 'revival' periods, especially ones like this that look especially typical, lots of posts and exaggerated patterns, etc. There are big waves of Tudor revivalism, one close after it in the seventeenth century, a big one in the 1920's-30's, and there is even a lot of it in our day. Donna and Jim's house has some of it. But most of the real houses that people lived in at that time are much less distinctive looking or even interesting looking at all. The kind of look like very simple houses, like the drawn image above.

The fact is that most buildings that were 'nice enough' to end up surviving to our day from the sixteenth century are actually brick, not the 'black and white' post and mortar composition that creates the look. Cardinal Wolsey, for example, built Hampton Court Palace in conspicuous red brick because that was the real prestige, cutting-edge look. This stylishness, rather than its actual 'palatial' fanciness, was one of the reasons that made this particular house so coveted and thus swiped by Henry VIII.

I realized that 'Tudor' style is probably one of the oldest styles of domestic architecture of any kind, meaning types of houses or any secular structures versus types of churches such as Gothic, Byzantine, Romanesque, or whatever, and I wondered whether there was a reason for this. Turns out, yes. The Tudor period represents probably the first time in European history where because of typical reformation efforts (like Henry's dissolution of the monasteries) there were actually a good percentage of important structures that served a mainly secular purpose.

This naturally bled over into residential architecture (I am assuming this so no one quote me for a term paper) because before this period, anyone who drew plans for a living would probably need to concentrate on various religious structures, from big ones like Cathedrals to smaller village churches. After decentralization of worship, there was more of a need for architects to do other things. Also, because the late medieval ages (or the Tudor period) was also the beginning of the modern era, or thus the very start of a kind of suburbia or middle class.

Because of the plague and other factors that grew the middle class, more and more people were able to do something other than live in shacks or hovels. So they would have their homes actually constructed based on some kind of professional plans rather than what ever they could raise in a weekend. So Tudor houses are actually some of the earliest houses constructed according to any real architectural style rather than just a result of whatever building materials and technology existed, because probably before these houses nothing much existed of any preservable quality.

So this kind of explains why Tudor architecture is even a kind of architecture at all--at least why it is one of the earliest famous kinds of domestic structures. Because there was more and more mass production for the middle class, more and more smallish houses were made with an eye toward design. So while before this, say in the period of Norman castles, either you had the money to throw up a house the size of a town or you had a one room shack, there were people who had a little bit but that little bit was worth fancying up. So there was more reason to do things like concentrate on doors, chimneys, arches, etc. which all have distinctive equivalents in this period. Tudor leaded glass windows are a good example of the new focus on craftsmanship on a more modest scale accessible to the masses.

One of the interesting phenomena of Tudor houses was actually an example of the increasing fashionableness of deliberately 'antiquing' houses and design. I find it fascinating that the famous thatched roofs of Stratford upon Avon seem to never exactly exist originally. There are reputed reasons that people may have engaged in this building practice on purpose, but by Shakespeare's day, most of the thatched roofs are really an attempt to look 'old fashioned'!

Several of these interesting features are pulled from various sites because I wasn't able to find all of the things I found informative about this architecture in one place, but one of the sites (from which I pulled an image) is a good one and I can't find it now or I would attribute it.

[Under construction: explanation of post and mortar look. I was actually surprised that no one had put the history of this technology with these other facts I mention already. At first, anyway; I guess I do run into that fairly often]

Back to the crazy wiggly post house on the main page to the left; it at least has the look of a house that is particularly 'representative' of a period and thus recognizable are actually from the end of that period. This is when a look needs to become exaggerated enough to actually stand out as itself. What I mean here is that for something to look distinctive it is actually getting to the point that it is overdone.

Consider hairstyles for example. I try very hard to not look like I have a de-la-mode hairstyle, because the very hairstyles that are 'in' are the ones that will eventually look 'dated.' Right now those flippy-outy hairstyles are very cool, but what will be tomorrow's dated look are today's blend in as hip. Facial and body piercing is kind of the same way. Initially it was probably a nose ring or a lip ring or whatever, but to actually sustain the 'cool' look of a stud, it has gotten to the point where people are volunteering as human pin cushions.

So Tudor architecture today is probably an abstraction and concentration of a few features that did have historical origin to the period, but were probably not actually very representative of much that really existed.

Auld Alliance with France leads to New Vowels in Scotland?

One of the lesser-known Tudor figures was Mary of Guise, a Scottish Queen and former French princess (as so many like her were). She was legendarily beautiful, initially popular, and a member of a powerful French family, and so was kind of like the Scottish Tudor equivalent of Oprah. The period in which she lived, 1515-1560, was changing rapidly. Unfortunately for her, and many other women like Anne Boleyn who got caught in the gears of that change, her initially fairy-tale story subsequently had a rough ending.

Wedding to secure an Auld Alliance--a marriage of inconvenience






The brutal life of her husband, James V, was a result of a complex interplay of alliances between family, country, and religion. All three are ways that societies have been organized, now like then, and can create many ways for people to find common ground, but more tragically, many reasons that they instead could go to war. James V tried in many ways to make peace but he also stood firm on other areas such as the persecution of protestant heretics (on the forefront of burning at stake in the Isles), that made his own life in many ways turbulent, stressful, and thus short.

One of his accomplishments during his only three decades of life was to renew the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France, approximately 1300-1600.

The reason for this alliance was natural: Scotland and France both had beefs with England. Scotland wanted protection from the more powerful and populous lower U.K because they shared a border with them,and thus like any country that would have some reasons for common ground, England and Scotland would inevitably end up in property disputes. France wanted an ally in their ongoing state of partially-declared war with England to compete with them as a world power for influence and land in the rest of Europe and the New World. Thus because shared enemies create friends in otherwise unlikely places, the two countries France and Scotland became allies against England.

When I asked a former professor if he knew about this relationship he guessed that its nature was a religious alliance. Inevitably as people search for common ground or end up with reasons to go to war, religion is involved, but at the time of the Auld Alliance, 129[something], everyone was Catholic and thus the heart of the matter was political and economic. (An aside may be that today, too, religion gets blamed for problems in current society and in the past when really it only gets dragged in later as a blame for more primary motivators of human beings' aggressive tendencies.)

So in this case there is an interaction among allies with France and Scotland, and not one of imperial conqueror/conquered like when William I brought French over in 1066. French at that time, rather than influencing the language of the conquered peoples, ended up sputtering because there is a much more complicated relationship between political leadership and the language spoken among the common people than most assume. I have frequently heard 'If [X] had happened (Germany winning WWII, fir instance) we would all be speaking German!' I am not sure that is true. When there is a foreign leadership situation the languages involved very often remain socially separate because of the social stratification and mutual animosity that naturally results. But when there is a relationship instead among equals in an alliance situation (probably never actually equal, but closer), they can possibly intermix as such and are more likely I think to influence each other linguistically.

And there were quite friendly relationships as a result of the Auld Alliance initially. Scotland's main prominence in Europe to speak of were the accolades heaped on them by France after various wars the two fought in together. To repay their thanks, Scotland gave huge amounts of territory in 1400-1500's to French nobles. Those nobles would come over to Scotland with their families and their people and live amicably as shared governors with the actual Scottish royalty, not walled up in castle outposts like the Normans had to do things to avoid violent death. There are still Scottish royalty today that are called things like 'Duke of Lorraine.' I think that is the name. I haven't actually Googled that yet to make sure my memory is serving me, about that or many other particulars because it would make me victim of TMI (too much info). As I often need to, I will edit later!

Turbulent Tudor times

And such was the steady state through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a long time for things to be similar politically. Things started heating up when it got contentious, and there is more familiar history to refer to. Because one thing that England and Scotland did do cooperatively together was harbor each other's exiles and terrorists, etc, during the beginning of the reformation Scotland became a breeding ground for politically active protestants that would hope to influence the direction that Catholicism was heading in England.

Henry VIII is often said to be the first protestant King, but he really spoke out of two sides of his mouth about it. One or another of his advisers suggested using reformation stances in his Great Matter (so for practical reasons to get his divorce he spoke against the pope with charges of church greed and vices just like Luther used). But at heart he remained a devout Catholic, and to appease the Pope that he wasn't actually a heretic, as well as to keep himself (successfully, mostly) from getting invaded by the Emperor, France, and Spain, he often sent his dogs on Lutherans in his own dominion. They would flee to Scotland, where they ended up having an easier time gaining the reigns politically (just like terrorism today thrives in situations of political chaos) People like Knox would up reversing the state church there from Catholicism to Protestantism.

That threw the Auld alliance in a bit of chaos, but it just goes to show what degree it was there in the first place, for well over two hundred years at that point. That is a long time language-wise, too, and collectively, I am thinking, any influence could be pretty small to end up being significant.

Mary of Guise was the first leader in Scotland to have a majorly hard time with the changes in religion. Poor Mary, formerly only really known worldwide for her beauty, living a fairy tale life, maried to a relatively beloved Scottish King, wwas to quickly become his widow, the mother of his only legitimate royal offspring, and responsible to resume his leadership including fighting his battles (literally). That relatively pleasant fairy tale included entertaining everyone who was anyone in her palace at Hollyrood, where any fine Scottish lord would hope to go to have a glimpse of what things were like on the continent.

James V himself died near the battlefield while fighting the English who were joined by local Scottish protestant 'insurgents.' So Henry VIII in England began major sympathies with protestantism out of necessity and that sympathy was was continuing out of it. His death at age 30 is thought to have not been from an actual war wound but a nervous breakdown from the psychological stress of the situation he was in and all the complex factors of ruling at that difficult time. The day before expiring he received word that his wife Mary of Guise had delivered an infant girl (Their two infant sons had died in infancy). He died with the ominous words 'Ay, my kingdom started with a lass and will die with a lass.'

It did happen in more ways than one. To avoid having to give the regency to someone sympathetic to Protestantism, Mary, as a French Catholic, gave her one year old daughter the throne. This enabled her to be de facto ruler. She tried to keep a lid on things on the battlefield and her most important ally continued to be France. This perhaps caused a situation where French was starting to be stigmatized as the language of the ruling class, but only among half or so of the population. And I think ironically, (like different races in this country) even if there is friction, that doesn't prevent language borrowing or mimicking, and it might actually speed it up, at least among the youth.

French in Scotland--people power

Along with the nobles who had held dukedoms and earldoms, Mary relied heavily on french soldiers. During this period there was a huge immigration of them who came with their families planning not ever to return. They were probably among the most socially respected and well paid members of society other than the French nobles themselves.

As soon as she could, Mary sent her daughter to France for her protection. Henry VIII wanted to wed his son Edward VI to her and was sending armies to try to force the nuptial arrangements, called his 'rough wooing.' She decided to send Mary to France to be betrothed to Francis II of France, thus during 10 years or so the Queen of Scotland was also the Queen of France.




Mary took over a retinue of four friends called the 'Four Mary's.' (This was a pun on the three Marys from the bible). Together these women were raised in France during a linguistically sensitive period. Mary herself was there from 10 to 20, perhaps the entire period in which dialect becomes solidified. She was said to speak English with a French accent the rest of her life, which would be understandable.

And so did her friends, which were the equivalent of celebrities of their day. Her friends the Marys came back with her to Scotland when her husband Francis died. They all with their French accents became prime meat on the marriage market, and married among the best nobles who wanted, whatever their other political sympathies, to have a piece of France's existing cultural allure. This says nothing to the rest of the Marys' retinue, which must have been also considerable.

There was emigration from Scotland to France, too, but since I have no idea what if any impact of Scottish English speakers had on French there might be, (probably very little since they remained the lower status of the two groups), I will only touch on how that emigration would have impacted Scots back home. As Catholicism became increasingly persecuted, Scottish Catholic families (again, probably only the wealthy ones, the poor were forcibly converted) fled for asylum in France, where they remained until they would trickle back over the next hundred years as France itself became increasingly unstable--thus enabling a chance for French influence among the wealthy and powerful for additional centuries.

Mary Queen of Scots, daughter of James V and Mary of Guise, herself was imprisoned by Elizabeth when she was 25. But she continued to be the hope of at least about half of the Scots and whatever their political sympathizers. Whenever Scottish nobles visited England they would pay diplomatic visit to her (her imprisonment was somewhat lax, as Elizabeth knew it would be hard for a royal woman and her large household to do much of anything).

Resulting linguistic impact

Meanwhile, back in Scotland, things started to go south economically. Rightly or wrongly as the politically disaffected often do, there was a contingent that would say among the people, it was better back in the days of French rule! Now we have nothing but our own Scottish poverty!, etc. So while Protestants (Calvinists) held the regency of James and thus control, social status and cultural sympathy remained at least to some degree with Mary and the Frenchness she represented. The Guises continued to make trips over to Scotland to befriend the young James VI (later James I after Elizabeth's death), though he formally accepted the Calvinism of his regents.

This was a situation opposite of when the French had ruled under William I. Now more inborn English were ruling, and they were very unpopular. Like Henry VIII, but without the status or the fear they inspired to protect them from criticism, they destroyed the monasteries and abbeys, which for centuries had been the only places for things like weddings, funerals, or other social gatherings. They also cut off the at least outwardly lucrative aid source from France.

Like today where people resent those in power, French, which once was an accepted part of the infrastructure in Scotland, became (though it remained present and thus potentially influential) the underdog and might have garnered cultural sympathy on that basis.

Some of James VI's best friends and advisers were French when he was young, but interestingly he shunned them once his ascension sealed the unification of Scotland and England under the somewhat accepted notion that both would be Protestant. No one had any use for France after that point, and thus if Scotland had been influenced by France my guess is it would have happened within that 300 years of political relations.

And essentially the relationship between the two languages is small, small enough that shared military and nobility might be enough to explain it if there was any cumulative affect over 300 years. Vowels are interesting and unlike things like syntax or vocabulary. For languages to share vowels they don't need to have any amicable relationship, they need only have some amount of exposure because their cultures are contiguous (India and Pakistan don't share a mutually comprehensible language OR any political interests, but at the border their people interact, and thus the sounds in each language are able to spread. In fact along the border is where the similarity of vowels is strongest and diffuses deeper within each country).

One phenomenon that might be related is the tendency for cultures that have some base familiarity with one another to pick out a distinctive sound that the other makes when they are 'mocking' that other language. Koreans, to make fun of Americans, say '/sh, sh, sh, sh/' because it apparently is a distinctive feature of English speakers to them. So if someone who heard French speakers but didn't understand them was going to poke fun at their language, they might say '/eu, eu, eu/' (the unmarked vowel that French use for stuttering).

Over time however, again like the racial groups and young people in this country, something held up for criticism and mockery might actually be incorporated. This is because the greater the salience of a linguistic feature, or the more likely it is to get attention, the more likely it is to have some type of impact--and what is better at getting attention than mocking or making fun of another culture?

The biggest argument to me that this 300 year period of mutual exchange of resources between the two countries led to sharing of vowels was that among the other remnant Gaelic dialects there are quite a few similarities. But some of the things that happen to be distinctive, including some of the vowels NOT used by other Gaelic dialects, happen to be also vowels that are distinctive about French pronunciation.

George Stuart's terrific Tudor tales

You may not be a youtube user--if you are you probably have found these videos already. But if not, check out George Suart (a perfect name) who does a bunch of video clips from what seems to be history-as-performance-art. A clever accomplishment indeed!

Warning for sticklers on detail(like myself): his facts don't always seem exactly right on, at least on the surface. I myself usually get what he is saying but some of the commenters on his videos often think they know to second guess him, so I will mention briefly the fine line between accuracy and being boring that every historian probably navigates.

For instance (in the video linked below), Henry's younger sister hadn't exactly 'disappeared across the continent.' She spent a very little time being married to a king of France, was widowed quickly, married her longtime love, and then returned to spend the rest of her life near court as the Duchess of the King's best friend, William Brandon. They established the formidable House of Suffolk--including her granddaughter Jane Grey, the unfortunate '9 days queen' beheaded at age 17 because of just the succession issue he is talking about here.

So even though Mary (called many things including Princess Mary Tudor, the French dowager Queen, Duchess of Suffolk, and most unfortunately 'Margaret' because of Showtime's series that amalgamated her with her other sister) is dead at this time, there were living contenders for the throne alive at the time he talks about that resulted from her.

Perhaps this simplification, even though technically somewhat misleading, is by design. He would probably say that her descendants were so devastated as a combination of Mary and Elizabeth's constantly executing and imprisoning them and that there were only one or two left before James ascended, and that is true.

James himself had to imprison one of the last ones, his cousin, for the rest of her life simply because he too was paranoid that she would wed another distant heir and fortify her claim. But to be technically correct, Queen/Princess/Duchess Mary, Henry VIII's sister and originator of a main royal line that traced back to Henry Tudor (Henry VII), who started the Tudor ball rolling, WAS sill around. Around at least in the form of an heir or two--even though it is a long story, obviously, as history by nature is. When it is accurate history, anyway.

Probably the important thing about Mr. Stuart's (George) stuff is that he knows how to make this information very entertaining because of his firm grasp of how to put a story together. It wouldn't be as good if he had to go into all of this background every time he made a point, and whatever the nitpicking details are, he probably winds up (mostly accurately) informing many of those who wouldn't otherwise be interested.

Here is a good example, which breathlessly covers the immensely complex Tudor period and how it transitions into the Stuart monarchs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AorWq5MoSmY&feature=related


I suspect he didn't actually post these, one of his fans did, so click 'more from this user' and you will see more, though it's not his account.

His own site I am not sure links to these youtube videos, but it also performs a valuable service. He makes accurate historical figurines based on available information (and without some of the legend and myths about a figure's appearance that hang around, perpetuated by among other sources, portraits done generations after a figure's death, etc.)

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4DKUS_enUS228US228&q=george+s+stuart

Thank you Mr. Stuart!

Psychology of the Tudor Period--King James and Henry VIII

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The two sides of royal selves


King James--yes the one on the bible

King James VI of Scotland (AKA James I of England), was the first Stuart monarch. Because of the patrilineal tradition of naming they were given the name of the male that started the line. In this case one of the husbands of Margaret Tudor, officially referred to as 'what's his name.'

I am only half joking, this husband of Margaret Tudor (she had various husbands, Matthew Stewart, ended up giving his name to a whole new line of kings even though she was actually the one that made the difference as the royal descendant of Henry VII. Eventually they started a line that would include Mary Queen of Scots and her son James VI/I, who would end up the last descendant of Henry VII (seventh), descended from him twice. So in a way James was sort of the last Tudor monarch, very much a player during the Tudor period, but he officially began the house of Stuart. ('Stuart' is the Frenchified spelling of 'Stewart' adapted by his Mother Mary Queen of Scots, and so whatever James believed about his controversial mom he at least chose this way of aligning himself with her.)

Every British monarch since James has claimed the throne through descent from him, so he’s a fairly prominent figure for that and other reasons. But personally, James was a strange bird. (Not unlike other kings/queens in that respect.) A theory argues that he wanted the scriptures 'less Catholic' because of the church's severe stance on homosexuality. That kind of bothered him, apparently, because he himself was gay. Of course in an equally possible theory, he wasn’t gay. Naturally.

He had some pronounced physical problems. His parents were, after all, first cousins, and he was raised in a brutally austere environment by cruel Calvinists. He didn’t walk till about three and when he was a tall, awkward adult (his mother was almost six feet tall), he had to lean around on his close advisers, mainly male of course. Even in portraits like that left he is looking kind of lanky and awkward and is leaning on a chair. Always something he is leaning on, because of the downside to falling flat on his face in public.

According to a contemporary account of these details of his physical condition, his leaning constantly on men is mentioned, but also the fact that he couldn’t use his mouth normally. One surviving detail from someone who saw him first hand was that when he drank anything, the liquid would pour out the sides of his mouth. He was said to appear to chew his drinks. Kind of a gruesome image, particularly for someone who was a king since he was a babe in arms, and one would guess raised with some thought to royal manners. This inability to control his mouth also made it so that when he would kiss male friends/associates (a MUCH more normal thing at the time because of custom and courtesy untouched by open fear of looking homosexual), he may not have been particularly delicate about it.

Too, the consequence of a King having people around him that mainly served to compliment him and tell him exactly what he wanted to hear about himself, would probably have been to under represent these quirks to that king, so maybe he wouldn't have thought twice about how various mannerisms--how he drank or leaning elbow to shoulder on his 'favorites' rather than falling on his face--affected his reputation.

I know that sometimes I personally am shocked to find out 'through the grapevine' how others view various things I do that seem to have a very natural explanation for someone who like me knows my circumstances.

All of us feel that we have unusual circumstances that explain our actions sufficiently so that we don't see it coming when people might guess something random and strange about us. In fact from a social psychology perspective, we more commonly view our own actions as externally motivated and others' actions by contrast as internally motivated--i.e. to explain FAULTS rely on a nurture vs. nature assumption about ourselves and nature vs. nurture assumption about others: 'I fall short because of being stressed/ill/broke but my crazy neighbor lady does because that's the way SHE IS .'

And also looking at it that way is handy so that we are able to self-justify not helping our crazy neighbor lady in any way to change the environmental factors. We reserve environmental factors to explain our own faults and limitations.

And the ordinary tendency to not correctly guess others' assessments of our behavior would be at least doubly so for a king that only got feedback from people who feared for their life making an honest appraisal, even for the king’s own benefit.

As is typical, this surviving report of the report of King James' 'bad manners' was through a foreign ambassador, which are usually (like Chapuys to Henry VIII) some of the only people who feel at liberty to say ANYTHING critical about a monarch. Kings were pretty careful not to openly persecute non-subjects. Foreigners had to be fairly careful about what they ate because poisoning (from someone or other) was a pretty common fate. After widespread use of gunpowder, random musket balls became a threat as it remains today for those in fear of assassination. Kings certainly made use of today's more typical anonymous murder in the case of foreign diplomats, but they didn't often just hall them off to the Tower to be executed like they did most people who criticized them, probably because they didn't have the option of controlling the respective opinion of those officials' home country directly through such tyranny, and thus had to actually practice some form of 'PR' that politicians more widely practice to EVEN THEIR SUBJECTS these days.

I think it is possible that James was spared any feedback on his mannerisms just like Henry VIII didn't get any good advice about his weight problem. You would think that one of his ‘people’ would have said “Highness, wouldn’t it be nice if you could lose some weight so we don’t have to raise and lower you into bed with ropes and pulleys? By that I mean nicer for---“ and his head would be off before he made himself clear that he was a loyal servant that had only the king’s best interest in mind.

Then again with James’ strange physical problems and the rumors that may have originated with them, maybe it was all true. Who knows--I don't. He did have a fairly happy marriage with a less then glamorous political wife--though maybe this is an example of how he was different than your average king. It wouldn't make him the only one--Louis XVI was married to one of the most beautiful women in Europe, Marie Antoinette, and was clearly smitten with her. So it was some other quirk or other than failure of normal heterosexuality(this also a less interesting historical debate) that most likely caused Louis' inability to consummate the marriage for seven years.

But as I said, depending on my own point of view and my likelihood to look at things one way or another I might downplay the nature of the rumors about James unnecessarily. Often I am struck when, in the aftermath of some National Enquirer-type story, the subjects of the rumors dismisses the shocking details easily as hugely-fictional slander, but eventually, when more comes out, the things that were so shocking as to be branded as obviously manufactured by slanderers, were impossibly right on.

(A lot of the Charles and Di stuff was much like that. I won’t go into it, as well as it illustrates what I am saying, because it is pretty crude. Overall, what was so horrifying that it was an easy target for dismissal by Charles’ and Di’s people as bold faced slander, even lies, was all dead on, and even the worst of it was tape recorded from the very beginning. In fact really the extreme shockingness of it served as an alibi of sorts for the guilty.)

So as typical of historical figures that will always remain a mystery, at the end of the day, and after all the information we have swirling around us from various sources, it comes down to what we believe, and probably why we believe it. So ‘reader of history beware,’ and beware that judgment of truth is more up to you than you realize.

King James' better seller--not just better than the Morgan Bible







Personal scandal often distracts any investigation into the psychology of complex historical figures, such as James Stuart, Louis XVI, Joseph Smith, etc.

In James case, his name is widely familiar because it dons many sacred books. More knowledge about his background than that fact about James will sway personal opinion about him rather widely. Those only knowing him because their bibles bear his name therefore often assume he must have been some devout politico-religious figure like Constantine. Any of them who end up indulging additional curiosity are often quite surprised about some of the first facts they run into.

As one who has found it frustrating as I first got to know James that the rumor of his sexuality is smack in the middle of any other in-depth discussion of him that would better explain who he was and why he operated, I would like to add some issues that I think are particularly helpful in getting beyond any simplistic view of his being either saint or sinner. I have above tried to deal with why who his romantic inclinations were toward can be either ignored or not depending on personal preference--it certainly doesn't have to be the defining issue for anyone, royal or commoner. After ignoring the really racy personal stuff that I tend to be less interested in, there are other issues that are more relevant IMO about him and more able to be applied to our modern sensibilities.

Whatever the less delicate aspects of James’ reputation, (and maybe because of them), he strongly considered himself an intellectual, and so it was imperative that he get involved in the major moral and thought efforts of the day. One of those was a debate continuing from Henry VII (twice his great grandfather). On that debate--which language scripture was read in throughout the Isles, James as a Calvinist voted for English.

A similar effort, the Morgan Bible, was the result of the like feeling that the scriptures should be made available in Welsh. Due to the relative status and self-promotion abilities of the authors, along with the bad luck of Welsh as a future language, few people hear of Mr. William Morgan. Very few associate his name with a famous bible. To bad for us Morgans, I guess.



Anyway, one of James' higher-profile and exigent contemporary efforts was his authorship of Daemonology, the definitive work on witchcraft. (James had a heavy Scottish accent raised as he was in Scotland (see the above post on Scotish vowels). If I was good at posting audio or video yet I would pronounce the approximate title of his book for you—ask me next time you see me, but /ae/ was not [yet] antiquated, it served an auditory purpose.

Here is a quote from Daemonology, which contained his belief in the seriousness of witches and their evil powers (until the end of his life when he admitted that despite the lives he had ended in the quest, he was less convinced than before):

I mean by such kind of charms as commonly daft wives use, for healing of forspoken [bewitched] goods, for preserving them from evil eyes, by knitting . . . sundry kinds of herbs to the hair or tails of the goods; by curing the worm, by stemming of blood, by healing of horse-crooks, . . . or doing of such like innumerable things by words, without applying anything meet to the part offended, as mediciners do.

(One small question, what is the difference between a 'daft' wife and a regular one?)

And James was serious about prosecuting witches, too, the full deal. He attended some of their trials to see that they were justly prosecuted, and one would assume that meant they were burned at the stake afterward. (For anyone who wonders why burning at the stake came about, it was because during the Spanish Inquisition, really a larger attempt to cleanse Christianity that only later got associated with Spain, they determined that it would be wrong to shed blood in the name of religion. Thus this more humane alternative. Makes sense if any of it does, I guess).

Another quote from James discussing his reasoning:

If any person or persons shall use practice or exercise any Invocation or Conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or shall consult convenant with entertain employ feede or rewarde any evil or wicked spirit to or for any intent or purpose; or take any dead man or child out of his or her grave, or the skin bone or any other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of Witchcrafte, Sorcerie, Charm or Inchantment: or shall use practice or exercise any Witchcrafte, Inchantment or Sorcerie, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof...shall suffer the pains of deathe.

One trial was to find guilty some 'witches' who were accused of conjuring a storm to sink the royal boat. James' party met with some foul weather and according to the wisdom of his day, foul weather was naturally caused by witches. Of course. You know those three witches in Macbeth--bubble bubble, toil and trouble, etc? I used to assume that Even Shakespeare knew what a trite superstition witches are, but they weren't that yet. The Bard probably thought witches were real and a real threat if he was anything like his royal highness. And in fact, he put the trouble threesome in his play, meant to be a flattering piece about the history of Scotland, to make it interesting to James, who was in the audience at its premiere.

The conjured storm in question happened on James' way over to meet half way, in his one romantic gesture to the opposite sex, his political bride, Anne of Denmark. We all know that it stretches belief for an otherwise reasonable person to believe in poor haggard nobodies conjuring the weather of Kings over a cauldron of toads, except that I have made the point elsewhere on my blog how culturally different and easily influenced our beliefs are, and that when we are born, and who we take advice from, often determines what we believe about major things.

Witchcraft, in the heyday of thinking it was responsible for all world evils, was basically the result of the 'God of the Gaps' assumption, or the notion that all things are a result of some kind of spiritual force, good or evil. If something could not be explained in the purview of going religious beliefs (in terms of what God would bring about say he was directly involved), then it was labeled witchcraft. This resulted in a lot of geniuses, autistic savants, etc. burned for witchcraft, because they could do things that people couldn't understand through normal Godly means, themselves not declared holy men.

Witchcraft seems so foreign to us. So 'superstitious' as it were. We ask ourselves, how could anyone believe that? But how likely is it, really, that only four hundred years ago human beings were capable of being so tricked by cultural beliefs into thinking something wacky like that? How is it also possible that now we are in the clear--nothing could ever happen to make us think something so obviously ridiculous. IMO I am probably just as vulnerable.

So because I am at least as likely as being daft as a famous king of England, I often engage in my own purgation of thoughts and worldview to find where it is that I see and prosecute witches. We all use the phrase, when something happens that we think is unjust, 'a witch hunt.' That is because at the core of injustice is the untrue belief in someone else's faults--prosecuting witchcraft or going on a hunt for the witches in the slovenly hovels of humanity around our own neighborhoods.

And ironically, James' education, while making him feel confident enough to cast all kinds of judgments on others to their death and pain, was actually part of the problem. Yes he had the benefit of all that an Elizabethan education could teach him--and all of the peril. Has anyone read a sixteenth century medical manual? Would any of us like our doctors to read from them while they were operating?
But while we admit that of course the view of medicine four centuries ago was quaint and antiquated, we still identify with how people of the time thought about the soul because we do the same.

(This applies to all you who don't believe in religion at all. Religion or the existence of spiritual entities is not what I am condemning here. Please, those of you naturalists patting yourselves on the back, try to pay closer attention, I know I have limitations myself, but my point is here if you want it).

James might have been better off without some of that education. And I think that I may be better off without some of mine. Education is good to help us steep ourselves in the comings and goings of our culture (as far as we would actually want to do that), but how is it in terms of doing anything of lasting importance? How is it in terms of avoiding the current myths that make the rounds? Uh, bad. Not only is it unlikely that education would help us avoid those myths, it is actually the very method by which those myths are actually perpetuated.

To educate is often to build a mental edifice so intricate, complex, and impressive (to those that lack access to it), that the edifice begins to be a very compelling substitution for the reality we all have access to as ordinary folk.--an 'Emperor with no clothes' situation. And often a dangerous one. To believe strongly that the answers to bettering the world around us=the pursuit of discovering and rooting out secret and undeclared evils in the private behavior of others leads to obvious potential to harm them and in a circular way back to us. We can all have our worldviews; very few people would take them from us, luckily, in a society that since Elizabeth I (IN THEORY) has valued 'not making windows on people's souls.’

But having a worldview and rooting out evil in the beliefs of others are totally different. I might advocate my own beliefs as dispassionately as possible but I hope that it will be a rare day that I should be confident enough in that worldview to cause me to hinder the lives of others, as unlikely as I am, in the long historical sense, of actually being 'right.'

The only way to get closer to being 'right' if I really want to, is to put my opinions out there and see what people have to say about them, hopefully being interested in what they have to say in response--because what do I want with opinions that aren't any good, after all?

I certainly hope, though, that before I am willing to start lighting bundles (I won't use the more common word here to avoid an unfortunate pun) and cause others that don't share my thoughts immediately to suffer, I will take a moment to reflect on how likely it is that my grounds to persecute are solid ones. On the basis of how shaky it is that I am pointing a finger in the direction of a true evil, I probably wouldn't even want to make any imposition on others whatsoever, even as minor as passing restrictions on their lifestyle, based on my belief that they aren't as good as me. Because truth is the best I am doing is to define right by what I am like and wrong by what I am not.

I think it is important in any endeavor to affect the actions of people around me I will remember the example of James, a figure who in many ways I admire and sympathize with. He was intelligent and as good a person as he could be in his circumstances. His parents were the victims of judicial murder, and most likely the reason he became a cruel Calvinist to any degree was, most charitably, because he was, after all, raised by them.

But which ended up being worse: any real witchcraft, or its subsequent prosecution?

I may be confident that someone should put away those evil playing cards, stop using bad words, stop doing something on an holy day of the week, stop teaching my kids their various political views (I threw in one bc I do actively sympathize with and in some forms try to effect change in this area--to be very fair and to be clear that I include myself in any group I mention by ‘people’ or ‘we’, etc.)

But even if I were, despite the realistic chances, ever to be in the right, at the risk of repeating sad and bloody history, it becomes obvious that more harm can come from overly zealous attempts to correct bad situations that I see around me over zealous than the bad situation itself did in the first place. And before anything that is attempted to force others to be like me IN ANY WAY I should ask if I am very sure of my information, and if I am sure, how it is that I got so lucky to have good information considering it is so hard to do it?

Ultimately admitting I was wrong, like James did, after a lifetime of ill consequence, will come too late to avoid the potential harms I have caused or might still, as everything we do continues to live on after us in ways we can’t even guess. Even James’ admission was nobly rare--most people remain committed to the end whatever they were committed to and whatever intervened to shake their conviction. Chances are, like the character of James I himself, there are alternate realities to the ones I am certain of, as long as I think I have a choice, I will deliberately choose the one that allows me to be as merciful to the poor wretched souls in my wake as I can.

Henry VIII—Shackling the tyrant within




Is the saying ‘Jolly Old England’ or is it ‘Bloody Old England’? Or is there some reason that we often hear both of these sayings? Maybe there is some connection between unrestrained Epicurean indulgence and unfathomably cruel tyranny? I think is at least possible, because one of history's worst tyrants was also one of its famous Epicures.

Since I was a young child I was intrigued by the figure of Henry VIII and the level of misery he caused in his reign. Henry VIII was actually a fairly bad dude. I am constantly shocked when I learn additional details about the cruelty he seemed to heap upon actual the actual necessity of being an absolute monarch.

Mark Smeaton, one of the men that was framed for adultery with his second (of six)wife, Anne Boleyn, wrote to ask him for mercy after receiving his death sentence of beheading. The block horrifies us, but it was actually a somewhat merciful form of death at that time, reserved only for the nobility. To show contempt for this individual, Henry answered back that not only would he not commute his death sentence, this man didn’t even deserve the mercy of a quick stroke of the axe.

So because he showed the ridiculous imprudence of asking for no death at all, Smeaton got the full treatment of drawing and quartering, and those that accepted their fate (and provided an accusation against Anne) got the royal treatment--beheading. This act of cruelty and hostility on Henry's part went beyond, in my opinion, the obvious realities of monarchy with a throne that needed protecting against any threat, real or perceived. Henry's treatment of Smeaton was actually contrary to practical purposes, for it allowed Smeaton the freedom to rescind his confession and be the sole among the five accused men not to 'admit' wrongdoing with the Queen. This probably made it a bit more difficult for Henry to solidify public opinion against his second wife and could have been a key component of his developing tyrannical reputation.

Of course I knew Henry did have this reputation for cruelty (it was a main feature of the beafeaters' tour of the Tower). But I also know that negative reputations of historical figures are obviously sometimes undeserved. For instance, I have noticed that when academics on historical documentaries refer to 'Victorianism,' they often raise their eyebrows like everyone naturally understands the terrible things about Queen Victoria’s reign—-but really she was just a chubby and comparatively benevolent German woman. A bit stuffy, perhaps, and in post-sexual revolution times, maybe prudishness really is the worst evil.

But the facts such as the story I mentioned about Smeaton tend to not only meet the expectation I have of Henry, they usually even end up exceeding it. Historians really don't even do him necessary justice in that regard. And thus I continue to add to any judgment I might have made from obviously dubious historical rumors with more facts to flesh out this famous king.

Not that he needed fleshing out. By age forty he was so large that he needed crudely rigged devices with ropes and pulleys to get him in and out of his fifteen sq. ft. bed, and onto his horse. HorsES to be exact. His steed needed constant refreshment to stave off death via exhaustion, and he tried to commute these sentences at least in his animals. He needed a long string of them to get him to the coast of the English Channel when he went to war with King Francis I late in his reign.

So this makes me think that he had some obvious ways that he could have made his own life much better. Whatever the failings of a Renaissance physician, they did understand the basic food in=fat equation. He could have done something about his weight to get rid of what would have most likely been the indignity and inconvenience of the raising-and-lowering machine, but he didn’t.

So ever since I was 10 and my parents first took me to the tower of London to be introduced to this character and the consequences of his life, I have wondered more or less sophisticated versions of the following question: why would a man that had such obvious ways of improving his life instead focus on such studied cruelty and hostility toward others?

My mistake was assuming that those two facts about him were at odds. It may be exactly because of the immense stress he was under because of personal reasons, his weight only being one of them, that caused him to be more and more outwardly hostile in his tyranny. The thing that enabled him to be so much more unrestrained in his tyranny was his power to dodge culpability for his own problems (he constantly had people around him calling him the ‘handsomest Prince in Christendom’) and also of course his power to enact his hostility as some sort of opiate-like diversion from the various pains he suffered as king.

Plea to 'Leave Anne Boleyn Alone' on Youtube

I thought this guy did a pretty good job with his attempt to get us all to "Leave Anne Boleyn Alone." If it doesn't seem at all funny it is a takeoff on the unfortunately famous "Leave Brittney (sp?) Alone" phenomenon that began with some very reactionary vid-blogging teen put up a while ago, encouraging all types of strange responses and imitators. This was one of the better ones, and I don't recommend watching others OR the original! (One of the worst things about sending someone a youtube link is all of the yucky stuff that might show up on that vertical list to the right, so please no one blame me, k?)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMVXwPWboTs

It is great people are willing and energetic enough to do this kind of thing.

Comments on Showtime's Tudors series

I have made my thoughts on this series public, but wish to give no more play than to link to them, as the subjects are a bit racy for the family and friends that might click through.

If raciness bothers you--click no further.


http://www.helium.com/tm/777515/showtimes-tudors-chosen-elevate
and

http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/Morganspices-Blog/Showtimes-Tudors-Historical/800028638#msg800329849

start of tutor fanblog

I swear I am not just jumping on a band wagon.

I have been intrigued with The Tudors since my age had two digits. I am not sure whether my parents would be proud to know that they led to my obsession with this historical topic or hide their heads in shame because of it, so all I can do is be honest and credit them for exposing me to it all through travel and literature.

The Christmas of 1980, my parents probably mortgaged the humble farm and took my brother and me to England. One of the sightseeing places they took me to was the Tower of London.

I enjoyed myself so thoroughly on that occasion that I went back there all three subsequent trips to England, and it kicked off a lifetime fascination for me with the likes of Henry VII, Henry VIII, his three royal children, Mary Stuart, and all monarchs descending from that last royal 'Tudor' lady Mary.

Who knows if anyone will benefit from this effort, but over the years I have come across some of the online content the rest of you have posted, and so I thought I would begin to make my quiet obsession pay off in some tangible way.