On This Day: Draconian Norman “forest laws” repealed

November 6th, 1217: England’s longest-lasting law, the Charter of the Forest, is sealed extending freedoms to the common people.

A mere two years after King John affixed the Royal Seal to Magna Carta Libertatum (the “Great Charter of Freedoms”) thereby subjecting the sovereign’s power to the law, England’s people gained another extension to their liberties. In November 1217, the 10-year-old King Henry III granted his assent to the Charter of the Forest marking a radical change to more than 100 years of royal tradition. For the first time in England’s history the common people gained legal rights.

Post AD 1066, with the Normans ruling the country, much of the kingdom had been converted into vast hunting estates known as “royal forests”. These included, for example, Sherwood, the New Forest and the whole of Essex. To the Normans a “forest” was a legally defined area where the “beasts of the chase [deer & wild pig] and their habitats including the vert” were for the pleasure of the monarch [1]. In AD 1079, for example, the New Forest in southern England was set aside by William I as his right, primarily for hunting deer. By 1217 it is estimated that royal estates encompassed nearly one-third of southern England.

These royal estates existed beyond the boundaries of the kingdom and were thus places where ordinary rules did not apply. Indeed, the draconian “forest laws” imposed across England by King William I forbade the cutting down of trees and regulated the gathering of fallen timber for firewood, the collection of berries or indeed anything growing within the forest. The Norman system ousted earlier Anglo-Saxon laws in which rights to the forest were not exclusive to the king or nobles but shared among the people (Woodbury, 2012). The common people’s access to their ancestral environment was drastically curtailed.

William’s forest laws established that taking wood from the forest or hunting in banned areas were crimes, the latter specifically known as poaching. Unsurprisingly, the laws were despised by the commonfolk as they were prevented from using the woodland to provide food, fuel and building materials. They were also banned from enclosing their land by fencing or other means, ostensibly to protect crops, as this restricted the hunt. Likewise, they could not use the timber from the woodland for building houses and were not allowed to hunt game, especially the king’s deer, to provide food for their families. For those living in the forest, they were explicitly not allowed to own dogs or a bow and arrows, and, as the “underwood” was also protected, commoners also faced a severe restriction on the availability of fuel. The punishments for breaking the laws could range from fines to, in the most severe cases, death. Repeat offenders, for example, were blinded or executed. In cases where a culprit could not be found, then whole communities might be penalised. Such punishments provided a lucrative income for England’s early Mediæval kings coincidently at a time when taxation was beyond the crown’s control.

In 1215 King John was coerced into adopting Magna Carta but this did not improve relations with his barons. When the king renounced the “Great Charter”, England was quickly cast back into turmoil. The following year, 1216, saw the untimely death (for him at least) of John and the succession of his infant son, Henry; Magna Carta was back on the table. In 1217, the new Charter of the Forest was sealed on behalf of the child king by his regent, William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, and a papal emissary. Within it were four provisions concerning the royal forests which, across 17 clauses, restricted the crown’s authority over the forests, reduced their size and restored many of the ancient rights enjoyed by commoners before 1066. The charter became the longest-surviving law in English history remaining on the statute books until 1971 when it was superseded by the Wild Creatures and Forest Laws Act. Bon appétit!

Reference:

Woodbury, S. (2012), “Forest Laws in the Middle Ages”, Available online (accessed 18 September 2024).

Endnote:

1. The “vert” in this case is a late Middle English adjective for flora or greenery. The term entered English via Old French from the Latin viridis meaning “green”.

On This Day: The Iceman cometh

On This Day, 19th September 1991, “Ötzi the Iceman” was discovered by two German hikers, Erika and Helmut Simon, who were trekking the slopes of the Similaun Glacier high in the Ötzal Alps.

At an altitude of 3,200 metres amid melting ice near the Tisenjoch Pass, on the border between Austria and Italy, the Simons spotted a body partially exposed by the retreating glacier. Concerned that the well-preserved human corpse might have been the victim of a recent accident, the couple alerted the nearby Similaun mountain refuge who, in turn, notified the Austrian and Italian police. The harsh weather and thick ice thwarted attempts to recover the body the following day but rescue teams were able to recover a copper axe.

On 23rd September, after it had been determined this was not an Alpine climbing accident, the corpse was finally released from the glacier’s icy grip along with fragments of leather, a flint dagger, a bow and other obviously ancient artefacts. The discovery marked a major archaeological breakthrough, and “Ötzi the Iceman” was introduced to the world. Radiocarbon dating revealed that he was more than 5,000 years old having lived in the early (often overlooked) Copper Age. The body’s state of preservation provided a unique snapshot into Ötzi’s life including the discovery of an intact copper axe, a quiver of arrows, surprisingly advanced insulated shoes, and an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder suggesting a violent death.

Ötzi's clothing

Ötzi was fully clothed when he died.  What he wore was practical and functional, affording him protection from the cold and wet, however, his clothing was damaged by wind and weather when the ice melted and was also badly affected by the unorthodox way in which his body was recovered. As already mentioned, Ötzi’s clothing was made from leather, but also from braided grass. The leather or hide garments were stitched together with animal sinews, grass fibres and tree bast [1]. Interestingly he was not wearing any woollen or woven textile even though the first wool textiles show up in the Late Neolithic period (7,000 to 4,500 BC. Unfortunately, there are no comparable items from Ötzi’s era, so we do not know whether he was wearing traditional everyday wear or special clothing. Even so, he was well prepared for life in the wilderness.

Ötzi’s hide coat reached almost down to his knees, covering his upper body and thighs. The coat was made from light and dark strips of goat and sheep hide stitched together with animal sinews. Ötzi wore the coat with the fur on the outside most likely to repel water or ice. Unfortunately, any sleeves did not survive. Since no recognisable fasteners were found, the coat may have been closed with a belt. It had clearly been in use for a long time because the inside was very dirty, and some torn seams had been repaired with grass fibres quite probably by Ötzi himself.

Remnants of a woven grass mat were found during examination of the excavation site. The mat, made from alpine swamp grass, was initially thought to be a grass cape. This interpretation is now questionable, and today it is believed that it was more likely to be a mat which Ötzi used to protect himself from the rain, or it was part of a backpack.

Ötzi wore a loincloth made from narrow strips of sheep hide stitched together. It was originally a 100 x 33 cm piece of hide worn between the legs and fastened with the belt. His “trousers” consisted of two separate leggings, approximately 65 cm in length, made from strips of domestic goat and sheep hide. The tops of the leggings were reinforced with leather strips, and each were knotted onto his belt with an additional leather strip. At the bottom of the leggings were loops that fastened to his shoes. The leggings had been worn for some time and had been repaired in several places.

Ötzi’s belt consisted of a calfskin strip 4 to 5 cm wide. It was probably around 2 m in length and would have been wrapped twice around the hips. Alternatively, it is speculated that he wore two separate belts – one to keep the loincloth in place and the other to hold the coat closed. Another leather strip was stitched onto the belt to make a small pouch. This belt pouch contained tinder fungus, a scraper, a boring tool, a bone awl and a flint flake.

During excavations, Ötzi’s right shoe was found on his foot. This was removed for restoration. Only the netting of the left shoe survived. The shoes are made up of several layers with the inner consisting of string netting made from lime tree bast. Dry grass was stuffed under the netting for insulation. The outer shoe was made from deer hide and was stitched onto the sole like the netting. The sole was worn with the fur on the inside. The shoe was tied onto the foot with bast string. Experiments with reconstructed shoes have shown that they are warm and comfortable even on long treks but provide little protection from the wet. Presumably, therefore, any wet grass was simply replaced.

A bearskin cap was also uncovered during the archaeological excavation. Pieces of bearskin had been stitched together to form a hemispherical shape with the cap held in place by a chin strap.

What did he look like?  

By current estimates, at the time of his death Ötzi was approximately 1.65 metres (5 ft 5 in) tall, weighed about 61 kilograms (134 lb) and was about 45 years of age. Using modern 3-D technology, a facial reconstruction has been created for the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. It shows Ötzi looking old for his years, with deep-set brown eyes, a beard, a furrowed face, and sunken cheeks. He is depicted looking tired and ungroomed. Further analysis showed Ötzi had a total of 61 tattoos, created from pigment manufactured out of fireplace ash or soot and consisting of 19 groups of black lines. These include groups of parallel lines running along the length of his body and to both sides of the lumbar spine, as well as a cruciform mark behind the right knee and on the right ankle, and parallel lines around the left wrist. The greatest concentration of markings was found on his legs, however. The tattoos appear to be over the sites of injuries Ötzi had sustained. It has been speculated that these tattoos may have been related to pain relief treatments similar to acupressure or acupuncture. If so, then this is at least 2,000 years before their previously known earliest use in China (ca. 1000 BC). Recent research into archaeological evidence for ancient tattooing has confirmed that Ötzi remains the oldest tattooed human mummy yet discovered.

Last meal

Given the state of Ötzi's preservation, identifying his diet proved difficult because his stomach seemed to be missing. In fact, the misplaced organ eluded researchers for some 20 years until, in 2009, while looking at new radiographic scans it was found inexplicably pushed up under his ribs where the lower lungs would normally sit. Significantly for the researchers, it was completely full, which meant that after a battery of tests they were able to determine Ötzi's last meal. Lipids and protein analysis indicated that he was eating both muscle and fat of the ibex (Capra ibex), a wild goat still common in the Ötztal Alps, red deer meat (Cervus elaphus), undigested einkorn wheat, and traces of toxic fern. While being a reasonably well-balanced mix of carbohydrates and proteins but, at around 50%, his diet was alarmingly high in fat compared to the 10% in the average modern diet. Yet, at the altitude Ötzi was hunting or trekking, his increased fat intake would have provided the necessary energy to survive in the harsh Alpine environment.

It is most likely the meat was dried for preservation since fresh meat would have spoiled quickly. The presence of carbon flecks also hinted that the meat could have been smoked. Ötzi also ate einkorn wheat, and the researchers also found traces of bracken, a type of fern, in his stomach. This may have been ingested as an early form of herbal medicine, but current thinking is that it is more likely that he wrapped his food in fern leaves and ingested the potentially toxic spores by mistake - an idea previously proposed for the moss he had also ingested. Whether by accident or design, the discovery of a well-preserved natural mummy nicknamed Ötzi has opened a rare window into the life of a man who lived between 3,400 and 3,100 BC. It has provided scientific evidence for ancient lifestyles and customs at the point when the Copper Age was slowly morphed into the Bronze Age. Bon appétit!

References:

Briggs, H., (2018), “Iceman's last meal was high-fat, high-calorie feast”, BBC News, available online (accessed 16 September 2025).

Katz, B., (2018), “Before He Died, Ötzi the Iceman Ate a Greasy, Fatty Meal”, Smithsonian Magazine, available online (accessed 16 September 2025).

Shaw, H., (2011), “The Bracken Fern: A Natural Born Killer?”, The Atlantic, available online (accessed 16 September 2025).

Wei-Haas, M., (2018), “5,300 Years Ago, Ötzi the Iceman Died. Now We Know His Last Meal”, National Geographic, available online (accessed 16 September 2025).

Endnotes:

1. Bast fibre (also called phloem fibre or skin fibre) is plant fibre collected from the phloem (the “inner bark”, sometimes called “skin”) or bast surrounding the stem of certain plants. Bast fibres are soft and flexible and some of the economically important ones are obtained from cultivated herbs, for instance flax, hemp, or ramie. Bast fibres from wild plants, such as stinging nettle, and trees such as lime or linden, willow, oak, wisteria, and mulberry have also been used.

On This Day: The Great Fire of London rages

September 2nd to 6th, 1666: The Great Fire rages across London destroying four-fifths of the city.

In the early hours of September 2nd, 1666, a fire had broken out in Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane, near London Bridge. At the time blazes were fairly common, which might explain the Lord Mayor of London’s reaction (right). Unfortunately for Sir Thomas and his fellow Londoners a long, hot, dry summer had turned the city’s largely wooden infrastructure into a tinderbox. Within hours 300 houses had been consumed and the fire had spread rapidly, whipped up by a strong easterly wind. Flames leapt easily from one timber-framed building to the next as the fire blazed through London’s narrow warren of streets. Efforts to fight the fire using buckets of water soon failed compelling many people to flee onto the River Thames or out to Hampstead and Moorfields.

By September 3rd, the city’s residents were in despair as the conflagration continued its inexorable spread. Scapegoating began almost immediately with rumours proliferating amid the chaos accusing (wrongly) Dutch and French residents of arson. Xenophobic attacks soon followed. That night brought little respite and as the fire crept eastward, there was genuine fear that the gunpowder stores in the Tower of London would be ignited. Diarist Samuel Pepys (pictured), overcome by witnessing his city’s destruction, wrote: “it made me weep to see it.”

As an aside, we know from his famous diary that on the morning of Tuesday September 4th, Pepys was rudely woken by a servant telling him to get up and get out of his house because the fire was fast approaching his home in Seething Lane on Tower Hill, near to the Tower of London. According to that day’s diary entry Pepys was “[u]p by break of day to get away the remainder of my things; which I did by a lighter at the Iron gate and my hands so few, that it was the afternoon before we could get them all away.” He managed to get most of his belongings to Bethnal Green and safety on September 3rd, but not everything. Pepys’ diary reads:

“…the fire coming on in that narrow streete, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten [1] not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.”

Some today may wonder why Pepys buried his cheese. The simple answer is that in the 17th-century Parmesan cheese was worth a great deal of money. Even today, it is still pretty valuable. There are reportedly over 300,000 wheels of Parmesan cheese stored in bank vaults in Italy, which are worth over $200 million. Parmesan cheese takes so long to mature that they’re held as collateral against loans to assist the cheesemakers’ cash flow. Cheese is practically a currency. Sadly, the fate of Pepys’ cheese remains unknown, though his diaries describing the incident remain. As far as we know it was never recovered and could still be buried in the garden of Seething Lane just waiting to be found.

Despite the demolition of houses to create firebreaks, on September 4th half of London was burning. King Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, joined the firefighting efforts but the conflagration overwhelmed all attempts to contain it. That evening the city’s cathedral, St Paul’s, was engulfed in flames. As its roof melted, flowing off in a torrent of molten lead, the building collapsed. It was not until September 6th, the fifth day of the Great Fire, that the flames were brought under control. Just one-fifth of London remained untouched. More than 87 parish churches, 13,000 homes and numerous civic buildings had been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Londoners were left homeless but remarkably only six deaths were recorded.

One positive outcome emerged, in the long term at least: the Great Fire had razed the city’s most overcrowded, disease-ridden quarters. While Christopher Wren’s ambitious plans to replace London narrow streets with wide boulevards (as a form of fire prevention) never came to fruition, his masterpiece, the reborn St Paul’s Cathedral, stands today as a testament to the city’s resilience. Meanwhile, the Monument was erected in Pudding Lane to commemorate the Great Fire of September 1666.

References:

Bird, D. (2024), “The Great Fire of London rages” in Anniversaries, BBC History magazine, September 2024 edition, pp. 8-9.

Oxbow Books blog, (2017), “Why did Samuel Pepys bury his cheese, and other pressing questions?”, available online (accessed 12 January 2025).

Gyford, P., (2025), “The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Tuesday 4 September 1666”, www.pepysdiary.com, available online (accessed 12 January 2025).

Endnote:

1. Sir William Batten was Master of Trinity House and Surveyor of the Navy. The Corporation of Trinity House was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1514 to regulate pilotage on the River Thames and provide for aged mariners. The Corporation’s mandate has expanded considerably since then. Today it is the UK’s largest-endowed maritime charity, the General Lighthouse Authority (GLA) for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar and a fraternity of men and women selected from across the nation’s maritime sector.

On This Day: Britain’s shortest ever war

August 27th, 1896: The Anglo-Zanzibar War was fought on this day and remains the shortest conflict in history. It lasted forty-four minutes.

At 11:40 AM two days earlier (25 August 1896), the fifth Sultan of Zanzibar, Sayyid Hamad bin Thuwaini Al-Busa'id [1] suddenly died. He was almost certainly poisoned by his cousin Prince Sayyid Khalid bin Barghash Al-Busa'id who seized control of Beit al-Hukm Palace and proclaimed himself the new Sultan. This irked the British since the agreement establishing Zanzibar as a protectorate of the Empire (on 14 June 1890) meant succession had to be approved by the British consul. Khalid had not fulfilled this requirement and, moreover, Britain’s preferred successor was the more compliant Sayyid Hamoud bin Mohammed Al-Busa'id.

Determined to retain control over the strategically significant East African archipelago, which would allow them to enforce their policies such as the abolition of slavery, the British reacted swiftly. Khalid’s action was the casus belli Britain needed to issue an ultimatum demanding Prince Khalid order his forces to stand down and leave the palace. The ultimatum was delivered by Rear Admiral Harry Rawson of the Royal Navy (RN): surrender by 09:00 am or face military action. Khalid’s response was to mobilise his palace guard and barricade himself inside the Beit al Hukum Palace. Together with the Sultan’s palace guard, the defenders comprised around 2,800 Zanzibaris, mostly recruited from the civilian population, and several hundred of his servants and slaves. The Zanzibaris positioned several artillery pieces and machine guns in front of the palace sighted at the RN’s ships.

The British had gathered two cruisers, three gunboats, 150 marines and sailors, and 900 pro-Anglo Zanzibaris [2] in the harbour area so, with the ultimatum expired, at 09:02 am Rawson’s warships immediately bombarded the palace setting the palace on fire and disabling the defending artillery. Around the same time a small naval action took place, with the British sinking the Zanzibari royal yacht HHS Glasgow and two smaller vessels. Some shots were also fired ineffectually at the pro-British Zanzibari troops as they approached the palace. After causing extensive damage to the palace, the Zanzibari flag flying from the roof was shot down and the bombardment ceased at 09:46 am. Khalid’s forces were overwhelmed, and 500 casualties were sustained. Just one British sailor was seriously injured during the brief skirmish.

Khalid fled to seek sanctuary in the German Consulate before escaping to German East Africa (in the mainland part of present-day Tanzania). Hamoud was quickly installed as the new sultan later that day and pledged to honour British demands on Zanzibar. This fleeting but decisive altercation marked the end of the Sultanate of Zanzibar as a sovereign state and the start of Britain’s entrenched dominance in the region that persisted well into the 20th-century.

Bon appétit! 

Reference:

Bird, D.. (2024), Q&A: “What was the shortest war in history?”, BBC History Magazine (September 2024), London: Immediate Media Company, p. 49. 

Endnotes:

1. Sayyid Hamad bin Thuwaini Al-Busaidi (Arabic: حمد بن ثويني البوسعيدي) (c. 1857 – 25 August 1896) was the fifth Sultan of Zanzibar. He ruled Zanzibar from 5 March 1893 until his death on 25 August 1896.

2. The pro-Anglo Zanzibaris were commanded by Brigadier-General Lloyd Mathews of the Zanzibar army, who was also the First Minister of Zanzibar.

On This Day: “Heart and stomach…”

August 19th, 1588: On this day in 1588, Queen Elizabeth I of England delivered her famous speech to her assembled land forces at Tilbury in Essex as they prepared to repel an expected invasion by the Spanish Armada.

Before the speech was even given, the Armada had been driven from the Strait of Dover in the Battle of Gravelines eleven days earlier and had by then rounded Scotland on its way home. Elizabeth’s troops, however, were still held in readiness in case the Spanish army of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, might yet attempt to invade from Dunkirk. On the day of the speech, the Queen left her bodyguard before Tilbury Fort and went among her subjects with an escort of six men. Lord Ormonde walked ahead with the Sword of State; he was followed by a page leading the Queen's charger and another bearing her silver helmet on a cushion; then came the Queen herself, in white with a silver cuirass and mounted on a grey gelding. She was flanked on horseback by her lieutenant general the Earl of Leicester on the right, and on the left by the Earl of Essex, her Master of the Horse. Sir John Norreys brought up the rear.

After she had made her rounds through the troops, Elizabeth delivered her speech to them. The version of it most widely considered to be authentic was discovered within a letter addressed to the Duke of Buckingham. The letter had been penned by Leonel Sharp who had been attached to the Earl of Leicester at Tilbury during the threatened invasion of the Armada and would later become chaplain to Buckingham. According to Sharp, the Queen’s speech was as follows:

“My loving people.

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and we do assure you on a word of a prince, they shall be duly paid. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.”

For those who have noted the part of the speech in bold, then you might be wondering why that is so. The simple truth is that here at Tastes Of History we thought it would be fun to create some light-hearted historically themed T-shirts as much for our amusement as anyone else’s. The version pictured took its inspiration from Good Queen Bess’ speech at Tilbury but, having suggested that recipes would be found on our website, it seemed only fair that we deliver on the promise. So, for those who took the time to visit www.tastesofhistory.co.uk, here are a couple of Tudor-period dishes that might fit the bill (please note that no monarchs were harmed in the making of these recipes).

Heart  The first is for braised beef or ox heart. For those unaware, ox heart is today a much under-rated, and underused, cut of meat but this makes it very affordable. As Tom Hunt wrote in his article “An offal waste: why you should be eating ox heart” for The Guardian newspaper in 2020: “Ox heart is an overlooked ingredient, as is most offal, which tends to be treated like waste at the abattoir, where it’s recycled or just disposed of. That’s crazy, because it’s both delicious and affordable: lean and with a clean flavour.” Rather usefully the article also included a recipe for ox heart kebabs which we have yet to try, but our braised beef heart recipe below as proved a popular dish at Mediæval events:

Stomach  If braised heart is not to your taste, then to fulfil the second criteria of our little “joke”, perhaps you might prefer a recipe involving a stomach. The most obvious choice would be for haggis, a savoury pudding containing minced sheep's heart, liver, and lungs, combined with chopped onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, salt, and stock. Traditionally the ingredients are encased in the animal's stomach and cooked (artificial casings more often used today).

It could be argued that the idea of quickly cooking offal inside an animal's stomach has ancient origins [1] since for early hunters all the ingredients would have been conveniently available after a successful hunt. Thus, cooking the perishable offal near the site of the kill makes sense as it would ensure little of the valuable food was wasted. It would be relatively simple to grill the liver and kidneys directly over a fire, but this method would be unsuitable for the stomach, intestines, or lungs. Perhaps not wishing to remain in proximity of a fresh kill in case other predators are attracted to it, then an expedient solution might be to dice the offal and stuff it into the cleaned stomach giving the hunters a means to safely transport the meat back to a campsite. It follows that the hunters might add whatever herbs and fillers to the offal filled stomach before boiling the ingredients. In this way, rather than wasting the stomach it becomes a convenient cooking vessel, and a tasty dish something like haggis was born.

Many people might assume haggis to have a Scottish origin, yet the first known written recipes naming a dish made with offal and herbs as “hagese” (pictured) are in a cookbook from Lancashire in northwest England titled Liber Cure Cocorum [2]. This dates from around AD 1430, as does the recipe for “hagws of a schepe” in another English cookbook dated to the same year. These two early references are certainly not proof of an English origin, however, as they only really offer when and where the name was first documented. Indeed, other countries are known to have recipes for something similar, albeit with different names, which were undoubtedly created to solve the problem of perishable ingredients. We can confidently say, however, that haggis is today the national dish of Scotland thanks to Scots poet Robert Burns’ 1786 poem “Address to a Haggis”. From then on, the most popular recipes remain distinctly Scottish. 

Haggis is so popular that it can be purchased from numerous makers and retailers, both on the high-street and online. A search of the latter will return so many versions of haggis, including vegetarian options, that we considered the dish to be thoroughly covered by others as to leave well alone. All of which meant an alternative to satisfy the “stomach” criterion was needed. Time to consider eating Humble Pye as described in Thomas Dawson’s The Good Huswife’s Jewell of 1596:

“To make a Pye of Humbles. Take your humbles being parboiled, and chop them very small with a good quantity of mutton suet, and half a handful of the herbs following - thyme, marjoram, borage, parsley and a little rosemary. Season the same being chopped, with pepper, cloves and mace, and so close your pie and bake it.”

Before proceeding, what exactly are “humbles”? Circa AD 1300 the word numbles (or noumbles) in Old English meant the edible viscera of animals, especially that of deer. The word comes via nombles in Old French for “loin of veal, fillet of beef, or haunch of venison”. This itself is derived from Latin lumulus, a diminutive of lumbus “loin”. Through rebracketing, which commonly occurred as the English language evolved, “a numble pie” would become “an umble pie” in Middle English. Umbles are therefore numbles without the n- but the word still meant what we would refer to today as “offal”. So, while Mediæval nobility or the wealthy would consume the higher quality venison meat, the offal and lesser quality parts of the animal would be baked into a pie for their servants. Thus, as a food fit for low-class servants or the poor, to “eat humble pie” became associated, by the 1800s, with being humiliated and forced to admit error or wrongdoing.

With all that said, we needed a recipe involving if not the stomach, then at least the umbles, so the following recipe for Umble Pye is adapted from one dating to the 1600s:

Bon appétit!

Endnotes:

1. Around 800 BC the earliest appearance in literature of a sheep’s stomach being used to encase what is thought to be a type of black pudding appears in Book 18 of Homer's classic saga “The Odyssey”: “Here at the fire are goats' paunches lying, which we set there for supper, when we had filled them with fat and blood.” The first recognisable recipe, using lengths of intestine as the container rather than a stomach can be found in Book 2 of Apicius’ De Re Coquinaria (“On Cookery”). The recipe botellum sic facies instructs the cook to: “Take the yolks of six hard-boiled eggs, chopped pine nuts, onion, and sliced leeks, and mix with blood [and forcemeats]. Add ground pepper and fill the intestine with the stuffing. Cook in stock and wine.”

2. þe nere means ‘the kidneys’.

On This Day: The Spanish Armada is sighted

July 29th, 1588: On this day in 1588, the fearsome Spanish Armada is sighted off England’s southern coast.

In late July of 1588, La Grande y Felicísima Armada - literally the “Great and Most Fortunate Navy” - sailed from Lisbon, a port city on the Atlantic coast in modern Portugal. This daunting war fleet was bound for England. The popular version of events - the one most likely found in school texts books - is that Philip II of Spain, deadly foe of Queen Elizabeth I of England, sent his huge Armada of ships to invade and return England to the Catholic faith. But the Spanish fleet was defeated by the plucky little English navy, whose courageous captains included Sir Francis Drake. It was crowning achievement of Elizabeth’s reign and a defining moment in English history - the moment we took on Europe and won! Or so the story goes because the popular version is not entirely true.

Philip, King of England

In 1588, Philip was 61, a devout Catholic and king of the largest empire in the world, reaching from South America to the Philippines. Elizabeth was in her 50s, still unmarried, still childless and ruling over a Protestant England in which Catholic plots were a constant threat. But in 1554, 34 years earlier, Philip had set sail from northern Spain to become part of the Tudor royal family. We often forget that before he was king of Spain, Philip II - the great villain in the Armada story - spent four years as king of England due to his marriage to Mary, Elizabeth’s older half-sister. Mary was desperate to secure England’s future as a Catholic country and dreaded the thought that she might die childless and leave the Protestant Elizabeth to take the throne. Philip, however, felt differently.

The alternative to Elizabeth, in the event of his and Mary’s marriage producing no children, was Mary, Queen of Scots. She was a Catholic, which was a plus, but due to her ancestry and close ties to the French court, she would have taken England firmly into the orbit of Philip’s French enemies, which was intolerable. Thus, the king of Spain rooted for his sister-in-law, persuading Mary to release Elizabeth from house arrest. When Mary lay dying, Philip realised, or at least believed, that the only way he could persuade Elizabeth to support Catholics was to marry her and get her to convert. And so, he proposed. Elizabeth, as ever, refused to commit herself. A few months later, hearing that Philip had “moved on” and started negotiations to marry a French princess, Elizabeth is quoted as saying: “He couldn’t have loved me all that much if he couldn’t wait a month or two for an answer.” Even so, despite the proposed match never happening, Elizabeth and Philip remained friends.

Why was the Spanish Armada launched against England? 

Over the next ten years, as Elizabeth and England became decidedly Protestant, there were rumblings from Rome. In the late 1560s, Catholics in northern England attempted an unsuccessful rebellion. To encourage them further, on February 25th, 1570 Pope Pius V (Jan 1566 - May 1572) excommunicated their Queen declaring "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime", to be a heretic - a non-believer in the Catholic faith - and released all her subjects from any allegiance to her, even when they had "sworn oaths to her", threatening to excommunicate any that obeyed her orders. Elizabeth now had a big target on her back. In the eyes of the church any English Catholic who rebelled against their Queen, or indeed killed her, would not have committed a “sin” and would be forgiven.

Philip was now under pressure from the Pope in Rome to topple Elizabeth, but with his vast empire to run, he had plenty of other priorities. Religion alone was not a strong enough reason for Philip to invade England. Even so, it is still alleged that the Spanish king supported plots to have Elizabeth overthrown in favour of her Catholic cousin and heir presumptive, Mary, Queen of Scots. These plans were thwarted when Elizabeth had Mary imprisoned. After eighteen and a half years in custody, in 1586 Mary was found guilty of involvement in a Catholic plot to assassinate the English queen. It is said Elizabeth reluctantly signed the death warrant that saw Mary beheaded the following year, 1587, at Fotheringhay Castle near Oundle in Northamptonshire. With Mary, Queen of Scots dead, Philip preoccupied with his empire, and religious differences not a strong enough reason to invade, what triggered the Spanish attack?

Protests and Privateers

Two things tipped Philip’s hand. Firstly, Elizabeth supported Philip’s rebellious Protestant subjects in the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Secondly, Elizabeth was funding privateers to plunder Spanish ships across the Atlantic. At the time Spain had colonies in the Americas and ships would cross the ocean to Spain laden with treasure - gold, silver, jewels, etc. The treasure ships were tempting targets for a cash-strapped English monarch.

Elizabeth issued Letters of Marque and Reprisal authorising attacks or the capture of enemy vessels and shipping during wartime. Individuals or ships in possession of such Letters were known as “private men-of-war” or Privateers. Significantly, privateering was a way of mobilising armed ships and sailors without having to spend treasury resources or commit naval officers. Moreover, privateers were of great benefit to a smaller naval power or one facing an enemy dependent on trade as they disrupted commerce and pressured an enemy to deploy warships to protect merchant trade against such “commerce raiders”. Usefully for a penny-pinching court the cost was borne by investors hoping to profit from prize money earned from captured cargo and vessels. The proceeds would be distributed among the privateer's investors, officers, and crew.

Cruising for prizes with a Letter of Marque was considered an honourable calling combining patriotism and profit, in contrast to unlicensed piracy, which was universally reviled. It has been argued that privateering was a less destructive and wasteful form of warfare, because the goal was to capture ships rather than to sink them. English adventurers Thomas Cavendish (ca. AD 1555-ca.1592), Francis Drake (ca. AD 1540-1596) and John Hawkins (AD 1532-1595) were celebrated privateers. Though each had Letters of Marque and Reprisal, Cavendish was the only one who confined his raids to wartime. Regardless, the Spanish and other nationalities regarded all three as pirates who, in contrast to privateers, committed warlike acts at sea without the authorisation of any nation.

Philip’s Response

Philip was goaded into action. He planned an expedition to invade England, overthrow Elizabeth and, if the Armada was not entirely successful, at least negotiate freedom of worship for Catholics and financial compensation for war in the Low Countries. Through this endeavour, English material support for the United Provinces, the part of the Low Countries that had successfully seceded from Spanish rule, and English attacks on Spanish trade and settlements in the New World would end. Importantly, the King was supported by the Pope, who treated the invasion as a crusade, with the promise of a subsidy should the Armada make land. As a devout Catholic, Philip thus felt it was his duty to invade and conquer England in order to convert the country back to the Church of Rome.

On July 21st, 1588, the Armada of 141 ships outfitted with 1,500 brass guns and 1,000 iron guns, and carrying ca. 10,000 sailors and 19,000 soldiers, set sail from Lisbon headed for the English Channel. The full body of the fleet took two days to leave port.

In the Spanish Netherlands, 30,000 soldiers awaited the arrival of the Armada, the plan being to use the cover of the warships to convey the army on barges to a place near London. In all, 55,000 men were to have been mustered, a huge army for that time. Meanwhile the English fleet stood prepared, if ill-supplied, at Plymouth, awaiting news of Spanish movements.

Bowls anyone?

You may have heard it was while Sir Francis Drake enjoyed a game of bowls on the greens of Plymouth Hoe that the Spanish Armada was first sighted on the horizon. The usual story has Sir Francis turning to Lord Effingham, commander of the English fleet, and saying that there was no need to hurry, there would be plenty of time to finish the game and thrash the Spaniards too.

Disappointingly none of the early accounts of the Armada mention anyone playing bowls at all. It was about 25 years later that one account - just one - finally describes sailors in Plymouth in July 1588 “dancing, bowling, and making merry” on the shore as the Armada appeared. Yet it is such an irresistibly juicy detail that, in the 1730s, a biography of Sir Walter Raleigh tells us that Drake was determined to finish his game of bowls - and from then on it became “history”.

Invincible fleet?

The Spanish fleet that Philip assembled is usually depicted as an “invincible” Goliath to England’s little David of a navy. In reality it was anything but. It was not even the biggest fleet ever to have attacked England: the Norman invasion fleet of 1066, and the French force that crossed the Channel in 1545 and sank the Mary Rose, both boasted more vessels. The Spanish had around 130 ships, but nearly half of these were not built as warships. Rather they were used for duties such as scouting and dispatch work, or for carrying supplies, animals and troops. Surprisingly the English fleet actually outnumbered that of the Armada by some 200 ships to 130. Nevertheless, the Spanish fleet outgunned that of the English, with its available firepower being 50 percent greater than that of the enemy.

The “invincible” Armada had sailed into trouble long before it had an opportunity to engage its English foes, however. Soon after departing from Lisbon in May 1588, they faced disease, rotting food and bad weather. Storms forced four galleys and one galleon to turn back, and other ships had to put in for repairs at A Coruña in northern Spain. From there, the commander of the fleet, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, wrote to Philip confessing that he could see “hardly any of those on the Armada with any knowledge or ability to perform the duties entrusted to them…we are very weak”. Philip insisted the invasion had to go ahead so, in July, the Armada set sail once more with the intention of navigating the English Channel towards its narrowest point. There it was to meet with an army of soldiers from the Netherlands led by the Duke of Parma, who were to be ferried across on barges to invade Kent. In the end only about 124 ships actually made it to the English Channel where the two fleets eventually met. Once again, the Spaniards began to experience more problems. Their first major casualties were self-inflicted: a crash and explosion lost two Spanish ships.

Battle is joined

The Armada was sighted in England on July 29th, when it appeared off the Lizard in Cornwall. The news was conveyed to London by a system of beacons that had been constructed along the south coast. The same day the English fleet was trapped in Plymouth Harbour by the incoming tide. The Spanish convened a council of war, where it was proposed to ride into the harbour on the tide and incapacitate the defending ships at anchor. From Plymouth Harbour the Spanish would attack England, but Philip explicitly forbade Medina-Sidonia from engaging, leaving the Armada to sail on to the east and toward the Isle of Wight. As the tide turned, 55 English ships set out to confront the Armada from Plymouth under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham, with Sir Francis Drake as vice admiral. The rear admiral was John Hawkins.

At daybreak on July 31st, the English fleet finally engaged the Armada off Plymouth near the Eddystone rocks. In two further encounters, off Portland Bill on August 2nd and off the Isle of Wight on August 4th, the English harassed the Spanish fleet at long range and easily avoided all attempts to bring them to close action. Given the Spanish advantage in close-quarter fighting, the English ships used their superior speed and manoeuvrability to keep beyond grappling range and bombarded the Spanish ships from a distance with cannon fire. However, the range proved too great for the manoeuvre to be effective, and at the end of the fighting neither fleet had lost a ship in action.

Fire ships!

By August 7th, the Armada was anchored off Calais in a tightly packed defensive crescent formation, not far from Dunkirk, where the Spanish army, reduced by disease to 16,000 men, was expected to be waiting. The army was not ready, and the Spanish fleet found itself increasingly vulnerable to attack. At midnight on August 7th/8th, the English set alight eight fireships, sacrificing regular warships by filling them with pitch, brimstone, gunpowder and tar, and cast them downwind among the closely anchored vessels of the Armada. The Spanish feared that these uncommonly large fireships were “hellburners”, specialised fireships filled with large gunpowder charges that had been used to deadly effect before. Two fireships were intercepted and towed away, but the remainder bore down on the fleet. The Armada's flagship and the principal warships held their positions, but the rest of the fleet cut their anchor cables and scattered in confusion. No Spanish ships were burnt, but the crescent formation had been broken, and the fleet now found itself too far downwind of Calais in the rising south-westerly wind to recover its position. The English closed in for battle.

At dawn on August 8th the English attacked the disorganized Spanish ships off Gravelines, and a decisive battle ensued. Retaining its superior maneuverability, the English fleet provoked Spanish fire while staying out of range. The English then closed, firing damaging broadsides into the enemy ships. The ships were close enough for sailors on the upper decks of the English and Spanish ships to exchange musket fire. Many of the Spanish gunners were killed or wounded by the English broadsides, and the task of manning the cannon quickly fell to the regular foot soldiers who were unfamiliar with their operation.

After eight hours, the English ships began to run out of ammunition, and some gunners began loading objects such as chains into cannons. Around 4 pm, the English fired their last shots and pulled back. Five Spanish ships were lost and many others severely damaged in what is known as the Battle of Gravelines. The Spanish plan for the fleet to link up with its army had been decisively disrupted.

“Stomach of a King”

Once the Armada was sailing northward up the Channel, the day after the battle off Gravelines, the next popular myth appears. It is the story of Elizabeth’s rousing address to her men at Tilbury on northern bank of the Thames. Her famous speech in which the Queen tells the assembled troops that she may: “have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king - and of a King of England too” has been dramatized in countless films. Elizabeth is often depicted riding a horse, dressed in white velvet, or even in armour. “I myself shall be your general“, she tells her men.

Once more, all is not what it seems. Elizabeth had indeed come up with the plan to address the troops while the Spanish were still in the Channel. Yet by the time she did so, it was 11 days too late, and the Armada was already staring defeat in the face - off the coast of Scotland!

Even better, the economy was struggling, and England was broke. Elizabeth could not afford to pay her troops and had to send them home. Fortunately, by the end of 1588 half of the English force were facing death from disease so, as Elizabeth’s chief advisor, William Cecil, put it: “If they’re dead, you don’t have to pay them.”

So, when Elizabeth uttered her famous words at Tilbury, what was left of the Armada was on its way home.  The only option left to the Spanish ships was to return to Spain by sailing round the north of Scotland and home via the Atlantic or the Irish sea.  

What also aided the English in defeating the Armada?

The Spanish ships were beginning to show wear from the long voyage, and some were kept together by having their damaged hulls strengthened with cables. Supplies of food and water ran short.

Off Scotland and Ireland, the fleet ran into a series of powerful westerly winds which drove many of the damaged ships further toward the shore. Because so many anchors had been abandoned during the escape from the English fire-ships off Calais, many of the ships were incapable of securing shelter as the fleet reached the coast of Ireland and were driven onto the rocks where local inhabitants looted the ships.

More ships and sailors were lost to cold and stormy weather than in direct combat. About 5,000 men died by drowning, starvation, and slaughter by local inhabitants after their ships were driven ashore on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland. Reports of the passage of the remnants of the Spanish Armada around Ireland abound with onerous accounts of hardships and survival. In the end 67 ships and fewer than 10,000 men survived.

Why is the 1588 battle with the Spanish Armada so famous? 

The English story of the Armada is one of rumour, spin and outright lies! With the action all taking place at sea, and communication from the English fleet to shore being pretty much useless, no one at home knew what was actually happening. Likewise, events were blown out of all proportion because, again, no one really knew what had happened. In the end people believed what they wanted to believe and the “fake news” - or “tabloid truths” - still resonate with us today.

In England, the boost to national pride from the defeat of the Spanish invasion lasted for years and Elizabeth's legend persisted, and grew, long after her death. Yet the Armada’s defeat did not bring victory in the war with Spain; in fact, that conflict dragged on into the 17th-century.

The English Armada 

The Spanish never really saw the Armada as a significant setback. That was because the English suffered an embarrassing naval disaster of their own in 1589. That year, Sir Francis Drake led a so-called “Counter Armada”, with the aim of destroying the remainder of Philip’s fleet while it was under repair in Santander. It was a fiasco, in which 15,000 Englishmen died, and many of the 86 ships were lost. Drake and his fleet were forced - just like Philip II’s own fleet a year earlier - to stop at A Coruña for lack of provisions. Here, a local woman, Maria Pita, led fierce resistance against the English navy.

Legacy

The legend of the defeat of the Spanish Armada created by the Tudors, and retold by generations after them, has had a powerful legacy. In times of crisis, from the Second World War to the Falklands Conflict in 1982, it has been used to convince Britons that this small island can take on superpowers, that we come from a long line of cool-headed and inspirational leaders, and that, small as we are, we can still play a mighty role on the world stage. True or not, this populist version of the Armada story convinces many to believe in that fantasy. Who knows where this impressive mingling of facts, fantasy, and fibs might take us next? Why does Boris’ Brexit spring to mind..? Bon appétit!

On This Day: The Forgotten Queen

February 12th, 1554: England's forgotten queen, Lady Jane Grey, is executed for treason.

In most popular histories, and as taught in probably all UK schools, the succession of British monarchs in the early modern period goes Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary 1 and Elizabeth I. There is, however, a notable absence in this list of Tudor kings and queens, namely Lady Jane Grey. Admittedly the title 'lady' does not make her regal connection immediately obvious, but neither would the Tudor public relations and marketing. If nothing else the Tudor dynasty was highly adept at self-promotion and in particular writing a history most favourable to themselves. William Shakespeare’s play Richard III is a rather good example of how Tudor propaganda has influenced more modern ideas. In ‘merrie ol’ England’ not towing the party line led many of the Tudor's subjects to an early grave. Undoubtedly keen not to upset Queen Elizabeth, therefore, Shakespeare crafts Richard has a ugly hunchback, ‘rudely stamp'd’, ‘deformed, unfinish'd’, and plotting to usurp the throne from his brother Edward’s two sons who Shakespeare has murdered by Richard’s command. The latter ‘fact’ is still contested today there being little surviving evidence to prove Richard was complicit in the deaths of the two princes in the Tower. All anyone can say with any certainty is that the fate of the two boys remains unknown. There is also an irony in painting Richard as a usurper given one could argue that the first of the Tudor monarchs, Henry VII, was exactly that.

Regardless of Ricardian machinations or Tudor propaganda, Henry VII son - the infamous Henry VIII - devoted a great deal of effort to secure an heir. From six marriages he and his wives produced just three surviving children and only one of them a boy. When that son, who reigned for just six years as Edward VI, died at the age of 15 in 1553, the troubling question of succession arose once more.

Both Mary and Elizabeth had been reinstated to the succession by their father Henry VIII in 1544, but in Edward’s will neither sister was in line to the throne. Rather the Protestant Edward did not want his Catholic sister Mary to rule and make England’s crown once more subordinate to the Pope in Rome. Instead Edward’s will named as successor his cousin Lady Jane Grey. Aged just 16 or 17, she was promoted as the Protestant alternative to the Catholic Mary. On July 10th, 1553, four days after Edward’s death, Jane was proclaimed queen. Nine days later the Privy Council changed its mind, Jane was deposed, and Mary ascended the throne.

During her trial at the Guildhall in November Jane was accused of ‘falsely and treacherously’ taking the crown of England thereby challenging Mary’s rightful ‘royal status, title, order and power of her kingdom of England.’ Perhaps hoping for mercy from the new queen, Jane pleaded guilty. It was a decision that doomed her; Jane could not be left alive to act as a beacon for the anti-Catholic faction. Although Mary allegedly desired to save her cousin, the Queen’s hand was forced by the politics of the day and she eventually agreed to Jane’s execution.

On February 12th, 1554 Jane ascended the scaffold constructed within the Tower of London. She bravely delivered her final speech as custom dictated and asked the assembled onlookers to pray for her. Eerily calm, Jane allowed herself to blindfolded before kneeling on a bed straw. Unable to see, her composure failed as she panicked, her flailing hands searching vainly for the headsman’s block. She was heard to cry ‘What shall I do? Where is it?’ Mere moments later Jane’s head was cleaved from her body by a single blow. She entered history as a tragic pawn in the world of cruel patriarchal politics only to become England’s forgotten queen.

Reference:

Carr, H. (2023), Lady Jane Grey is executed for treason’, Anniversaries, BBC History Magazine February edition, p.43.

On This Day: Remembering Noor Inayat Khan

September 13th, 1944: On This Day SOE operator Noor Inayat Khan was executed at Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria. 

At dawn on September 13th, 1944 [1] four women were led into a yard within the camp. There they were told to kneel and their death sentences were read out. Men of the Nazi SS (‘Schutzstaffel’) stepped forward and shot each woman in the back of the neck. One of them, however, despite having been severely beaten uttered her final word ‘liberté’. Such bravery and her name, Noor Inayat Khan, should not be forgotten.

She was born in Moscow on January 1st, 1914. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, the family left Russia for London, living in Bloomsbury. In 1920, however, the family moved to France, settling in Suresnes near Paris. As a young girl, Noor was described as quiet, shy, sensitive, and dreamy. After the death of her father in 1927, 13-year-old Noor took on the responsibility for her grief-stricken mother of her younger siblings.[citation needed] She went on to study child psychology at the Sorbonne, as well as music at the Paris Conservatory under Nadia Boulanger, composing for both harp and piano

As a young woman, Noor began a career as a writer, publishing her poetry and children's stories in English and French and becoming a regular contributor to children's magazines and French radio. In 1939, her book Twenty Jataka Tales, inspired by the Jataka tales of Buddhist tradition, was published in London by George G. Harrap and Co. The following year, to escape Nazi occupation of France, Noor’s family fled first to Bordeaux and then by sea to England, landing at Falmouth in Cornwall on June 22nd, 1940. Initially they stayed in Southampton, at the parental home of the philosopher Basil Mitchell. But in November that year, Noor joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and, as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class, was sent to be trained as a wireless operator. By June 1941 she had been assigned to a bomber training school but, finding the work somewhat boring, she applied for a commission. Eventually, Noor was recruited to join F (France) Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) [2], and in early February 1943 she was posted to the Air Ministry, Directorate of Air Intelligence, seconded to First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). She was sent to Wanborough Manor, near Guildford in Surrey, before being ordered to Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, for special training as a wireless operator in occupied territory. Having had previous wireless telegraphy (W/T) training, Noor had an edge on those who were just beginning their radio training and was considered both fast and accurate. In June 1943, now assigned the codename ‘Madelaine’, Noor was inserted by a Lysander aircraft into France with a mission to support the ‘Prosper’ resistance network in Paris. She was the first woman to be sent in such a capacity as all female agents before her had been sent as couriers only.

When the network’s agents were rounded up by German forces, Noor chose to stay in France. She was to be betrayed and arrested by the Gestapo, the Nazi’s secret police, four months later. After several escape attempts and recaptures, Noor, who had steadfastly refused to reveal any information during interrogation, was sent to Dachau Concentration Camp in Bavaria alongside three other SOE operators, Madelaine Damerment, Yolande Beekman and Elaine Plewman. These four women were those executed that morning in September, their bodies being stripped and searched for jewellery.

For displaying ‘the most conspicuous courage, both moral and physical’, in 1949 Noor Inayat Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross [3].

Reference:

Carr, H., (2022), Anniversaries’, BBC History Magazine September 2022, p. 19. 

Endnotes:

1. Possibly September 12th.

2. SOE’s mission was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially those occupied by Nazi Germany. SOE operators allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from the UK.

3. The George Cross (GC) is the highest award bestowed by the British government for non-operational gallantry or gallantry not in the presence of an enemy. In the British honours system, since its introduction in 1940, the George Cross has been equal in stature to the Victoria Cross, the highest military gallantry award. It is awarded ‘for acts of the greatest heroism or for most conspicuous courage in circumstance of extreme danger’, not in the presence of the enemy, to members of the British armed forces and to British civilians.

On This Day: Caesar invades Britain

August 26th, 55 BC: Gaius Julius Caesar first ‘invasion’ of Britain takes place.

Britain was not unknown to the Classical world. As early as the 4th century BC, the Greeks, Phoenicians and Carthaginians traded for Cornish tin. Greek authors even refer to the Cassiterides, or 'tin islands' describing them being situated somewhere near the West coast of Europe.

The first direct Roman contact, however, came when the Roman general and future dictator, Gaius Julius Caesar, made two expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BC as part of his conquest of Gaul believing the Britons had been helping the Gallic resistance.

Of all the Amorican tribes, who occupied the areas of modern day Normandy and Brittany, the Veneti, with their seagoing experience, had close trading links with their neighbours across the Gallic Sea, or the English Channel. In South-west Britain were the Dumnonii, mainly in Devon and Cornwall, and the Durotriges whose territory extended East to the Hampshire Avon and westwards to the River Exe. Both of these tribes almost certainly provided their continental cousins with support and encouragement in their resistance to the Roman invader. It is not inconceivable that those of the Veneti who managed to escape Caesar’s wrath would have fled across the Channel.

The flight of the Veneti, and the help they received from their brethren in the mysterious and apparently prosperous island across the water, attracted Caesar’s attention. He determined to reconnoitre because, although he had no had expressed no intention of remaining there, Britain had rendered assistance to his enemy in all his Gallic campaigns and he felt:

‘It would be a great advantage merely to have visited the islands, to have seen what kind of people the inhabitants were, and to have learned something about the country with its harbours and landing places.’

Caesar, with his customary speed for decisive action, made his preparations late in the summer of 55 BC. An officer, Gaius Volusenus, was despatched in a warship to search the British coastline for a suitable landing place and with instructions to report back as soon as possible. Meanwhile a task force was assembled at Boulogne of two legions and a cavalry regiment, together with a fleet of about 80 ships.

Not all Britons were necessarily hostile to Caesar’s intentions. A number of tribes, for example, sent envoys to the continent, promising hostages and offering submission. Quick to exploit this hopeful gesture, Caesar sailed on August 25th. Having crossed the Channel overnight, by mid-morning of August 26th, the eighty ships approached the coast of Kent preparing for a beach landing. On board were some 12,000 soldiers of Legio VII and Legio X, the latter reputedly the commander’s, Gaius Iulius Caesar’s, favoured legion. All had not gone well, however. The hoped for rendezvous with the cavalry sailing from a more northerly embarkation port never occurred.  The transport ships were delayed by bad weather and the contingent never caught up with the main body of the task force severely handicapping Caesar’s subsequent operations.

The sight greeting the Roman force that August morning was alarming. The clifftops were lined with warriors, and horsemen and charioteers prepared to repel any Roman attempt to land. The Romans were faced with very grave difficulties. The size of the ships prevented them from running aground to allow the soldiers to disembark on the beach. At length the invaders managed to anchor just offshore, probably somewhere near modern town of Deal, but this meant the heavily-laden troops had to wade ashore in the face of a determined enemy. Hesitant to do so, the Roman attack stalled until the Aquilifer (eagle-bearer) of Legio X jumped overboard carrying the legion’s sacred eagle into the surf all the time exhorting his fellow legionaries to follow him. Fearful of the disgrace that would befall them if they lost the eagle, the soldiers leapt into action. Waterlogged Romans waded ashore and, after initial difficulties, eventually had sufficient numbers landed to charge the Britons forcing them to flee.

Caesar’s first expedition to Britain did gain a foothold on the coast of Kent but, hindered by storm damage to the ships and a lack of cavalry, was unable to advance much further. The expedition, more a ‘reconnaissance in force’ than a full invasion, was fundamentally a military failure but a political success. The Roman Senate declared a 20-day public holiday in Rome in honour of the unprecedented achievement of obtaining hostages from Britain and defeating Belgian tribes on returning to the continent. Undoubtedly buoyed by the reaction of the Senate and people of Rome, Caesar launched a second expedition the following campaign season in 54 BC. This time he took with him a substantially larger force and proceeded to coerce or invite many of the native British tribes to pay tribute and give hostages in return for peace. A friendly local king, Mandubracius, was installed, and his rival, Cassivellaunus, was brought to terms. Hostages were taken, but historians disagree over whether the tribute agreed was ever paid by the Britons after Caesar's return to Gaul with his forces.

Caesar had conquered no territory and had left behind no troops, but he did establish clients on the island and had brought Britain into Rome's sphere of political influence. Emperor Augustus had planned invasions in 34, 27 and 25 BC, but circumstances were never favourable, and the relationship between Britain and Rome settled into one of diplomacy and trade. Archaeology, for example, shows an increase in imported luxury goods in south-eastern Britain.

Rome appears to have encouraged a balance of power in southern Britain, supporting two powerful kingdoms: the Catuvellauni, ruled by the descendants of Tasciovanus, and the Atrebates, ruled by the descendants of Commius who had acted as an envoy for Caesar in 55 BC. This policy was followed until AD 39 or AD 40, when Caligula received an exiled member of the Catuvellaunian dynasty and staged an invasion of Britain that collapsed in farcical circumstances before it had even left Gaul. When Claudius successfully invaded in AD 43, it was in aid of another fugitive British ruler, this time Verica of the Atrebates. From then on Roman influence spread across the islands until Britannia was incorporated as a province of the Empire for the next 400 years.

As always please feel free to Like, Comment and Share. Bon appétit!

Reference:

Carr, H., (2023), ‘Julis Caesar’s Roman legions invade Britain’, BBC History Magazine (August), p. 7.