The body of King James IV

 

King James IV of Scotland was killed at the Battle of Flodden Field on 9th September 1513, following his unwise invasion of England while King Henry VIII was out of the country. The battle was a massacre and there was some doubt as to which body was that of the Scottish king.

There then arose a problem, due to the fact that James had died having broken a Treaty of Eternal Peace with England. This treaty had been brokered by Pope Alexander VI, who had decreed that anyone who violated it would suffer excommunication. This meant that James’s body could not be given a Christian burial. It was therefore taken to Berwick, embalmed, sealed in lead, and then transported to Richmond Palace near London.

When King Henry returned to England from France he suggested that the body be buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, but the Pope would have none of it and so it was taken instead to the monastery at Sheen in Surrey where it was left.

Following further problems with the Papacy, King Henry proceeded to declare himself head of the Church of England and dissolved the monasteries, that at Sheen suffering this fate in 1538. King James’s body was moved to an old lumber room and forgotten about.

There are various accounts of what happened next. One is that nothing happened until the early years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, in the 1560s, when a glazier working on the building, which was then falling into considerable disrepair, reported that he could smell embalming spices. A delegation arrived to inspect the source of the smell coming from a lead box and left again, taking no action. The glazier then decided to open the box, cut off James’s head and take it home with him. Not surprisingly, his family was less than impressed with this bizarre trophy so he took it to St Michael’s church in the City of London where it was reburied and may well still be there.

However, a second story relates that the whole body is still at Sheen, buried in an unmarked grave. Evidence for this is entirely lacking.

A third option is much more entertaining but probably the least likely of those on offer. This is that James did not die at Flodden at all. Instead, he was rescued by the Queen of Elfland and has been living with the elves ever since. One day, so it is hoped by those who believe this nonsense, he will return in triumph to continue his reign.

© John Welford

The death of King Henry IV at "Jerusalem"

 

King Henry IV of England died on 20^th March 1413 at the age of 45. His health had been poor ever since he had seized the throne from King Richard II in 1399. He suffered regular blackouts and had serious skin problems, which some contemporaries thought might be leprosy, but some sort of kidney disease is probably closer to the mark.

Henry himself thought that his condition was a form of divine punishment, not only for causing the death of his predecessor (Richard died at Pontefract Castle in 1400, possibly having been murdered) but for executing the Archbishop of York after the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403. He became depressed and slept badly. On top of his health problems, he was on continual bad terms with his son Hal, the future King Henry V.

Henry thought the best way of improving his health would be to obtain a divine pardon, and the best way of doing that would be to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. That was why he was in Westminster Abbey on 20^th March 1413, praying at the tomb of Edward the Confessor, prior to setting forth on his journey.

Edward had consecrated the abbey church of St Peter in 1065, not long before his death the following year. He was buried in the Abbey and later kings venerated his memory. He was canonised as a saint in 1161 and his cult was promoted by King Edward III as an alternative to that of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. That was why the abbey was rebuilt from 1245 to become the tallest of all Gothic churches and a fit setting for all future coronations down to the present day.

While King Henry was praying, another fit seized him, one that was to prove fatal. He was carried to a room that had been added to the abbot’s lodgings in the late 14^th century. The monks of the Abbey had become accustomed to naming such rooms after holy sites, which is why the room where Henry died was known as the Jerusalem Chamber. When Henry briefly and partially recovered his senses he asked where he was and was told “Jerusalem”. Given that this was where he intended to go, Henry died happy.

Henry was not buried at Westminster but at Canterbury. His Queen, Joan of Navarre, had a splendid tomb built for him next to the shrine of St Thomas.

© John Welford

King Edward the Confessor

 

Edward the Confessor was the only English king to become a saint. This was entirely due to his personal behaviour and had nothing to do with his abilities as a monarch, which were far from what the country needed at the time.

Born in 1004, he was the son of King Ethelred II, who is known to history as Ethelred the Unready. Edward was 13 years old when his father died, at which time the throne of England was being disputed between Anglo-Saxons and invading Danes. Queen Emma fled to her native Normandy, taking Edward with her.

However, the new king, Canute the Dane, thought that a good way to make himself acceptable to his new English subjects would be to marry Ethelred’s widow, which is what he did. Emma later gave birth to another son, named Hardecanute.

Canute also had an illegitimate son named Harold and it was he who became king on Canute’s death. This was because Hardecanute was far more interested in looking after Denmark than England. However, when Harold died in 1040 Hardecanute became King of England and he invited his half-brother Edward to return from exile and assume the position of heir to the throne. Edward therefore became King when Hardecanute died in 1042.

Edward had very little interest in the monarchy, much preferring to spend his time in religious devotion. He was known to spend several hours every day praying and was even reputed to perform miracles of healing. He grew a long white beard and therefore looked more like an Old Testament prophet than a king of England.

The real power in the land was the Godwin family, who ruled the roost and whose word was law. Edward married a Godwin daughter but this was a marriage in name only, with no children issuing from it. There have been various theories as to why this was – Edward might have been impotent or homosexual, and it is even possible that he had taken a monkly vow of chastity.

At any event, when Edward died in 1066 after a reign of 24 years he left no heir other than his brother-in-law Harold Godwin. The resulting conflict over the succession between Harold and Edward’s French cousin William of Normandy soon resulted in the Norman conquest and the end of Anglo-Saxon England.

© John Welford

Isabella of Angoulême, Queen of England

 

Isabella was born around 1187 at Angoulême in south-west France, the only daughter of the Count of Angoulême. She was about 12 or 13 years old when she was spotted by King John of England, who had only just come to the throne and was already married. He fell madly in love with her and divorced his first wife so that he could marry Isabella, which he did in the year 1200.

They were to have five children, but the marriage could hardly be described as a happy one, due mainly to John’s spiteful and jealous character. Once, when he thought that Isabella was having an affair, he arranged for the man to be hanged and for his corpse to be suspended over Isabella’s bed.

When King John died in 1216, the new king, who reigned as Henry III, was only nine years old. Isabella was keen to secure Henry’s title and lost no time in having Henry crowned, and this was done in Gloucester Cathedral. There was no actual crown to hand, so Isabella used one of her own gold collars as a substitute.

Isabella had no desire to stay in England so she returned to Angoulême and married her real childhood sweetheart. This was a much happier marriage than her first, and she bore her new husband six sons and five daughters.

Isabella was later accused of conspiring to poison the King of France, a charge that was almost certainly false. She sought sanctuary at Fauntevrault Abbey, where she lived in hiding for the last two years of her life, dying in 1246.

Years later, her son King Henry III visited the Abbey and was shocked to find that his mother had been buried in the open cemetery. He ordered that her remains be reburied inside the Abbey, where a suitably respectful effigy was later supplied.

© John Welford

Isabella of Valois, Queen of England

 

Isabella of Valois, the second Queen of King Richard II of England, was born in 1389. She was not yet eight years old when she was sent to England to marry Richard. It was a marriage in name only, as one might expect with somebody this young, and was engineered purely as a peace-making deal between England and France.

In 1399 King Richard was deposed and disappeared, Isabella having no idea whether he was alive or dead. A new King appeared, calling himself Henry IV, and Isabella was moved out of Windsor Castle to a new home at Sunninghill.

Enemies of the new King Henry plotted to overthrow him and persuaded Isabella to accompany an army of rebels, but at Cirencester the plot fell apart, the ringleaders were beheaded and Isabella was packed off back to London under lock and key.

Henry then had the bright idea that his son and heir, Prince Hal, would be the perfect match for Isabella. They were, after all, the same age – just 11 years old. But Isabella had a mind of her own and refused to have anything to do with it. She now knew that Richard must be dead, and promptly went into mourning, having nothing whatever to do with the new regime.

Henry had no choice but to send her back to France. When she was 16 she married Charles, Duke of Orleans, but was only 20 years old when she died in childbirth.

Six years later, in 1415, the former Prince Hal, now King Henry V, triumphed at the Battle of Agincourt, one consequence of which was that Henry married the French Princess Catherine, who was Isabella’s sister, and Charles, Isabella’s widower, was imprisoned in the Tower of London for the next quarter of a century.

 © John Welford

 

 

Friedrich Nietzsche: a much misunderstood philosopher

 

Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher who has been regarded as providing intellectual support to anti-Semitism and Nazism. However, a close reading of his works does little to support this view. The blame for his views being misinterpreted lies very largely with his sister Elizabeth, who edited his work and used it as backing for her own beliefs, which were blatantly in favour of Germany’s National Socialists. When she died in 1935, Adolf Hitler attended her funeral.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 in a small town in Saxony which was then part of Prussia. The son of a Protestant minister, he became a professor at the University of Basel but had to retire after only ten years due to ill health. He then wandered across Europe, devoting himself to writing and trying to recover his health. In 1889 he suffered a complete relapse into insanity, dying in 1900 at the age of 55.

Shortly after his death, his writings were edited and published by his sister under the title “The Will to Power”, but there is plenty of evidence to show alterations to his original texts, which has done much to mar the reception of Nietzsche’s thought ever since.

Nietzsche’s writings are varied and cover diverse topics, but he is most renowned for his concept of “the will to power”. He saw that the fundamental driving force of the individual is expressed in the need to dominate and control the external forces operating upon him. He seeks the power to be master of his own destiny.

The frustration of this urge, according to Nietzsche, is responsible for the existence of various moral systems and religious institutions, all of which attempt to bind and subdue the will. This view made Nietzsche particularly hostile to Christianity, which he termed a “slave morality”.

Friedrich Nietzsche saw the will to power as something to be pursued and affirmed, and not to be resisted. However, he did not advocate the dominance of the strong over the weak, nor suggest that mastery of the will to power belongs to some special elite by virtue of birth. The absence of such statements in his work make clear that the Nazis were entirely wrong in their interpretation of his philosophy.

What Nietzsche actually said was that strength is necessary to the evolutionary progress of the human being. But strength, as he understood it, was not constituted in physical but in psychological force. The strong are those who are more complete as human beings because they have learnt to control their passions and have channelled the will to power into a creative force.

Nietzsche used the term “superman”, but his concept had more to do with Aristotle’s notion of a man of virtue than of the Aryan superhero of Nazi philosophy.

Nietzsche’s moral philosophy did not advocate “master morality”, although he clearly believed that being a master was better than being a slave. The point about being strong was that one was then in a position to help the weak, and that was the duty of the man of virtue. Helping the weak was not to be done from a sense of pity, but as a result of the natural urge to have power over one’s own development.

It has to be hoped that in future Nietzsche’s reputation will depend on what he actually wrote rather than on what others may have supposed he did.

© John Welford

Charles Peace: 19th century burglar and murderer

Charles Peace was a notorious 19^th century murderer. He was once described as ‘the greatest and most naturally gifted criminal England has produced’. 

He was born in Sheffield in 1832, the son of an animal trainer. A childhood accident led to him wearing a false arm with a hook at the end of it. He also became a master of disguise as well as a burglar.

In 1876, while burgling a house near Manchester, he shot and killed a policeman who surprised him. Two brothers were arrested for the murder and sent for trial. Peace attended the trial, with a view to ensuring that his involvement was not suspected, and was relieved when one of the brothers, William Habron, was sentenced to death.

Peace did have a legitimate occupation, that of a picture framer, which he carried out at his home in Sheffield. He became friendly with a civil engineer named Arthur Dyson and his wife Katherine. Despite being married himself, Peace became enamoured of Mrs Dyson, who at first encouraged him in his pursuit of her. However, Katherine Dyson eventually thought that Peace was becoming too insistent and tried to break off the attachment.

The Dysons moved to a different part of Sheffield, but Peace continued to bother her. One night, Mrs Dyson discovered Peace in her back yard armed with a revolver and screamed loudly. Her husband chased Peace down the road but Peace turned and fired at him with fatal consequences.

Peace escaped to London where he rented a villa in Peckham. He adopted a new persona, taking the name John Ward, and turned his attention to inventing scientific instruments. At least, this was what he did during the day – at night he continued his old habit of burgling houses. During one such escapade in Blackheath he shot at and wounded a policeman but that did not stop him from being captured.

His true identity as Charles Peace became known and, having been sentenced to life imprisonment for wounding the policeman, he was then sent to Sheffield to stand trial for killing Arthur Dyson. During the train journey he was able to jump from the train in a bid to escape but was injured as he did so and was soon recaptured.

At his murder trial he was found guilty and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution he confessed to the killing of the policeman at Manchester for which the Habron brothers had been found guilty. Fortunately, William Habron’s sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment and he was duly released and pardoned, receiving £1000 in compensation.

© John Welford