Historical Britain Blog

I’m working on my tenth book right now, and late in the process I concluded something that never occurred to me until now. The closer we get to the present day in our novel, the more we are locked into real historical details. Of course, that’s a double-edged sword. On the one side, I don’t have to worry about concocting a plot. The story line is already done for me. On the other side, I’m constrained by historical accuracy—or at least, what passes for accuracy. Unless I’m writing alternative fiction, I can’t change the course of events.

The way I see it, there are three kinds of Historical Fiction authors: the first writes about a totally made-up character in a historical setting, which frees up the author to do anything they like, within reason. The second type of historical novel centers on a character related to a historic person, like a spouse, younger brother, favorite comrade, or servant—that sort of thing. This author will often touch on events, and is also free to create a totally fabricated parallel story. The third type of historical novel is more of a biographical fiction, usually about a king or famous person. This requires a ton of research and dedication to veracity. As you may have guessed, I ascribe to the third option.

My first four books covered the eleventh century, where we have a maddening dearth of historical information. We have the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which gave us little paragraphs that left a lot to the imagination. When you consider that the Bayeux Tapestry is our major source about the Battle of Hastings, as well as a chronicle written about fifty years after the fact (Orderic Vitalis), and another written a hundred years later (Wace, Roman de Rou), we—or rather, historians—really have to extrapolate. Everybody seemed to have a different opinion. That gave me a lot of head-scratching, but allowed the creative juices to flow.

My last several books are about Plantagenet kings starting with Richard II. As expected, the period I am writing about is much more expansively documented. And now I’m up to Henry V. He reigned six hundred years ago, still long enough in the past that one would think I’d have plenty of “blank spaces” to fill in with my imagination. Fat chance! It seems that Henry couldn’t take a nap without someone making note of it. And there doesn’t seem to be as much disagreement between historians as to what happened.

Well, OK, I exaggerate a tad. But the point is, it seems his reign was more closely documented than ever before. And frankly, I got stuck. Why? Because I’m locked in to a timeline that is not particularly interesting. I want to write about Henry’s life, since most people know little about him past the Battle of Agincourt. Alas, much of his later story consisted of a long series of interminable sieges. And, for the most part, sieges were boring. We do get an occasional bout of stimulating action, thank goodness.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of uninteresting stuff tying it all together. If I’m bored with it, I certainly can’t make it stimulating to my readers.

So what’s an author to do? Can I just jump from one high point to another? It’s very tempting. Can I do that without losing the continuity? Not really. I like to compare my novel-writing to building a human body. The first draft is the skeleton. I concentrate on the historical events, which involves the most extensive research. I don’t spend much time worrying about personalities and storyline. I think of my second draft as the muscles and sinews. The history is in place. I can concentrate on tying the events together, and figuring out why something happened, and how. Connect the dots, I like to say. The third draft is the skin and makeup. I can concentrate on the human interest, and this draft usually lightens things up for me. I can add further dialogue and throw in motivations, giving more dimension to my protagonist’s character. That stuff becomes filler, but I am writing fiction after all. This is what separates us from the historian, who doesn’t have the license to dive into a person’s brain.

This time around, I have yet to get through the first draft. It’s just dragging for me. One potential solution is yet more research. I’ve starting buying books that tell the history from the French point of view, which is definitely a different angle. It doesn’t hurt that the French civil war and violent rioting in Paris impacts heavily on the English army’s progress. Those activities got me halfway through the book. I just have to figure out how to keep it up!

A further potential solution is to give another historical person more prominence than I normally do. The interaction between Henry V and Philip the Good, for instance, is not unimportant. And what about the Dauphin, the future Charles VII who makes such a mess of things when he has John the Fearless murdered? Oh yes, that is pretty juicy. So, perhaps as an author, I need to crawl out of my comfort zone and do something different. Expand the perspective rather than make up more filler. After all, my ultimate goal is to make history more interesting to the reader, and to do so, it has to be entertaining to me. I’m a firm believer that this is possible. I just hope I have the skill to do it.

Medieval jewellery is mostly found in museums these days – bold gold rings and religious pendants. Antique jewellery from the 18th and 19th century, set with a wider range of gems and using various techniques, is more available to buy and wear.  

Some of this is down to how many people lived in the British Isles in medieval times compared to the mid 18th century onwards. The population grew from only a couple of million in the medieval period (with wars and plague taking their toll), to 10 million in the mid 18th century and 30 million by the mid 19th. So there was just a lot less jewellery made in medieval times.

Of course back then, only the rich and powerful wore jewellery. Monarchs had their crowns, chains and rings. High ranking clergy were often wealthy, wearing signet rings and enamelled crosses. Knights would have heraldic rings to show allegiances and to seal documents. By the late middle ages, wealthy merchants might also have chains and rings. 

But it wasn’t just wealth that determined all this – sumptuary laws dictated who was allowed to wear what. These laws prohibited non-nobles from wearing gold and gemstones. In Elizabethan England, purple, along with silk and certain furs, was reserved for the Royal Family and their immediate relatives. The wearing of jewellery only became more commonplace later on – fuelled by the success of the British Empire at gathering resources from around the world. 

Techniques evolve and are reborn

Even though there were relatively few of them, medieval craftsmen were highly skilled. 

Champlevé enamelling, for instance, flourished in the 12th century, particularly in Limoges, France. Recesses were carved into a metal surface and filled with enamel powder, which was fired to fuse. The technique added vibrant colour and was used to represent saints, heraldic devices and Christian symbols. These techniques faded by the 15th century but re-emerged in different forms. And by the 1800s, enamellers began using machine etching and chemical etching (acid) rather than entirely hand-carved cells. Even the tutti frutti aesthetic of the Art Deco period could be said to share the traits of color blocking and surface decoration.

Diamonds were rarely used in early medieval jewellery due to their hardness and scarcity. However, the late Middle Ages marked the beginning of 500 years of diamond modification in Europe. Modern diamond cutting techniques that bring out the gems’ brilliance and fire were developed gradually between the 15th and early 20th century. The modern round brilliant cut was only finalised around WW1. 

Gem cutting in the Middle Ages was more rudimentary. Before jewellers invented faceting techniques, cabochon cutting, where gems were shaped and polished into smooth, domed forms, was the main approach. This method preserved as much of the original stone as possible and was ideal for showcasing the natural translucency or colour of gems like garnet, sapphire, and amethyst. Because optical science wasn’t well developed, the aim was not brilliance and sparkle but symbolism, durability, and surface richness.

Despite this, it was the (very) late middle ages that kick started the timeline of how jewellers approach diamonds. In the late 15th century, the point and table cuts emerged in Europe, with basic polishing of natural octahedral diamonds. Two key new cuts emerged in the 18th to 19th Century – the old mine cut from the early 1700s (squarish shape with a high crown and small table) and then the old European cut (early-mid 1800s): rounder, with better symmetry, deeper pavilion, and the start of optimising for brilliance. It was in the early 20th century that today’s industry standard was developed, the modern round brilliant cut with 57 or 58 facets.

Despite these improvements, there was a revival of interest in cabochons in the Art Nouveau and Edwardian periods in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially for moonstones and opals. They remain popular today.

Granulation was another technique that was revived in the 19th century archaeological renaissance. Medieval jewellers would fuse tiny metal granules onto a surface to form patterns. It was an ancient Etruscan technique, preserved by medieval artisans with many goldsmithing techniques passed through ecclesiastical workshops.

Likewise, filigree was used extensively by Georgian jewellers. They would twist fine wire and solder it into lace-like motifs. This technique had been introduced to medieval Europe via both trade and conquest.

Finally, repoussé remained popular across the centuries. The technique raises designs by hammering from the back. It was widespread across Europe for both religious and personal jewellery and continued throughout Georgian and Edwardian pieces. Those periods also saw interest in Cameo carvings, a very different method but the equivalent stone aesthetic of metal work’s repousse.

Recurring themes: nature, heraldry and mortality

It wasn’t just techniques that were rooted in the early second millennium, but many of the themes and motifs of later accessories.

Heraldic symbols served a purpose in medieval times – coats of arms and family badges on signet rings and brooches were used to assert identity and allegiance. Georgian jewellery embraced the theme with crest rings and armorial intaglios (seals with heraldic details but largely shorn of their original meaning). In Victorian and Edwardian times, heraldic motifs were preserved in signet rings, fobs, and seal pendants, especially in aristocratic circles.

Nature and garden imagery was widely used in medieval times, rooted in Christian allegory with vines representing the blood of Christ. Centuries later, romanticism saw a renewed appreciation of nature’s beauty for its own sake, not just for its symbolism. The Edwardian and Art Nouveau eras put nature to the fore – until the post WW1 Art Deco era and its emphasis on geometric shapes. 

Death was all around in medieval times. Symbols like skulls, hourglasses, skeletons, and coffins reminded the wearer of mortality and encouraged piety. Georgian mourning jewellery also featured hairwork or miniature mourning scenes in enamel – but it was deeply personal with hair of a deceased loved one replacing bones of saints. The Edwardians were also more sentimental, although the death of Prince Albert saw a return to more obvious mourning in Victorian times.

The middle ages were a superstitious time, with jewels thought to have powers (perhaps one reason the rich were so keen to keep them for themselves). The Georgians lent on this tradition and further developed the idea of birthstones, helping shift jewellery from a religious function to personal and emotional meaning. Ultimately science won out – but the traditional meanings remained for many gems. 

Later eras also developed acrostic jewellery: rings and bracelets spelling out words like “DEAREST” or “REGARD” using the initials of gemstones (diamond, emerald, amethyst, etc.). Even this was a continuation from the late Middle Ages, where rings exchanged between lovers often bore short inscriptions (called posies) engraved on the inside.

The democratisation of jewellery: social and legal changes

Nothing sums up the changes in society better than amethyst – a rich, purple gem. Sumptuary laws had meant purple was not just a colour, it was a status symbol backed by law. Amethyst was therefore seen as a noble and religious gemstone, historically valued on a par with emeralds and rubies. Before the 18th century, amethyst deposits were found only in places like Russia and Sri Lanka, making it relatively rare.

Sumptuary laws fell out of favour in the 1600s and 1700s due to the rise of capitalism and mercantile wealth. There was a growing middle class who could afford luxury goods, so the rules were hard to enforce. What’s more, the 18th century saw the discovery of Brazilian amethysts in Minas Gerais, making amethyst and other gems far more accessible and affordable.

Alongside this, the church had had its grip loosened – the Reformation, the Renaissance, and growing secularism meant people no longer needed jewellery to prove their piety. Instead, they used it to show love, status and individuality.

This combination of greater accessibility and more freedom (at least for some) meant amethyst became more popular in the 1800s as a choice for jewellery, especially in sentimental and mourning jewellery. Purple was now a colour that anyone could wear. Jewellery was much more widespread. There were fewer legal restrictions.

It’s the layers of of history that enrich antique jewellery

It’s tempting to think of the last 1,000 years as a series of great ruptures – the shift from medieval to modern times, the decline of religious power. The way we think of history reinforces this – teaching important events like the Black Death or the shift from Tudors to Stuarts makes it seem like there were a series of fundamental, overnight changes.

Yet people remained the same – there were just many more of them, and different classes evolved. And most of the themes and techniques that were used in the 1800s and 1900s evolved from, and were first popularised, some 400 or 500 years earlier, often coming back into fashion despite more modern alternatives. 

So when you look at an antique ring, even one that’s, say, 200 years old, you’re really looking at something older – something that’s only possible because of a technique a devout artisan helped develop some 500 years before that.

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Samuel Mee is the founder of The Antique Ring Boutique (https://www.antiqueringboutique.com/) and has a number of guides on his website to buying rings from different historical periods. Unless otherwise noted, photos are courtesy of Antique Ring Boutique

Myself, I’d never heard of the Lollards until I studied the Tudors at university. The Reformation in pop culture is remembered in binary terms: Team Catholic and Team Protestant.

Historians debate the importance of the Lollards in the grand scheme of English church history. After all, in 1517 they weren’t about to take over the country. There was no Lollard gunpowder plot when Henry VIII came to the throne. While Lollard communities were tightly knit, they weren’t a unified force. Without the Reformation, Lollardy probably would have stayed underground forever. Still, it blew my mind that these radical Protestant-y ideas were running around in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries- centuries I thought of as Catholic England.

The Lollards honoured John Wycliffe as the father of their movement, but they didn’t keep strictly to his beliefs. Instead, they took his ideas in new directions. So Wycliffe is in the interesting position of being the father of Lollardy…. without being himself the first Lollard. Lollards eagerly devoured several different texts under the mistaken impression that Wycliffe wrote them.

John Wycliffe was a theologian at Oxford. He was kicked out of the university but had the patronage of John of Gaunt. Gaunt’s piety was conventional, but he found it politically useful to sponsor anti-clerical preaching. In his eyes, the clergy were a threat to magnates like himself. I can’t help but be reminded of Gaunt’s great-great-great-grandson Henry VIII, though Gaunt’s admirers probably don’t love the comparison.

Matters came to a head in February 1377, when Wycliffe was tried for heresy. The trial was held at St Paul’s Cathedral and a huge crowd gathered outside. Gaunt had summoned four Doctors of Divinity to serve as Wycliffe’s defence counsel. Henry Percy, the Marshal of England, was there to oversee the trial. He had the unenviable task of organising crowd control. Percy told Wycliffe to sit down ‘because there were many questions to answer so he would need a soft seat’. At this point, Gaunt’s nemesis William Courteney, Bishop of London, told Wycliffe to stay standing. An argument broke out and escalated until John of Gaunt stormed into the Lady Chapel. Backed up by an armed following, he threatened to drag the bishop outside ‘by his hair’. Wycliffe escaped further questioning.

By 1382 John of Gaunt had fully rejected Wycliffe’s theology, but Wycliffe had enough luck to avoid execution. He suffered a horrible stroke in 1383, then another one in December 1384. A few days later, he died on New Year’s Eve.

Despite Wycliffe’s death -and a boring death, with none of the spectacle and shock of martyrdom- Lollardy became even more popular. John Purvey translated the Bible into English, and the late 1390s was the Lollard heyday. Like the Puritans and the suffragettes, they were named by their enemies. Lollard means ‘mumbler’. Lollards called themselves ‘privy’ or ‘known’ men/women, and ‘children of salvation’.

That Bible would have been handwritten: it was not until the 1520s that the Lollards had the technology and the resources to print their texts. Some Lollards owned Bibles that they could not read, knowing their co-religionists would read it aloud to them. If they didn’t have access to a copy, they memorised it. Two hundred complete Lollard Bibles have survived, while other copies have survived in chunks or sections. Then again, the Bible is such a huge collection of short texts that whole medieval Bibles are already rare: it made practical sense to print or copy one or several of its books. Individuals might not have owned a whole Bible, but a copy of the four gospels or a psalter. You can read the Lollard bible digitally on biblegateway.com.

In 1414, Sir John Oldcastle led a Lollard revolt. (If you’re a Shakespeare fan, his name might ring a bell – he was the inspiration for Falstaff.) The attempted rebellion was a disaster for the movement: not only did it fail spectacularly, but it also allowed the king to paint the Lollards as traitors, so sympathisers were tainted by association. Lollardy was driven out of the universities. Realising the hopelessness of their situation, most Lollards renounced their beliefs. Only a few were martyred. Henry V’s Parliament declared that Lollards wanted “to annul and subvert the Christian faith and the law of God, to destroy our sovereign lord the king himself.”

English Protestants claimed the Lollards as their intellectual and theological ancestors. They dubbed Wycliffe ‘the flower of Oxford’, ‘the morning star of the Reformation’. So it’s interesting that Protestant England revered Henry V as the ideal medieval king while hating Mary I, even though both monarchs used violence to enforce Catholicism and papal authority. Military victory works wonders on posthumous reputations.

Who were the Lollards? Where were they? We have the names of only a few hundred. They tended to be peasants and artisans, in cities like London, Bristol, Coventry, and Gloucester. But they could also be found in the countryside: in Essex, Kent, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire. Lollardy reached as far north as Ayrshire (southwest Scotland) but didn’t have much of a foothold in the north of England. When the European reformation arrived, it was received far more warmly in some regions than others. The places where the new ideas were popular map onto the areas where there was a Lollard presence: East Anglia, Bristol, Gloucester, the Thames Valley, the Chiltern hills (Buckinghamshire) and Kent. There is evidence from the 1520s of evangelicals networking with the Lollard underground.

Recent research has shown that some Lollards were slightly higher in status than we thought. In 1514 the Bishop of London’s summoner claimed that he knew of heretics who were each worth £1,000. John Foxe would later claim that Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester ‘had long been a follower of Wickliffe’ – this is unlikely to be true, and the crime she was accused of (probably falsely) was witchcraft, not Lollardy. Humphrey of Gloucester was also not a Lollard: he idolised his brother Henry V.

By 1500, the number of Lollards was stable: not withering away, but not booming. The last Lollard text had been written around 1440. This stagnation is understandable: they were now a tiny minority in little pockets throughout Britain (except for the Chiltern hills in Buckinghamshire). It’s quite impressive that the large Chiltern community managed to survive undetected. And they were communities: Lollards stuck together, marrying and employing fellow Lollards. Like later religious dissidents, they met in safe houses or in fields to talk theology and read aloud their books – not just the Lollard Bible but a cycle of sermons.

No matter how much they hated it, they had to conform to survive. They went to their parish churches, had their infants baptised there, had to swallow their antipathy to the religious artwork surrounding them.

But I think they would say, if we could talk to their ghosts, that it was worth it. Henry V was crushingly victorious over the French and the Lollards. But by 1600, I think we can say it was the Lollards and the French who had the last laugh.

Further reading: The Red Prince by Helen Carr New Worlds, Lost Worlds by Susan Brigden All Things Made New by Diarmaid MacCulloch The Later Reformation in England 1547-1603, also by MacCulloch The Age of Reformation by Alec Ryrie The Tudors by Richard Rex  

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Read CF Kirkham-Sandy’s NEW BOOK:

SHACKLED TO A GHOST
At the turn of the sixteenth century, young law student Thomas More meets the scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam. Caustic and clever, Erasmus has a vision of what Christendom could be – and More shares his dream.

Without wealth, noble blood, or even physical strength, Erasmus’ only weapon is his mind. Despite the obstacles they face, More and Erasmus blossom together. But the Reformation is coming for them. They can’t stop it, but can they survive it? And can they trust the man the other has become? As the Reformation gathers pace, More’s daughter Meg yearns to make her mark. Can she succeed, or is she doomed to repeat her mother’s fate?  

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DV5F6585/

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DV5F6585/    

 

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              CF Kirkham-Sandy grew up in Devon and has a BA and an MA in History from the universities of York and Bristol. CF lives and works in Herefordshire, and moonlights as a history tutor for students of all ages. CF is currently writing another novel and can be found on Threads @kirkhamsandycf and Twitter @Catofthepigeons.

I think Henry V was one of the more inscrutable kings—not least because the great bard took him in hand. Shakespeare’s play has, of course, immortalized Henry, giving him a fabulous speech on St. Crispin’s Day that still sends chills down our spine. Well, you know what I mean. There is no doubt that Henry V elevated the Lancastrians from usurpers to heroes, which was very possibly the reason he launched his French invasion in the first place. God was on his side, and after Agincourt no one dared suggest he didn’t deserve to sit on the throne.

If you had a chance to read my previous novel, THE ACCURSED KING, you would have seen Henry in his formative years. He was not the favorite son; the one-year younger Thomas filled that slot. I suspect this was because Thomas was the only son to accompany Henry Bolingbroke when he was exiled by Richard II. Before that, their father was so busy gallivanting around Europe he had very little time to spend with his family. Young Henry’s mother died in childbirth when he was eight, and the children were farmed out to relatives. During his father’s exile, twelve year-old Henry served as hostage to the king, and he accompanied Richard II to Ireland. He was favoured by the childless king, and Richard knighted him on campaign. When the king was usurped, young Henry was appalled, and I’m sure the stress between him and his father was intense. As first-born, Henry was given the titles due to the heir of the throne, and he was pragmatic enough to accept what fate had handed down to him. But as soon as he was crowned, one of the first things he did was give Richard II a proper burial.

As Prince of Wales, Henry was given full responsibilities. He spent eight years subduing the rebellious Welsh, learning much about warfare in the process. In 1403, when he was seventeen, he engaged in the full-scale Battle of Shrewsbury against the Percies, where he received an arrow in the face that nearly killed him. In 1410 he actually took control of his father’s council, since Henry IV’s illness had nearly incapacitated him, though a year later he was summarily dismissed when he and his uncle Bishop Beaufort reportedly suggested Henry IV retire. Then he spent a couple of years in enforced inaction.

Shakespeare gives us a lively tale of young Hal traipsing around town, drinking, causing trouble, and hanging about with disreputable characters (sorry, Falstaff was a made-up charlatan). As usual, this version of Hal went down in the history books as fact. But really, between fighting the Welsh and running the government, when could he have had the time? It’s possible that the two years he was in disgrace gave him the opportunity to proverbially let his hair down. This may have been the only time in his life he had a chance to enjoy himself. But by all accounts, he really did sober up the night his father died, and redefined himself as a serious, resolute leader ready to step into his father’s shoes. I just don’t believe his personality changed. He was ready for the task, and embraced it wholeheartedly.

It is said that Henry was well-loved by his companions and retainers. He was sincerely pious—to a fault, many historians state. He surrounded himself with bishops and clerics and took them on campaign, attended three masses in a row (I think every morning, but I’m not certain). Throughout his life, he didn’t waste time with flowery orations, and gave concise, common-sense responses like “No, that’s not acceptable” or “Yes, that’s possible”. In ordinary circumstances, he was very approachable and even sociable, as records of his losses at cards attest. He loved music, played the harp, and kept a large group of minstrels at his side, even on campaign. However, when the situation called for it—like a surrender after sieges—he exhibited an arrogance that intimidated his enemies.

 

As a commander, he demanded absolute obedience. His army was reportedly even better behaved in France than the French soldiers; there was no random violence against peasants, women and clergy for the most part. It was his intent that the French should come to see him as a better leader than their own incompetent king. As we know from the famous incident before Agincourt, he didn’t hesitate to hang a soldier who stole a pyx from a local church. At the same time, he did his best to take care of his troops. When he lay siege in the winter, he made sure to build little wooden houses for his own soldiers to shelter in. For the most part, food and supplies were shipped over from England rather than live off the land. Rarely did his besieging army suffer the pangs of hunger.

Nonetheless, a closer look at Henry’s deeds and behavior—especially during his Norman invasion after 1417—gives us some cringe-worthy moments. It can be terribly difficult not to judge Henry from our modern point of view. He was a product of a violent society, where human lives had little value unless you were of the upper classes. Might made right, and chivalric ideals didn’t necessarily include sympathy for the downtrodden. No one gave any thought to poor farmers whose crops were devastated and homes burned to the ground. It was commonly stated that the French occupying forces actually did considerably more damage than the English (France was in the middle of a civil war when Henry invaded).

One of the more damning stains on Henry’s reputation was during the battle of Agincourt. He ordered the prisoners to be killed when he was convinced that the enemy were gathering to attack again. Many modern historians are appalled at the order, which seems ruthless in the extreme. However, this wasn’t the first time prisoners were killed on the field of battle. It happened at Aljubarrota in 1385 when John of Portugal ordered prisoners killed so they could fight the Castilians. In an even more cold-blooded example, on the morning after the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333, Edward III ordered the beheading of over 100 Scottish prisoners. There are other examples, too much to describe here. It is significant that no one can find contemporary denunciations of Henry V’s decision at Agincourt. What he did was apparently within the acceptable code of war at the time. He may have regretted the killing, but he thought it was necessary.

Later on, during his second invasion of France after 1417, Henry’s attitude became more unforgiving. After one siege, he insisted on hanging a trumpeter that repeatedly annoyed the English with his derisive blasts from the battlements. He hung Scottish prisoners after the siege at Melun because they dared fight against him. Most of these petty retributions occurred after sieges, when he was angry at the resistance that caused the deaths of many Englishmen.

I think modern historians are harder on Henry V then contemporaries. But I’ll leave you with this quote from the great K.B. McFarlane, mid-century Oxford historian whose research was unparalleled: “It pleases lesser mortals to detect the Achilles’ heel of the great ones that live in the world’s eye; but by whatever standards he is judged, Henry was superlatively gifted: his only weakness was the physical one from which he died. He was born to rule and to conquer… Take him all round and he was, I think, the greatest man that ever ruled England.” (Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights) That’s informed judgment I would find it hard to argue with!