Dick Turpin: truth and myth

Legend meets reality

Dick Turpin is one of those “everybody knows” characters of English folklore. Everybody knows that he was a “gentleman highwayman” who treated his victims with respect and performed a magnificent feat of horsemanship by riding his mare “Black Bess” from London to York in double-quick time in order to escape justice. He ranks alongside Robin Hood and King Arthur as romantic folk heroes.

However, truth and reality are poles apart here. It is true that Dick Turpin did exist, and it is also true that a highwayman did once cover 200 miles on horseback within a day, but they were not the same person. The mistake was made by the novelist William Harrison Ainsworth in a novel published in 1824, but the story became so popular that it entered public consciousness as the truth, and for most people it has stayed that way ever since.

Dick Turpin

Richard Turpin was the son of an Essex innkeeper. He was born in 1705 and became involved in stealing deer in Epping Forest as part of a gang. He was lucky to escape being caught, which is what happened to the other gang members, but decided that a life of crime suited him. He therefore turned to highway robbery as a means of earning a living.

He was clearly a nasty piece of work. He was not above committing murder if it suited him, and it was to escape the consequences of such a deed that he fled to Yorkshire in 1738, although not during the course of a single day.

Once in Yorkshire he changed his name but not his criminal activities, although he turned his attention to stealing horses rather than holding up stagecoaches. He was eventually caught and convicted, being hanged in York on 7^th April 1739.

He attracted public attention because he decided to go out in style. He “held court” in his prison cell by inviting people to visit him and hear of his exploits, then hired five mourners to accompany him to the gallows where he became the master of ceremonies at his own execution by waving to the crowds before leaping to his death.

       

Dick Turpin therefore made a name for himself, and this is probably what confused William Harrison Ainsworth when he came to write his novel “Rookwood”. Even so, there is no evidence that Turpin had achieved folk hero status in the years following his death. A criminal had paid the price for his crimes and, despite making a show of things in his final days, was largely forgotten until Rookwood was published.

The other “Dick Turpin”

However, during the century before Turpin lived there was another criminal who had attracted public attention and of whom much more complimentary things had been said. This was John Nevison, who was born in 1639 and died on the gallows in 1684.

It was said of Nevison that he only robbed rich people, although there would have been little point in robbing people without any money, and that he was always polite to his victims. These are characteristics that would later be associated with Dick Turpin. However, Nevison was said to be tall, handsome and aristocratic in his bearing, which was certainly not true of Turpin.

The clincher in terms of Ainsworth’s error is that Nevison was reputed to have committed a robbery in Kent early one morning then crossed the Thames and ridden all the way to York where he greeted the Mayor at sunset. As nobody believed that a man could be in Kent in the morning and York in the evening, he had a cast-iron alibi. The story came to the ears of King Charles II, who promptly gave him the nickname of “Swift Nick” – despite his name being John.

The legend of Swift Nick was recorded by Daniel Defoe in his 1724 work “A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain”. It is possible that this is where William Harrison Ainsworth got some of his information from, but he should have checked his sources more carefully before putting pen to paper.

As it was, the publication of Rookwood sparked the Dick Turpin myth and it was not only Ainsworth who was able to cash in on it. In the years that followed many prints were sold showing images of Turpin’s ride, and many landlords of inns along his supposed route were happy to allow customers, for a fee, to drink a pint out of the very tankard that Turpin used when he paused for refreshment!

© John Welford

Gandhi's visit to Britain in 1931

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) is generally known to history by his honorific title of “Mahatma”, which means “venerable”. It was a well-deserved title, given that he was surely one of the most remarkable figures of the 20^th century.

Gandhi spent much of his early life in South Africa, but after that he rarely left his native India. One such occasion was in 1931, when he made a considerable impression on the people of Great Britain during a visit that lasted for nearly three months from September to December.

The occasion was the London Round Table Conference held at St James’s Palace with the objective of finding a peaceful resolution to the crisis in South Asia that would eventually lead to the end of British control in that region and the creation of independent India and Pakistan. Gandhi was only one of more than 100 representatives of Indian interests, which included princes, landowners, industrialists and trade unionists. Gandhi remarked that the only class missing from the talks was that of the peasants who made up the vast bulk of the population.

The Indian uprising had been marked by considerable violence and bloodshed, but Gandhi always advocated peaceful means of persuasion, notably a policy of “civil disobedience” towards the British Empire. He identified himself with the poorest members of society, including the “Untouchables” of the Hindu caste system, and his own lifestyle mirrored his belief in the dignity of every man and woman, however humble. He dressed in a simple tunic with sandals on his feet, he ate simple food and fasted regularly.

His visit to England achieved little in terms of the Round Table Conference, but he made a huge impression on the British people. He insisted on travelling second class and being accommodated in the poorer parts of London, often sleeping on the roof of a building in the East End. He believed that if he stayed among the poor he would be more likely to reach into Britain’s heart than if he mixed with fashionable and intellectual people; however, he was probably regarded more as a curiosity than a serious world figure by most of the people who encountered him.

One aspect of Gandhi’s civil disobedience involved encouraging Indians to boycott imports of cloth from Britain and instead to weave their own clothes from thread they had spun themselves. Gandhi could often be seen working at a spinning wheel, which became his personal symbol.

During his 1931 visit to Britain, Gandhi made a point of going to Lancashire, which was the source of most of Britain’s exports of yarn and cloth to India. He wanted to encourage the millworkers to see his side of the argument in the debate over the unemployment caused by his boycott. As he explained to the workers:

“You have three million unemployed, but we have nearly three hundred million unemployed. Your average unemployment dole is seventy shillings a month. Our average income is seven shillings and sixpence a month.”

Gandhi met a number of prominent people and impressed them deeply. These included the Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, the London-born film actor Charlie Chaplin, academics at Oxford University and several bishops of the Church of England.

One notable absentee from the list of visitors was Winston Churchill, who thought it “nauseating” that Gandhi, “posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East” should dare to speak on equal terms with representatives of the “King-Emperor”.

However, the King-Emperor himself, George V, was not so standoffish and actually asked to meet Gandhi. Several Buckingham Palace officials were worried about the decorum of allowing Gandhi, dressed in loin-cloth and sandals, with bare legs, to meet the monarch. Gandhi answered this point afterwards by observing that “the King wore enough for the two of us”.

Gandhi and King George had no common ground on which to agree, but the encounter passed in a spirit of politeness and good manners.

When Gandhi returned to India, taking in a visit to Rome on the way, he had achieved nothing concrete in terms of advancing the cause of Indian independence, but he had certainly made an impression on the people he met and those who read the newspaper reports about his activities while in the country. When Indian independence was eventually achieved in 1947 there was considerable goodwill extended from the ordinary people of Great Britain, if not from all of their Parliamentary representatives.

© John Welford

The death of King William II, 1100

King William II of England was killed by an arrow while out hunting on Thursday 2nd August 1100 (at the spot marked by the stone in the photo). Most historians say that this was an accident, and that the stray arrow was fired by Walter Tyrel, one of William’s companions. However, there is the intriguing possibility that it was not an accident after all.

 

Death in the Forest

The New Forest is the best known of the many hunting reserves that William’s father, King William I (the Conqueror), had created in England for his personal use. It occupies a large part of south-west Hampshire (and a small bit of Wiltshire) and it exists today as one of England’s national parks. It is a mixture of woodland (both broadleaved and coniferous) and open lowland moorland, with relatively little cultivated or pasture land. There are parts that King William would recognise were he able to visit it today.

The hunting consisted of shooting arrows at deer as they ran past stands where the hunters were positioned. The deer were chased into a channel between trees and bushes that provided suitably hidden sites for the stands. If one hunter missed, a companion on the other side of the channel would probably hit.

However, if a huntsman were to swing round with his crossbow as the deer passed, and then miss, there was the possibility that he could shoot a fellow huntsman on the other side. That is what appears to have happened in this case.

King William (who is always known as William Rufus because of his florid complexion) was hit full in the chest. He is believed to have fallen forward and driven the arrow further into himself as he fell. He would have died almost instantly.

 

Accident or murder?

The reported behaviour of William’s fellow hunters, immediately after his death, has given rise to much speculation as to what really happened.

Walter Tyrel, who was a close personal friend of the King, did not raise the alarm and send for help. Instead he got on his horse and rode straight for the coast, from where he took a boat for France.

He does not appear to have been alone in fleeing the scene, because William had other companions with him at the time. It was left to some local farm labourers (possibly the beaters who had been driving the deer) to find the body and take it on a cart to Winchester, dripping blood as it did so.

If the death was purely accidental, why did everyone present suddenly get a guilty conscience and run off as fast as they could? It is possible that, under the circumstances, Tyrel and the others believed that they would have been hard pressed to prove their innocence and they feared the prospect of being tortured until they confessed to a crime they had not committed. Thoughts of self-preservation might easily have been uppermost in their minds.

Flight was not therefore necessarily an admission of guilt. It could well have been the most logical choice to make. Walter Tyrel never admitted to firing the fatal arrow, aimed either at the king or the deer, so he clearly believed that somebody else did. He may indeed have had his suspicions about who the guilty party was, but he had no intention of hanging around until he was forced to say what he knew.

 

Who wanted Rufus dead?

In any case of suspected murder, the finger of suspicion points at whoever has most to gain from the death of the victim. When that victim is a monarch, the obvious beneficiary is the next in line to the throne. However, that poses a problem in the case of William Rufus.

 

The three sons of William the Conqueror

King William I had three sons who lived to adulthood, namely Robert (probably born in 1054), William (born between 1056 and 1060) and Henry (probably born in 1068). As is clear from the dates given, there is some uncertainty about their actual ages, but the order of their births is clear enough, as is the fact that Henry was, by some, margin, the youngest of the three.

King William I was the legitimate Duke of Normandy and King of England by conquest. He neither liked nor trusted any of his sons (and they felt the same way about each other). William had no intention of rewarding any of them by naming them as his sole heir, so Robert got Normandy (to which he was entitled by right of primogeniture), and William became King of England (where there was, up to that time, no firm tradition of the eldest son automatically inheriting the throne). Henry was allowed some land in Normandy, to keep him quiet.

 

The heir of William Rufus

William Rufus, although married, had no children. He may even have been homosexual (Walter Tyrel may have been more than just a “close friend”). The question of who would be the next king of England was therefore to be decided.

In 1091 Rufus persuaded the barons to nominate big brother Robert as his heir, and Henry agreed to this, although how willingly he did so is another matter. Clearly, if Robert was to have heirs, that would push Henry out of the line of succession altogether. He would need to take drastic action to ensure his path to the English throne.

 

An approaching crisis

The situation in August 1100 was that Duke Robert was on his way back from the Holy Land where he had been taking part in the First Crusade. In order to raise funds for the Crusade he had mortgaged Normandy to William, who was therefore now the monarch of both parts of the Norman Empire.

On his way back, Robert had found a wife for himself, a wealthy Italian heiress named Sybilla. He therefore had the means both to buy back Normandy (and thus threaten Henry’s property there) and produce an heir. Henry could see that any prospect of advancing himself could disappear very quickly. Within a few weeks, Robert would be home, so if he was to take action it would be now or never.

 

After Rufus died

Henry was a member of the party on the hunt in the New Forest but he was not alongside William when the fatal shot was fired. He was a mile or so away, making arrows. However, when he heard about William’s death he leapt on his horse and made straight for Winchester where the royal treasury was held. Having seized the treasury he set out for London where he had himself crowned king three days later.

Henry had therefore beaten brother Robert to the throne, and he would later campaign against Robert to make sure that there was no threat from that direction. Henry’s decisive action in the New Forest was therefore something of a “coup d’etat” that took everyone by surprise.

 

Did Henry order his brother’s murder?

It is entirely possible. It would have been no problem at all for Henry to have placed an assassin in the undergrowth to shoot William at the opportune moment and then slip away to report back to Henry that the deed was done. Walter Tyrel and the others may well have been witnesses to the murder and realised that they were in considerable danger from Henry, who would have had a very strong motive to silence them should any awkward questions be asked. It is no wonder, if that is the case, that they made themselves scarce as soon as possible.

It all adds up, in that the brothers loathed each other and each would do anything to further their own cause at the expense of the other two. The answer to the question posed earlier, as to who had most to gain from William’s death, is easy to answer. Henry had motive and opportunity for murder, and no moral compunction to stop him from taking advantage of that opportunity.

© John Welford

Captain Henry Morgan's roast pig disaster

Captain Henry Morgan was a notorious privateer and pirate during the 17th century. He suffered an unfortunate setback when a celebratory pig roast cost him a lot more than he had bargained for.

Captain Henry Morgan was a real “Pirate of the Caribbean” during the 17th century. He was a Welshman (born around 1635) who emigrated to the West Indies and became a sea captain. At the time, England and Spain maintained a running undeclared war for domination of trade at sea, and English ships were given free rein to raid Spanish ships and possessions. Morgan was to make a handsome living by taking part in such activities.

The distinction between “pirate” and “privateer” was one that could become somewhat foggy, in that privateers were supposed to be acting on behalf of the English government, with at least some of the proceeds of any raid going back to England, but piracy involved no such consideration. It was therefore perfectly possible for an unscrupulous man like Henry Morgan to pay lip-service to his official duties but acquire a vast fortune for himself in the process.


The sacking of Porto Bello

In 1668 Henry Morgan attacked the Spanish town of Porto Bello on the coast of Panama. Under cover of darkness he and his men slipped into the harbour in canoes and took by surprise the defenders of two of the three forts that guarded the port.

However, the third fort was less easy to subdue, and Morgan used the subterfuge of capturing a number of priests and nuns and using them as human shields as his men advanced on the fort. The Spaniards surrendered and handed over a huge fortune in slaves and gold as Morgan’s price for not slaughtering the entire population of the town.


Easy come, easy go

The following year, Captain Morgan captured two French ships near Haiti (the French were just as likely to be attacked as the Spanish). This was clearly something for Morgan to celebrate, so he dropped anchor near the island of Ile à Vache (which was his base of operations) and proceeded to do precisely that. With his ship’s hold bursting with treasure, including the bulk of the pieces of eight that comprised the ransom handed over at Porto Bello, the crew proceeded to roast a pig on the deck of his ship.

However, lighting an open fire on board a wooden ship that also contains a goodly amount of gunpowder (which was being used to fire cannon rounds in celebration) is probably an unwise thing to dot, and that proved to be so in this case.

There was a huge explosion that sank not only Morgan’s ship but also the two captured French ships. Morgan himself had the relatively good fortune to be blown clean through the windows of his cabin and into the sea; he therefore survived, but more than 200 of his men did not.

As for the treasure, that went down with the ship, leaving Henry Morgan with the task of starting all over again to rebuild his fortune. Several years later he attempted to recover the gold but was prevented from doing so by a storm at sea that wrecked the ship he was commanding at the time (another wreck from which he survived). As far as Morgan was concerned the treasure was lost forever.


Where is the treasure now?

Despite the fact that the ship went down in relatively shallow waters (no more than twelve feet) nobody has ever found the treasure. In 2004 a team of divers found the wreck and recovered artefacts such as cannons and musket balls, but not a single piece of eight.

The question that arises, therefore, is what has happened to the treasure? There can be little doubt that the ship was carrying the gold when it blew up, because why else would Henry Morgan have tried to recover it?

It seems unlikely that, more than 300 years later, Captain Morgan’s treasure is still where he left it. The 2004 dive found nothing, despite the search being a relatively straightforward one, which therefore suggests that someone else has already found it at some stage since its original loss.

It might even be the case that the treasure was found during the interval of time before Morgan’s own abortive attempt to find it. Despite the huge loss of life when the ship exploded, it is unlikely that Morgan was the sole survivor, so there would have been other people who knew all about the treasure and where it was. Might they have helped themselves at some stage, after Morgan himself had sailed away from Ile à Vache? That sounds like a possible scenario to me!

As for Henry Morgan, he eventually retired from piracy and the sea and also managed to stay out of prison. He was even knighted by King Charles II and became a Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. He died in 1688 and was buried in Port Royal, Jamaica, in a cemetery that later slid into the sea during an earthquake in 1692. Perhaps it was appropriate that both the captain and his treasure disappeared beneath the waves.

© John Welford

Sir Christopher Wren

Sir Christopher Wren, famed as the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral, was born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, on 20^th October 1632. He was the only surviving son of Dr Christopher Wren, the local rector who would later become Dean of Windsor, and his wife Mary.

His early life

After education by private tutors, including his father, he entered Wadham College, Oxford, in June 1650 and graduated with a BA in 1651 and an MA in 1653. Wadham College was known for its strength in mathematics and natural science, and its warden, John Wilkins, was one of the circle of scientists who would later found the Royal Society. Wren was greatly influenced by Wilkins, and the two men worked together on building an astronomical telescope after Wren had become a fellow of All Souls in 1653.

In 1657 Wren was appointed to the chair of astronomy at Gresham College in the City of London and in February 1661 he became Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford University. Wren was active in many mathematical and scientific projects, including research in optics and experiments in printmaking, surveying, navigation and other fields.

Wren played an important part in the foundation of the Royal Society (he helped to draw up its royal charter) and his name thus became known to King Charles II.

In 1661, in an unofficial capacity, he gave advice on the repairs needed to old St Paul’s Cathedral, which had suffered from decades of neglect. This was his first brush with architecture, having previously declined a commission to oversee the refortification of the port of Tangier, based on his acknowledged status as one of the best geometricians in Europe.

During the early 1660s he developed an interest in architecture that was to take precedence over everything else in his life. Using observation, his skills as a mathematician and physicist, and intuition, he taught himself the fundamentals of architecture and was soon working on important commissions with considerable success.

His most important early commission was for the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, the circular building that is still used today for university events including degree ceremonies. This innovative building, which was always intended to be multi-functional, avoided the use of internal pillars by using traditional roof carpentry methods. The emphasis on functionality was to be the hallmark of Wren’s architectural style. Other commissions followed, including several for Oxford and Cambridge college buildings.

Plague and fire in London

Wren made his only overseas journey when he spent the period from June 1665 to March 1666 in Paris, where he met some of Europe’s greatest architects and artists, notably the French architect Mansart and the Italian sculptor and architect Bernini. This sojourn meant that not only did he avoid the plague that swept through London in 1665, but he also returned full of ideas for new buildings. In particular, he had a vision of how the crowded and insanitary city of London could be remodelled, were the opportunity to present itself.

As it happened, the fire that raged from the 2^nd to the 5^th of September 1666 seemed to be exactly that opportunity.  Within two weeks, Wren had produced a comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of London, consisting of broad straight streets radiating from large piazzas, with a new St Paul’s as its most prominent feature. However, there were many things wrong with the plan, not least its immense cost and the requirement for life to get back to normal as soon as possible. It was therefore always a non-starter.

Despite this setback, Wren was involved in some of the initial planning for re-building, as one of the surveyors chosen by the King and the City to deal with immediate practical problems. Wren made important contributions to the legislation that was drawn up to govern the rebuilding, such as the need for new buildings to be constructed from brick or stone rather than timber.

Wren’s chance came a few years later in 1669, when he was appointed by King Charles as Surveyor of the King’s Works. This gave him the status to push his own ideas forward, but the task of rebuilding a whole city depended on a large team of people, and Wren’s personal contribution was therefore limited.

Many important buildings needed to be rebuilt or restored, including around 50 churches and, of course, St Paul’s Cathedral. The degree of variation between the church designs was remarkable, even given the requirement to build churches that suited the Anglican liturgy and which were largely neo-classical in style. One reason for this is that, as mentioned above, Wren worked as the manager of a team, and a number of the designs were those of men such as Robert Hooke and Nicholas Hawksmoor, with Wren merely giving their designs his approval.

That said, the designs that were purely by Wren show his delight in experimenting with innovative shapes and geometries, such as the polygonal St Benet Fink and the complex incorporation of a Latin cross into a rectangular shape, surmounted by a dome, at St Stephen Walbrook.

St Paul’s Cathedral

Wren had already planned to add a dome to the old St Paul’s before it was destroyed by fire, so this was in his mind from the very start of the plan for the new cathedral. However, what we see today was not what Wren originally envisaged, given that the “new” St Paul’s, despite its impressive size, is nothing like as big as Wren’s first concept, or even his second. The plans went through several phases before a final design could be agreed upon, and even this was controversial. One of the abandoned designs takes the form of the “Great Model”, more than six metres long, that can still be seen today.

The opposition to Wren’s plans centred mainly on the dome, which many people regarded as being too “Romish”. Wren exploited every loophole he could to get his own way over the dome, and it cannot be denied that the end result is not what was agreed in the final “warrant design” that had received the royal warrant on 14^th May 1675.

Wren simply went ahead by instructing the various workmen to perform their own part of the operation without knowing the overall plan. Nobody therefore knew what the final result would look like, and, by the time it was complete in 1711, it was too late for any objections to be taken on board. Wren’s masterpiece took 36 years to build, and the design was undeniably all his own work.  

Other work

Wren worked on other commissions during the years when St Paul’s was under construction. One of these was for a monument on Fish Street Hill to commemorate the Great Fire, which is the massive column, with an internal staircase, that is simply known today as “The Monument”.

The library at Trinity College, Cambridge, was completed in 1695. This is undoubtedly the most splendid library building in Cambridge and arguably the most elegant of all Wren’s secular designs.

His later life

Wren’s long life covered the reigns of several monarchs, and he continued in royal favour after the death of Charles II in 1685. For William and Mary he rebuilt part of Hampton Court Palace and also transformed a Jacobean mansion into Kensington Palace. His last major secular commission, on which he worked alongside Nicholas Hawksmoor, was the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich. Wren produced his final design for the building in 1698.

Wren, who was knighted as Sir Christopher Wren in November 1673, was twice married. His first wife, whom he married in December 1669, was Faith Coghill, who bore him two sons before dying of smallpox in 1675. In February 1677 he married Jane Fitzwilliam, who died in 1680 leaving Wren to care for the two children she bore him.

In his later years Wren came under increasing criticism, mainly as a result of his architectural style falling out of general favour, and he was dismissed from his position as Surveyor of Royal Works in 1718. He died on 25^th February 1723 at the age of 90.

Sir Christopher Wren’s legacy is clearly the many splendid buildings that have survived to the present day. Unfortunately, many Wren churches were lost during the “second fire of London” that was the blitz of World War II, but there were also many notable survivors. His greatest legacy will always be St Paul’s Cathedral, the building which occupied the most extensive period of his time as an architect and to which he devoted his best inspiration.

He was buried in the crypt of St Paul’s and a tablet to his memory was laid in the cathedral floor under the central point of the dome. The inscription includes the Latin words “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice”, which translates as “If you seek his monument, look around you”.

© John Welford

Captain Lawrence Oates

“I am just going outside and I may be some time”. Those were the last recorded words of Captain Lawrence Oates, who stepped into a blizzard in Antarctica on 16th March 1912 and was never seen again. The recorder of those words was Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who kept a diary until shortly before his own death some two weeks later, also defeated in the attempt to survive the terrible conditions of the southern continent.


Captain Oates and the race to the South Pole

Lawrence Oates was born in London on 17th March 1880 into a well-do-to family that provided him with an Eton education and the pleasures of gentlemanly life. He became particularly interested in hunting and horses, and it was his expertise with the latter that made him a suitable candidate for Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, which had never been reached before. Another plus point was the fact that he was able to contribute one thousand pounds to the cost of the expedition, which was a considerable sum in 1910.

Scott knew that he was in a race to be first to the Pole, his rival being the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. However, the tactics of the two expeditions were different. Whereas Amundsen was going to rely on a pack of more than 200 dogs, some of which would be slaughtered to feed the survivors as the journey progressed, Scott was horrified by this idea. Instead, he wanted to take a much smaller team of dogs and use ponies as pack animals to carry supplies to the depots they intended to set up along the way.


Why Oates did not trust Scott

The ponies were to be bought from a source in Siberia, the idea being that these would be used to working in extremely cold conditions. What Scott should have done was send his horse expert, Oates, to Siberia to select and buy the ponies, but he did not. When Oates saw the ponies that had been bought, and which were collected from New Zealand on the expedition’s way south, he was alarmed by their poor condition, describing them as a “wretched load of crocks”. Oates was to continue to have a poor opinion of Scott and his ability to lead the expedition.

Another point of contention was Scott’s plan to establish the final depot, named “One Ton” for the quantity of supplies it would contain, which was too far from the Pole for Oates’s liking. Oates argued that if the weakest of the ponies were killed and fed to the dogs, it would be possible to site the depot ten miles closer to the Pole, thus shortening the distance that would have to be covered by men dragging sledges. However, Scott rejected the idea, saying to Oates that he had had “more than enough of this cruelty to animals”.

For his part Oates clearly distrusted Scott, as revealed in his letters home. He wrote: “The fact of the matter is he is not straight; it is himself first, the rest nowhere”.


Scott loses the race

When the final team of five reached the Pole on 18th January 1912 they found that Amundsen’s well-organized expedition had beaten them by more than a month. Oates wrote of his admiration for the Norwegians in his diary, stating that: “That man must have had his head screwed on all right”. The clear implication was that Scott had not.

It was now a case of returning the way they had come, the first objective being to drag the sledges the 120 miles to One Ton Depot, which they would have expected to do in about three weeks. However, the weather turned bad and temperatures plummeted, resulting in severe frostbite. As progress slowed, the food supplies began to run out.

After four weeks of battling against the elements, Petty Officer Edgar Evans died, although Scott noted that this did at least meant that the food would last longer.


The last days of Captain Oates

The condition of Captain Oates now held everyone back. It is doubtful whether he should have been allowed to be one of the final five given the opportunity to reach the Pole, one reason being that he carried an old and serious war wound (on the thigh) from his former service as an army officer during the Boer War in 1901. He had, after all, served his purpose as an expedition member now that all the ponies were dead, and Scott’s reason for selecting him for the final push seemed to be out of sentiment rather than anything else. It is hard to see a modern expedition allowing someone with such a handicap to take the risk of facing such extreme conditions.

Oates’s frostbite had become gangrenous and every step was extremely painful. Even worse was the fact that it took him two hours every morning to get his boots on, with everyone else having to wait while he did so. He knew that he was holding the others back, but they persuaded him to keep struggling on, although they also knew that their own chances of survival were worsening by the day.

On 11th March Scott issued every man with 30 opium tablets, which was in effect a suicide pill that gave them all a choice of whether to keep going or give up. However, nobody chose the easy way out.

Oates eventually realised that he had to make that choice, and he did it in a way that would inconvenience his colleagues as little as possible. Scott and the others knew that Oates was committing suicide when he walked out of the tent. Whether Scott was correct to write in his journal that they tried to dissuade Oates we can never know. Oates had himself described Scott as “not straight”, and this could have been Scott’s way of trying to exonerate himself from agreement with an act that might just have been enough to save his own life.

In the event, it was not. Scott and the others died some two weeks later, ironically just eleven miles short of One Ton Depot. Had it been sited ten miles further south, as Oates had suggested, would that have been enough to save them? On the other hand, would the extra eleven miles have been covered if Oates had taken his opium tablets five days before his final act, thus speeding the progress of the others? This is, of course, open to speculation because the answers can never be known.

© John Welford

Nicholas Breakspear, Pope Adrian IV

Only one Englishman has ever been Pope. That was Nicholas Breakspear, who was elected in 1154 as Pope Adrian IV.

His exact origins are unknown, but he was probably born around 1100, his most likely birthplace being not far from St Albans, where he was educated at the Abbey school.

He travelled to southern France, where he entered the monastery of St Ruf near Avignon and eventually became its abbot. Pope Eugenius III elevated him to the status of cardinal and sent him to Scandinavia as papal legate. He was clearly successful in his mission to reorganise the Church in that region, leading to his election as Pope, in succession to Anastasius IV, in 1154.

His first concern as Pope was to defend the Papacy against Arnold of Brescia, a monk and would-be reformer who had caused problems for previous Popes through his support for the “Commune of Rome”, which was an attempt to govern the city on Republican lines. The Commune had managed to have Pope Eugenius III (predecessor of Anastasius) exiled from the city, and Arnold was still a thorn in the flesh of the Papacy. With the support of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Adrian was able to have Arnold arrested and executed.

The next problem was an invasion of southern Italy in 1155 by Manuel Comnenus, the Emperor of Byzantium. Adrian saw this less as a threat than an opportunity to establish friendly relations with Constantinople with a view to ending the “Great Schism” that had split the Eastern and Western Churches since 1054. An alliance was engineered to fight against the Norman rulers of Sicily, but this ended when Manuel was summoned back to Constantinople. Adrian’s terms for repairing the Schism also proved to be unacceptable to the Eastern Church.

Also in 1155, it is traditionally believed that Adrian issued a papal bull entitled “Laudabiliter” that conferred on King Henry II of England the right to rule over Ireland, a right that was retained by successive monarchs of England. However, no copy of this bull has been preserved and it has been doubted whether it ever existed.

Frederick Barbarossa’s relations with Pope Adrian later took a turn for the worse, especially after a letter from Adrian was interpreted as meaning that he regarded Frederick as his vassal, although this might well have been a misunderstanding. This led to Frederick taking troops into northern Italy in 1158, and his capture of Milan.

However, Frederick’s argument with the Papacy was put on hold in September 1159 when Adrian died suddenly. One story was that he choked on a fly in a glass of wine, although this is unlikely.

No other Englishman has ever become Pope, although Cardinal Pole came close in 1549, falling short by only two votes in the Papal Conclave.

© John Welford