Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe

Alexander Selkirk is usually credited as being the original of the character of Robinson Crusoe in Daniel Defoe’s novel of 1719. Although Defoe’s book was fictional, and owed much to the author’s vivid imagination, it did contain elements of fact which relate to the life of Alexander Selkirk, as relayed by word of mouth and written accounts at the time of his rescue from having been marooned on a remote island for more than four years.

Alexander Selkirk’s early career

Alexander Selkirk was born in 1676 in Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland. He was the seventh son of a shoemaker. He made it clear at an early age that he wanted to go to sea, which he did in August 1695.

In May 1703 he was appointed master of the privateer “Cinque Ports”, which was under the command of Captain Charles Pickering. Together with the “St George”, commanded by William Dampier, the renowned explorer, the ship set sail for the South Pacific Ocean on 11^th September. Britain was at war with France and Spain (the War of the Spanish Succession), and privateers were being encouraged to capture and raid ships belonging to those two countries.

When Captain Pickering died after reaching Brazil, Thomas Stradling was appointed to succeed him. Selkirk seems to have found the new commander difficult to deal with and may have been among those officers and crew who mutinied after the ships reached the Juan Fernandez islands, some 400 miles west of Chile.

However, the crew seems to have been pacified following a successful engagement with a French ship, after which both British ships continued to explore northwards in the hope of finding more rich pickings, although these proved hard to come by.

By the end of May 1704 the two commanders found that they could no longer work together so the two ships parted company, with Selkirk staying on Stradling’s ship.

How he became “Robinson Crusoe”

The “Cinque Ports” sailed up and down the coast of Central and South America until August, with relations between Selkirk and Stradling becoming increasingly fraught. When they returned to Juan Fernandez in September for repairs, Selkirk declared that the ship was not in a seaworthy enough condition to continue its voyage and that he would rather stay ashore than sail in her. He therefore gathered together some essentials and disembarked. The list of items he took with him was later given as:

‘his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets, and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible, some practical pieces, and his mathematical instruments and books’.

It would appear that, once he had realised what he had done, he changed his mind almost immediately but Stradling refused to let him back on the ship. However, Selkirk’s move turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the “Cinque Ports” sank a month later. He had been correct in his assessment of the dangerous condition of the ship.

Selkirk now had to survive as best he could on his own. The island in question (renamed “Robinson Crusoe Island” in 1966; another island in the group being named “Alejandro Selkirk Island”) was large enough (nearly 40 square miles) to support him in terms of food, especially as it had a population of wild goats which he could hunt, firstly using his musket and later catching them on foot. When he had been on the island for some time he tamed some of the goats and “farmed” them for milk and meat. His fear was that he would never leave the island and that he would eventually be too old to catch anything wild.

He also bred cats from the feral specimens that had escaped from ships that had called in the past. These not only provided company but helped to keep him safe from the rats that had also populated the island thanks to the occasional visits of sailors.

Having nobody to talk to was one of his worst privations, and he preserved the power of speech by reading his Bible aloud to himself and singing psalms to tunes that he remembered from his boyhood days in the church at Largo.

On one occasion he was lucky to survive a fall over a precipice when chasing a goat. When he came round he found that the goat was lying dead underneath him, having cushioned his fall and probably saved his life.

His hopes of being rescued lay with the possibility of a ship visiting the island, much as the “Cinque Ports” had done. When two Spanish ships did so, he was spotted by the sailors who sent a boat ashore and fired a gun in his direction. His knowledge of the island, and his physical agility, enabled him to escape and hide until they gave up the chase.

Rescue and further voyages

Selkirk was eventually rescued when two privateers from Bristol, the “Duke” and the “Duchess” called at the island in February 1709 in search of water. Selkirk had a fire burning, and this was seen by an observer on the “Duke”, whose commander, Captain Woodes Rogers, sent a boat ashore to investigate. When Selkirk was brought aboard the ship, dressed in goatskins and barely able to speak coherently, he was recognised by the man who was acting as pilot on board the ship, none other than William Dampier.

Dampier remembered Selkirk as having been an excellent ship’s master and recommended that Captain Rogers should make use of his services. Selkirk was thus not only rescued but he also found himself with a job, namely as mate of the “Duke”.

The two ships made a capture on 26^th February which was renamed the “Increase”, with Selkirk being appointed by Rogers to be its master. In December an even richer prize was seized, this being the “Nuestra Señora”, a Spanish galleon which was renamed the “Bachelor”. Again, Selkirk was given the job of being its new master, with Captain Thomas Dover in command.

On 10^th January 1710 the fleet of four ships then set sail to cross the Pacific, a voyage of 6000 miles. They arrived in Batavia (modern Jakarta) in June, where the booty was shared out and Selkirk received 80 pieces of eight.

After the ships were refitted they sailed on to Cape of Good Hope where they stayed put for three months before heading home as part of a larger fleet, eventually reaching the Shetlands in July 1711 and London in October. When Alexander Selkirk eventually stepped ashore he had been away from Britain for more than eight years, with four years and four months of that time spent in total isolation.

Later life

He found it very difficult to adjust to a normal life. After telling his story to anyone who was willing to listen, and there were many such, he eventually returned to Largo, where he found it necessary to build a cave in his father’s garden where he could be alone and meditate.

However, he also became infatuated with a local woman, Sophia Bruce, with whom he eloped back to London, living with her for some time (possibly as husband and wife) and making a will in her favour in January 1718.

The call of the sea eventually became too strong for him and he embarked on HMS Weymouth on 20^th October 1720, as master’s mate. A factor in his decision may well have been the appearance in 1719 of Defoe’s novel, and the extra attention that would have come his way. For a man who had become used to solitude it must have seemed that this was going to be denied him for ever and it was time to escape to the world he knew best, namely that of ships and the sea.

HMS Weymouth was based at Plymouth, where Selkirk appears to have forgotten all about Sophia Bruce in that he married Frances Candis, a widow, on 12^th December 1720, when he also drew up a new will that left everything to his new, maybe bigamous, bride.

  

From March to December 1721 Selkirk served aboard HMS Weymouth in operations against pirates off the coast of Africa. He died of disease aboard ship on 13^th December, leaving the two women in his life to fight over his will, a fight which Frances Candis won.

Apart from those four years and four months spent on Juan Fernandez, Alexander Selkirk’s life was not all that remarkable, in that many sailors of that time could have told a very similar story of sailing around the world and serving on privateers and naval ships. However, it is as the original of Robinson Crusoe that he has gained immortality.

The most accurate account of his “Crusoe years” is in Woodes Rogers’s “A Cruising Voyage Around the World”, which was published in 1712 with a second edition in 1718, but the best-known is clearly Defoe’s novel, despite its fictions. Defoe almost certainly met Selkirk in London, and there were stories that he tricked Selkirk into allowing him to use Selkirk’s own journal, but there is no evidence that this is true.

There is an unproven report, that may well be true, that Selkirk once complained that, although he was now a wealthy man, he was much happier when he did not have a farthing to his name. Even if this was an invention it would not have been out of character for a man whose best years, in retrospect, were spent entirely on his own on an island in the Pacific Ocean.

© John Welford

Cecil Rhodes, Empire builder

Cecil John Rhodes was born on 5th July 1853, at Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, the fifth son of the town’s vicar. After an education at the local grammar school, he was sent to the British colony of Natal to join his brother Herbert, who was growing cotton there.

However, when Cecil arrived at Durban in January 1871 his brother was missing, as he had gone to seek his fortune on the newly discovered diamond fields of Griqualand West. Cecil started growing cotton, but by October he too had decided that diamonds were a far more profitable venture, and set off inland. Within two weeks of finding his brother, the latter was off again, leaving Cecil in charge of his claims, where he soon proved that he could hold his own in the dangerous pioneer country around Kimberley.

Within two years, Cecil had amassed a fortune of £10,000, which he used to fund a long-cherished ambition, namely to go to Oxford University. However, he only lasted a term before ill health and the lure of Africa took him back to the diamond fields.

Diamond mining in Kimberley was to go through a series of crises, involving such issues as the claims of white miners against black, and small claims-holders against larger ones, as well as technical problems caused when opencast mining was forced to give way to deep mining. Many miners gave up, but Rhodes stayed put and, together with his partner Charles Rudd, became the owner of one of the largest concerns in the region.

There was, however, a controversy over Rhodes’s dealings concerning pumping equipment, and in 1876 he returned to Oxford to complete his degree and qualify as a barrister.

His time at Oxford served to reinforce his imperialist views, and his conviction that the “Anglo-Saxon” race was inherently superior to any other, especially in Africa. He even went so far as to develop a grandiose scheme for an Anglo-Saxon empire that would comprise Great Britain dominating all other nations and races.

On returning to Kimberley in 1878, he set about consolidating his power and accumulating greater wealth. Through his control of the De Beers Mining Company, Rhodes, with his colleagues, became the dominant force in the region, bringing other companies into the De Beers empire and exercising considerable political power at the same time.

Rhodes’s management style included practices that reflected his imperialist attitudes and laid the foundations for 20th century apartheid. For example, black workers were forced to live in closed compounds and were searched every time they entered and left. White workers were treated far less harshly.

Rhodes became a politician by being elected to the parliament of Cape Colony, a position which he used to further his interests as a diamond miner and trader. One of his first actions was to sponsor a law that bore down harshly on diamond smugglers. He showed interest in a peaceful outcome to the dispute with Basutoland, but this was largely out of self-interest because the Basuto people provided food and labour for his mining empire.

Likewise, Rhodes was keen to see the Afrikaners (settlers of Dutch extraction) kept in check, partly from imperialist motives, but mainly so that he could extend his control over the diamond mines in the territories they controlled, particularly in Bechuanaland (modern-day Botswana) to the west of Griqualand West. The situation was complicated by the arrival of Germany as a colonial power, taking control of the region that became South West Africa.

By means of persuading the South African government to take military action, Rhodes was able to gain most of what he wanted, with northern Bechuanaland becoming a British protectorate and the Afrikaners kept as potential allies rather than enemies. Above all, his commercial interests were secured.

In 1886, gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand, which led in turn to further European expansion in southern Africa and the annexation of virtually all the land as far north as the Congo.

Rhodes was rather slow to get into gold mining, and his acquisitions on the Rand were not particularly profitable. He therefore set his sights further north, and particularly in the lands of Lobengula, the king of the Matabele, whom Rhodes was able to outmanoeuvre in gaining mining concessions.

Rhodes also worked with, and eventually gained control over, the British South Africa Company, to acquire interests over vast swathes of Africa, with treaties being signed that would establish British rule over much of the continent.

Things did not always go smoothly for Rhodes and his agents and partners. This was in part because of the imperialist interests of the other European great powers who sought their share of the African carve-up, notably Belgium and Portugal. However, Rhodes was able to colonise the lands north of the Limpopo that were later to be known as Rhodesia, although their promises of mineral wealth were not realised to the extent that was hoped for. His methods of acquiring territory were often dubious, to say the least.

In 1890, Rhodes became Prime Minister of Cape Colony, with the unlikely support both of liberals and Afrikaners. He proved to have astute political skills in being able to please all the disparate elements of his administration by, for example, supporting agricultural interests. However, the liberals were less happy with his attitude towards African labour, and did not form part of Rhodes’s second administration in 1894.

Trouble flared in 1895 when rivalries with the neighbouring Transvaal, peopled by Afrikaner Boers, nearly led to war. The dispute was over tariffs and rail communications. It is notable that Rhodes was able to retain the support of his own Afrikaners throughout the crisis.

However, things went disastrously wrong when the “Jameson Raid” into the Transvaal failed in its aim to overthrow the Boer republic, and Rhodes’s refusal to repudiate the raid forced his resignation as Prime Minister. Rhodes’s “fingerprints” were soon found to be on the plot, with the result that Afrikaner support was lost and the Cape electorate started to split along ethnic lines.

In 1896, the Ndebele and Shona in what is now Zimbabwe rebelled against the colonists. Rhodes took personal charge of the campaign to quell the rebellion in his private colony, but realised that negotiation was better than conquest. He used much of his own money to resettle the rebels in new territory and to pacify the settlers.

Rhodes continued to be a powerful influence in Cape politics, although he never regained the Premiership. He was also prominent in efforts to promote a railway link from “Cairo to the Cape”.

Throughout his life Rhodes had been conscious of his mortality, and he wrote a number of very different wills at various times. His eighth and last will, written in 1899, provided for 52 annual Oxford scholarships for men from the colonies (which included the United States!), the aim being to strengthen the ties of empire by ensuring the education of future imperial leaders. Bill Clinton was a notable Rhodes Scholar at a much later date.

Rhodes’s last years were spent in defending his reputation, particularly as regarded his actions over the Jameson Raid, and overseeing progress in Rhodesia. He also spent four months trapped in Kimberley in 1899 during the First Boer War.

His health, which was never robust, eventually deteriorated, and he died on 26th March 1902 at his home near Cape Town. He was buried, at his request, in the hill country of Southern Rhodesia. He left behind a strong imperialist mentality in the leaders of southern Africa, the seeds of apartheid, and a powerful mining company in De Beers that continues to dominate the diamond trade to this day.

© John Welford

Anthony Eden, British Prime Minister

Anthony Eden is generally regarded as one of the least successful British prime ministers of the 20^th century, whose poor judgment over the Suez Crisis led to a considerable lessening of British influence in Middle East affairs and caused a deep rift with the United States that took some time to repair.

Early years

Robert Anthony Eden was born on 12^th June 1897 at Windlestone Hall in County Durham. He was the third son and fourth child of Sir William Eden, a baronet who owned large tracts of land in County Durham and Northumberland.

After private tuition and preparatory school, Anthony went to Eton College in 1911 and so was at school when World War I broke out in 1914. On leaving school he enlisted with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in September 1915 and was awarded the Military Cross in 1917 for rescuing a wounded man when under fire. He was promoted to brigade major in May 1918 when still aged only 20.

After the war he entered Christ Church College Oxford to read oriental languages, particularly Persian and Arabic, and was awarded a first-class honours degree in 1922. He had a flair for languages, also being fluent in French and German. This doubtless had a strong bearing on his overwhelming interest in foreign affairs during his political career.

Early political career

He first stood for Parliament, as a Conservative in an unwinnable Labour seat, in the general election of November 1922, but had more success the following year when he won the seat of Warwick and Leamington in December 1923. He was married in November of that year to Beatrice Helen Beckett; there were to be two surviving sons from the marriage, which ended in divorce in 1950.

In July 1926 he was given the post of parliamentary private secretary to Sir Austen Chamberlain, the Foreign Secretary. Eden agreed with Chamberlain’s view that the best way to maintain peace in Europe was to support France and be very wary of Germany, although this was not the attitude taken by a large number of fellow Conservatives.

In August 1931 Eden was appointed under-secretary of state at the Foreign Office, under the National Government of Ramsay Macdonald, which in effect meant that he was the parliamentary face of the Foreign Office in the Commons, given that the Foreign Secretary was a member of the House of Lords.

In December 1933 he became Lord Privy Seal, which made him virtually a roving ambassador for the Foreign Office. In this role, Eden was the first Western politician to have face-to-face- meetings with all three of Europe’s strong men, namely Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. He formed clear impressions of all three men and knew that none of them was to be trusted.

Eden acted as a mediator for the League of Nations during the Balkan crisis of late 1934 and his patient diplomacy may well have prevented war breaking out at that time. A health problem prevented him from attending the Stresa conference in April 1935 which failed to rein back Italy’s ambitions regarding a takeover of Abyssinia. Eden believed that, had he been there instead of Macdonald, he could have deflected Mussolini from his aims.

In June 1935 Eden was at last given a Cabinet post, specifically to deal with League of Nations affairs, but this was an awkward compromise that caused difficulties with the new Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare. However, Hoare resigned in December, following the outcry over the Hoare-Laval pact that allowed Mussolini to retain his new colony of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Eden therefore became Foreign Secretary in his place, although he was not Prime Minister Baldwin’s first choice.

Foreign Secretary

Anthony Eden, at 38, therefore became Britain’s youngest Foreign Secretary since 1851, but he was to be one of the longest-serving (over three periods of office).  This was a crucial time in international relations, with not only the ambitions of Hitler and Mussolini to be contended with but also the aggressive attitude of Japan and, from July 1936, a civil war in Spain. Eden took the view that it was vital to maintain solidarity with France and to develop friendly relations with as many countries as possible that were opposed to the Axis powers (as from November 1936) of Germany and Italy. This policy included the signing of an Anglo-Egyptian treaty in August 1936.

However, Stanley Baldwin resigned as Prime Minister in May 1937 and Neville Chamberlain took his place. Eden and Chamberlain took a very different line on foreign policy in that Chamberlain believed that it was possible to make binding agreements with Hitler and Mussolini whereas Eden did not.

Things came to a head when Chamberlain, in Eden’s absence, took decisions on foreign policy with which Eden disagreed profoundly. Eden therefore resigned in February 1938 and was not in office at the time of Chamberlain’s signing of the Munich Agreement with Hitler in September 1938.

Eden had not burned his bridges completely and, when war was declared in September 1939, he was invited to rejoin the government as Dominions Secretary, although this did not gain him a place in the war cabinet. This was still the case when Winston Churchill replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister in May 1940 and Eden was made War Secretary, in which post he made his famous radio broadcast appealing for men to join what would become the Home Guard. In October he made an important visit to Egypt and Palestine.

However, in December 1940 Eden did become Foreign Secretary once again, and his advice to Churchill was invaluable concerning the conduct of the war. His many important missions included several visits to Moscow to negotiate with Stalin over an anti-German alliance. Churchill made it very clear that Eden was his preferred successor as Prime Minister.

After the war, Eden attended the San Francisco Conference in 1945 that was the inaugural meeting of the United Nations, but then found himself out of office when the Conservatives lost the general election of July 1945.

Eden had hoped that Churchill would stand down after this defeat but Churchill wanted to carry on and try to become Prime Minister once more. This he was to do at the general election of October 1951, but it was Eden who appeared during the campaign in the first ever televised election broadcast.

Eden now became Foreign Secretary for the third time. He might have succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister when the latter suffered a stroke in June 1953 but he was himself ill at the time, recovering from a botched gallstones operation in which his bile duct was accidentally cut. Churchill recovered, and it was not until 5^th April 1955 when the 80-year-old Prime Minister finally handed over the reins to Anthony Eden.

Prime Minister

Eden’s first move was to call a general election, which the Conservatives won with a majority of 60 seats. Foreign affairs were to dominate his administration, including a missed opportunity for Britain to join the movement for European economic co-operation at its outset.

However, the major crisis that was to bring his career to a shattering halt was the Suez affair, which started when the Egyptian government, under Colonel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal and Eden, together with the French, hatched a plot to win it back by encouraging the Israelis to attack Egypt, which they did on 29^th October 1956. British and French paratroopers then landed in the Canal Zone, ostensibly to separate the two warring sides. The United States opposed the move and Eden was forced to withdraw within 24 hours.

Eden was very evasive about the whole business, even pretending that he had no knowledge that Israel was going to attack Egypt. However, in the end this fooled nobody and Eden eventually had no choice but to resign, which he did on 9^th January 1957.

Retirement

A complicating factor was Eden’s state of health, which was never good after the botched operation. One problem was that the drugs he was prescribed to control his pain had side-effects that included extreme irritability and impaired judgment, which were not what Eden and the country needed at that time.

Eden’s retirement was to last for 20 years until his death, from liver cancer, on 14^th January 1977, at the age of 79. He was offered a peerage in July 1961 as the 1^st Earl of Avon, although he was not a particularly active member of the House of Lords.

History is a matter of “what ifs”. If a surgeon had been more careful during that operation in 1953, and Eden had been in a better frame of mind to deal with the Suez crisis, would his reputation have been one of conspicuous success rather than ignominious failure? Up to that point, very little had gone wrong in his public life and Anthony Eden had served his country with great distinction, not least during both world wars in very different capacities.

© John Welford

Harold Harefoot, Danish king of England

Much less is known about the first than the second King Harold of England, as it was the latter who lost his throne and his life at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and was thus the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings. The first King Harold is usually known as Harold Harefoot.

King Harold’s claim to the throne

King Harold I, although King of England for a brief period in the 11^th century, was not an Anglo-Saxon but a Dane, being a member of the short Danish interregnum before the Anglo-Saxons, in the person of Edward the Confessor, were restored to the throne.

Cnut (Canute) of Denmark had ruled an impressive empire, comprising England, Scotland, Denmark and Norway, but when he died in 1035 this all fell apart. One major problem was that there was no obvious successor, as he left behind several offspring who laid claim to various parts of the empire.

It did not help matters that Cnut would appear to have been a bigamist, having married Elfgifu of Northampton in 1016 and Emma of Normandy, the widow of King Ethelred (the Unready), in 1017. However, all sorts of claims and counter-claims were made in the records of the time as to which marriage came first, whether one or other “wife” was actually a concubine, and therefore whether or not the children of the marriages were legitimate.

One fact that seems uncontested is that Elfgifu had two sons, namely Harold and Swein. It is recorded that Emma agreed to marry Cnut on condition that neither of Elfgifu’s sons would succeed to the empire should she, Emma, produce a son. However, it would also appear that Cnut’s later intention was that Harold should become King of England while Emma’s son Harthacnut ruled Denmark. In 1030 Cnut sent Elfgifu and Swein to Norway to look after that part of the empire for him.

When Cnut died in 1035, Harold would have been about 18 or 19 years old. He apparently acquired the nickname “Harefoot” because of his athletic build and swiftness as a runner; however, this is not recorded in any document written earlier than the 12^th century, so it may well be a later invention, or a result of confusion with another person.

Harold had the support of the powerful lords of the Midland counties, probably because his mother was from that area. Harthacnut was in Denmark at the time, defending his lands, but his interests in England were protected by his mother Emma who was based in the Wessex capital of Winchester. One possible outcome was that England would be split between the half-brothers, with Harold ruling the north and Harthacnut the south. Swein was soon removed from the reckoning because he died late in 1035.

However, Emma also had two sons by her first husband, Ethelred, namely Alfred (Etheling) and Edward (who would later be known as Edward the Confessor). They were living in exile in Normandy as guests of Duke Robert (father of William the Conqueror). On Cnut’s death, Alfred launched an invasion of England but was intercepted by Earl Godwine (father of Harold II) and handed over to Harold Harefoot. Harold had him blinded and he died soon afterwards, possibly as a result of the blinding.

Harold becomes king

Harold was then accepted as king by the lords throughout the country, even by Godwine who had earlier given his support to Harthacnut. Queen Emma was sent into exile in Flanders. Harthacnut realised that he had no chance of wresting the throne from Harold, as he did not wish to share Alfred’s fate, so he stayed put in Denmark.

There is scarcely any evidence of Harold’s activities as undisputed monarch, but his reign was not a long one. He died in Oxford on 17^th March 1040 and was the first king to be buried in Westminster Abbey. Harthacnut then arrived to claim the throne and promptly had Harold’s corpse dug up and thrown into a marsh. It was later retrieved and given a proper burial in a Danish cemetery in London.

One report mentions that Harold was married and had a son, but, if he did, the son never entered the historical record as a claimant to the throne of England.

© John Welford

Bess of Hardwick, a remarkable Tudor woman

Bess of Hardwick was one of the most remarkable women not of royal blood to emerge from the Tudor Age. From relatively modest origins she rose to enjoy considerable wealth and prestige, and some of the buildings she commissioned are among England’s premier attractions.

Early Life

She was born as Elizabeth Hardwick in about 1527. She was one of five children born to John Hardwick, a member of the minor gentry of Derbyshire. Her father died when Bess was very young, and the family fell on hard times as a result. Her mother remarried, but her second husband brought little wealth to the family although he fathered three more children for her to look after. He later spent six years in a debtors’ prison.

Bess escaped this life of genteel poverty by marrying when still very young – possibly at the age of 16. She was a widow at 17, but she gained a modest inheritance as a result of her husband’s early death.

Second husband

Bess’s luck really changed three years later when she married Sir William Cavendish, the personal treasurer of King Henry VIII. It is possible that Bess had been working as a lady-in-waiting to the Marchioness of Dorset (the mother of Lady Jane Grey) and that this was how she met Sir William. Otherwise it is difficult to see how she would have had access to that particular social circle.

As it was, Bess’s second marriage was happy and productive, with eight children being born 1548 and 1577, six of them surviving to adulthood. Among the godparents of her children were Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth I) and several notable Protestant aristocrats.

In 1549 Sir William bought the Derbyshire estate of Chatsworth and then acquired several other estates in the county. The properties were owned jointly by the couple, which meant that, should Sir William pre-decease her, ownership would not immediately pass from Bess to the next generation.

This proved to be a sound move, because Sir William died in 1577. Even so, Bess was not free of financial worry because her husband died with debts of more than £5000. Although she sought to offset the debts by petitioning Parliament, it would clearly have been in her best interest to find another husband, and preferably a very rich one.

Third husband

This turned out to be Sir William St Loe, a very wealthy widower who was a member of the household of Princess Elizabeth. The couple did not spend much time together, because Bess preferred to be at Chatsworth, where she oversaw the building of the magnificent house that stands to this day, while St Loe was mainly in London. There were no children of this marriage.

At some time after the accession of Elizabeth to the throne (in 1558), Bess became a gentlewoman of the privy chamber, a position that she held until the two women had a major disagreement and Bess was dismissed.

Fourth husband

William St Loe died in 1565, leaving the bulk of his fortune to Bess, and in 1567 she married for the fourth and last time. This was to George Talbot, the 6^th Earl of Shrewsbury, who was even rich than husband number three. Shrewsbury was one of the wealthiest men in the north of England, being the owner of three castles and a number of other houses as well as huge areas of land.

Bess lost no time in uniting the fortunes of her house and that of her husband, which she did by arranging marriages between a son and daughter of hers and a daughter and son of the earl.

In 1568 Queen Elizabeth gave Shrewsbury the task of being jailer to the captured Mary Queen of Scots. Mary spent time at several properties owned by the earl, and Bess therefore came into contact with her. Bess and Mary did not get on well together, especially after Bess suspected that Mary and her husband had had an affair – which was almost certainly untrue.

Bess also annoyed her husband (and Queen Elizabeth) when she engineered a marriage between her daughter Elizabeth Cavendish and Charles Stuart, the son of the Countess of Lennox who had paid a five-day visit to her former friend Queen Mary.

Shrewsbury also complained that his wife was spending too much money on the work at Chatsworth when he was facing increasing expense in looking after Queen Mary in a style that befitted a queen.

In 1584 the couple separated and Bess retired to Chatsworth. The earl claimed Chatsworth as his, under the terms of their marriage settlement, and it took a protracted legal debate before Bess was eventually awarded complete ownership of Chatsworth and a substantial financial settlement for good measure.

Hardwick Hall

At the time when it looked as though she might lose Chatsworth, Bess bought the Hardwick estate from her brother and started to renovate the house that is now known as Hardwick Old Hall. This work was virtually complete by 1591.

However, no sooner was the work completed than Bess decided to build a completely new house only a few yards away from the old one. This is Hardwick New Hall. Bess was able to do this because the Earl of Shrewsbury died in 1590 and left Bess one third of all the property he had owned at the time of their marriage.

The shell of Hardwick Hall (i.e. the new building) was completed in 1593 and Bess (who remained a widow for the rest of her life) moved in in 1597, although she continued to make changes up to her death in 1608.

It is a remarkable building in many respects, partly because of its large number of windows, giving rise to the description “Hardwick Hall – more glass than wall”. Window glass was very expensive in Elizabethan England, and a measure of one’s wealth was how many glass windows one had in one’s house.

Bess did not only show off her wealth and status by living in large rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows (which incidentally made the house extremely difficult and expensive to heat), but had her initials (ES for Elizabeth of Shrewsbury) prominently displayed at the top of each of the Hall’s six towers. She also filled the house with furniture, paintings, tapestries and embroidery with no expense spared.

Bess died in 1608 at the age of around 81 (given the uncertainty over the year of her birth). As well as the magnificent houses at Chatsworth and Hardwick she left behind a dynasty that was to play important roles in later events. The Dukes of Devonshire are descended from her second son William Cavendish and the Dukes of Newcastle and Portland from her youngest son Charles.

© John Welford

Aethelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians

Women did not have as hard a time in Anglo-Saxon high society as they were to do in later ages. An example of the respect that was shown to high-born women is Aethelflaed, the eldest daughter of King Alfred of Wessex. She was to have a major impact on developments in England, especially after her father’s death in 899.

King Alfred the Great is renowned for having fought off the threat from Danish invaders and turned the tide of what had looked like inevitable defeat. However, Alfred only ruled in Wessex, which was the south and south-west of England. Between his kingdom and the Danelaw (the eastern part of England that was ceded to the Danes) lay the larger kingdom of Mercia. Were Mercia to fall, Wessex would again be threatened.

The Lady Aethelflaed

Alfred left his daughter the large sum of one hundred pounds and a royal estate. She had already been married for several years, her husband being Ethelred of Mercia. The couple proved to be effective joint rulers of Mercia, with Aethelflaed playing an active role in decision-making when it came to defending the kingdom.

Ethelred did not enjoy good health, which placed greater burdens on Aethelflaed; these were increased even further when Ethelred died in 911. Aethelflaed now took over the role of sole ruler, being known as “The Lady of the Mercians”. Although there is no evidence that she took a direct fighting role in any battles against the Danes, she certainly planned campaigns and inspired her troops to greater efforts.

Alfred had been succeeded in Wessex by his son Edward, who joined his sister in campaigning against the Danes. Together they forced the Danes north to the River Humber and freed East Anglia.

Aethelflaed had learned an important lesson from her father, which was to defend territory that had been won by building fortified towns that would act not only as population centres but be places of refuge for farmers in the area should danger threaten. These “burhs” were established throughout Mercia and would form the basis of “boroughs” that exist to the present day. Among them were Tamworth, Warwick, Runcorn and Stafford.

As Aethelflaed’s armies moved north they captured the Dane-held cities of Derby and Leicester and she was on the point of taking York, the Danish capital, when she died in 918.

Aethelflaed’s legacy

Aethelflaed’s doughty spirit was to live on in her nephew, Edward’s son Athelstan. Edward so admired his sister that he sent his son to be brought up by her and gain an apprenticeship in statecraft. The training and example were to pay dividends, in that Athelstan would later unite the kingdoms of England and be entitled to claim the honour of being the first king of all-England.

Aethelflaed’s name is not often brought up in discussions about where the roots of England lie. However, perhaps the Lady of the Mercians deserves to be better remembered as one of the group of remarkable people who saved England from foreign dominance in the 8^th/9^th centuries.

© John Welford

Harry Paye, a famous pirate from Poole

I grew up in the town of Poole on the south coast of England. It has a long and colourful history, and the pirate Harry Paye was one of the most colourful characters in that history!

Harry Paye and Poole

The town of Poole, in the English county of Dorset, is particularly proud of one of its less respectable former citizens, namely Henry (or Harry) Paye, who flourished in the late 14^th and early 15^th centuries. Depending on one’s point of view (and nationality), he was either a doughty defender of his town’s and nation’s interests, a shipmaster who was not averse to using strong-arm tactics when they suited him, or a pirate who was out to get what he could no matter who stood in his way. The facts that the nearby Old Harry Rocks were probably named in his honour, and the Poole speedway team called itself the Poole Pirates, seem to point not only to civic pride but also to the piratical intentions of Harry himself.

It is not known when Harry Paye was born, but it was probably around 1360. This was a difficult time for a number of reasons, one being the continuing outbreaks of plague that had devastated the population of England since the arrival of the Black Death in Dorset in 1348. Another factor was the so-called “Hundred Years War” with France, which constituted a series of hostilities between 1337 and 1453.

Poole, a port with a large shallow harbour (pictured), had been growing steadily since the early 13^th century, obtaining its first charter in 1248 which allowed certain freedoms to the merchants who traded there. Wool was the chief export from the area, and it was largely to protect this trade that England was at war with France for so long. Harry Paye’s story is therefore part of the story of Poole and also that of wider political and dynastic events.

Sea dog and pirate

It is clear that Harry used the international situation to his personal advantage, in that he was very active in attacking ships belonging to France and Spain and taking their contents. His piracy (for such it should be termed) extended from the straits of Dover all the way to northern Spain, and he became a byword to sea captains throughout the region, being universally referred to as the feared “Arripay”. No ship or port was safe from his predations as he took cargoes and prisoners at will, ransoming the latter for cash. He operated from one of the smaller islands in Poole Harbour, and there are many stories of treasure being buried on the islands and shoreline of the harbour.

In 1398, he plundered the town of Gijon in Spain, setting fire to the buildings and carrying away the crucifix from the church of Santa Maria de Finisterra. What happened to the crucifix is unknown, but in 2008 recompense was finally made when a four-foot high wooden cross was presented to the mayor of Gijon by the people of Poole.

When he captured a French barque, the “Seint Anne”, he seized its cargo of more than 12,000 gallons of fine wine and it is reported that the citizens of Poole were drunk for a month as a result. However, this exploit led to a charge of piracy being levelled against Harry, although he seems to have escaped the consequences of his misdeeds.

Indeed, he was shortly afterwards authorised to fit out a small fleet with the sole purpose of harassing the French. He was also given the official title of warden of the Cinque Ports (five ports in south-east England that are closest to the French coast).

A story from 1404 tells of how his ship was captured by the French. Paye and his companions were held on deck by a few guards while most of the French went below, having removed their armor, to search for booty. However, Harry and his men broke free and killed all the Frenchmen as they emerged from the ship’s hold. He then seized two French vessels and sailed them up the River Seine, flying the French flag, to plunder several ships before escaping back to sea.

Repercussions for Poole

His activities against the Spanish, particular his seizure of cargoes of iron from Bilbao, eventually led to a revenge raid on Poole in 1405, authorised by the King of Castile and Leon. A combined Franco-Spanish fleet of five galleys and two smaller ships, with crossbowmen on board, sailed into the harbour at night and approached Poole itself. The French commander thought that a landing was unwise, but the enraged Spanish leader sent a raiding party ashore with order to burn the town. Harry Paye was not there at the time, but the locals were able to put up a stout resistance, finding that their longbows were able to fire a continuous stream of arrows at the invaders, whose crossbows took much longer to reload. 

Eventually the French were forced to send in reinforcements, and their greater numbers were enough to defeat the Poole men. Among those killed was a brother of Harry Paye.

Harry’s activities continued for some years after this raid, although on one occasion in 1406 he was ordered by the king (Henry IV) to return a captured ship that turned out to be owned by a merchant from London. At this time the English crown was under threat from the Welsh under Owen Glendower, and part of Harry Paye’s role was to prevent French supplies reaching the Welsh rebels.

In 1407, Harry, with just 15 ships at his command, captured a whole fleet of 120 ships laden with iron, oil and salt and escorted them back to Poole from Brittany.

The end of the story

However, after 1407 there are no further references to Harry Paye in the official record. He seems to have died in 1419, and there is a damaged memorial brass in Faversham Church in Kent, indicating that he ended his days in Kent rather than Dorset. It appears that his final appointment was as water bailiff of Calais, with a royal pension to his name. Although the king could not openly acknowledge that he supported the dubious activities of the “Poole pirate” there is every possibility that his deeds were condoned rather than condemned.

At all events, the reputation of Harry Paye has come down the centuries as being a positive one, at least in the eyes of the people of Poole. There is an annual “Harry Paye Charity Fun Day” in June, which is generally shortened to “Paye Day”, in which a lot of fun is had both on and off the water, as a celebration of the life of one of Poole’s most colourful characters.


© John Welford