Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke – the paradox of early modern women

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I’ve encountered Mary Sidney on several occasions in the past few years. She was the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, their mother was born Mary Dudley, the sister of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Mary, the wife of Sir Henry Sidney, was one of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite ladies. Sir Henry who was raised alongside Prince Edward, his father being the prince’s chamberlain and his mother the prince’s governess. It’s easy to see how the pair were married to one another – the Sidneys were already close to Edward VI and Dudley, who later became the Duke of Northumberland, wanted to ensure their support.

Henry and May had seven children. Mary was the fifth child, born in 1561. Her eldest sister, Margaret, died while she was still a toddler in 1558. Elizabeth died when Mary was just six, while Ambrosia who was only a year older than Mary died in 1575. Mary’s youngest brother, Thomas, also died at a young age.

All of them were raised at Penshurst in Kent, at Ludlow Castle in Wales and Ticknell Palace near Bewdley. They also travelled to Dublin. It was while they were there that Elizabeth died. When Mary was three, her 10-year-old brother, Philip, was sent to Shrewsbury School where he remained for the next four years before continuing his education at Oxford University. Having finished his studies there, Philip was granted a licence to travel for two years in order to improve his knowledge of foreign language.

For Mary education, of the humanist kind enjoyed by Elizabeth I, meant a proficiency in French and Italian. She was also taught Latin, music and needlework. They were essential skills for a young woman who might find herself in Elizabeth’s court.

By the time Philip returned home in 1575, following Ambrosia’s death, Mary and her mother were residing at Elizabeth’s court. It was an opportunity for her to acquire court polish and for her parents to make her a good match. The good offices of the queen and of the Earl of Leicester gave the Sidneys an advantage in securing a union with the Herbert family in 1577. It was another factor in making a daughter’s education arrangements. It was essential that a young woman should meet the expectations of the family into which she might marry. Manners and conduct were consequently an important part of education. Girls were expected to be respectful and modest.

After her marriage to Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (becoming his third wife) who was more than two decades older than her, she was responsible for the good management of his estates as well as providing him with a family of four children. Much of her surviving writing is business correspondence. It’s a reminder that while women were regarded as having roles within the private rather than pubic sphere, that as representatives of their husbands, their influence could be wide ranging. Somehow, as well as entertaining the queen, running a household and managing her husband’s estates, she managed to find time to have a chemistry laboratory at Wilton House where she developed medicines and invisible ink.

More important, she created the Wilton Circle of poets that included the likes of Edmund Spenser and Ben Johnson. She would receive more dedications than any other woman of non royal status. And she wrote her own work -unusual in publishing under her own name- but avoiding criticism by focusing on religion, translations, elegies and works of praise. It helped that her that she was the sister of Sir Philip Sidney. Her story of patronage began after his death when she encouraged authors to publish works written in his praise. It seems that she wrote throughout her life thereafter but most of what exists today dates from the 1590s. it is likely that much of what she wrote has been lost to history. There was a fire at Wilton during the seventeenth century and also at Baynard’s Castle which was another of her homes.

In short, Mary Sidney is a perfect example of the paradox that many early modern women became. On one hand they were expected to be obedient wives, interested in the domestic and the religious but on the other they were business women, patrons of the arts and like Mary, on occasion, able to demonstrate their intellect and achieve remarkable things.

A Little History of Nottinghamshire

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I’m not sure what happened to December – other than the usual! And now having started physio on my shoulder I’m back at the keyboard which is probably just as well, because as ever in January I’m running behind.

Currently this year I have a talk in February in Nottingham at Waterstones on the evening of Thursday 26th February on the subject of Nottinghamshire. If you’re interested please follow the link to the Waterstones page.

https://www.waterstones.com/events/the-little-history-of-nottinghamshire-an-evening-with-julia-a-hickey/nottingham

Hopefully by the end of today I will have my first Zoom class for 2026 set up. It’s going to be on the subject of remarkable women of the Seventeenth Century – Lady Anne Clifford, Christina Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Mary Vere and her daughters, Aphra Benn, Brilliana Harley, Lady Jane Cavendish, Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort are among the women that spring to mind as well as Lady Ann Middleton from York and Mary Ward who became a Poor Clare. I will also be covering Lucy Hutchinson who wrote an account of her husband’s life and, less well known, Alice Thornton a northern diarist. In fact there are rather a lot of remarkable seventeenth century women when I come to think about it, I just need to martial the dates and organise them into some kind of order.

Unexpected Victorian images…the four frogs of Christmas

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So far as I can work out there is absolutely nothing festive about four anthroprmorthic frogs – I could be wrong. Somehow or other I’ve now strayed into a slightly bizarre twelve days of Christmas. This is not the only example of a froggy festive card. There is another example, four frogs again, which at least involves a wintery scene and an unfortunate attempt at sequence ice skating….

I’m not sure I’d describe this as particularly jolly either. I think it’s a snowman about to waylay a startled Victorian. Raymond Briggs created an altogether more kindly snowman in his book of the same name in 1978. It was turned into an animated film in 1982. Three years later ‘Walking in the Air’ featured on a Toys R Us advert, sending the song into the top ten. Presumably, since all genealogists know that everyone has a black sheep in the family somewhere, this is The Snowman’s distant ancestor and very definitely not on first name terms with Father Christmas.

I should add that this is not the only alarming snowman Christmas card and if the frogs don’t offer you the kind of festive vibe you were seeking – how about four caterwauling moggies?

It is at least snowing. Jólaköttur or the Yule cat is from the Icelandic tradition – work hard enough and you get a nice set of new clothes…if you’re idle and lazy you’ll be eaten by the Yule cat who is the pet of the ogress named Grýla who eats naughty children – I think you can see how this might be going. And how does the cat know who to eat? Simple, if you’ve worked hard you will have gathered in the harvest, including shearing the sheep and have spun the wool – from which your new clothes have been made. This is, of course, quite important in the cold Iceland winter weather.

I have the feeling that I might find myself somewhat stuck with the number five but we shall see.

A robin comes bob bob bobbing along…in your soup or possibly your wassail bowl

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Public Domain, National Library of Ireland

The reason that robins became so popular at Christmas was because Victorian postmen were nicknamed robins because they wore bright red uniforms. The link between the postmen, the bird and the cards they delivered was almost a ready made one.

There is also a Victorian story of a robin warming the baby Jesus by fanning the fire with its wings and the resulting burn is marked by the robin’s red breast.

I’m not quite so sure how this particular Victorian card fits into the festive message – it seems that three robins have over indulged the sherry or punch and that two of them have expired – one of them actually floating in the punch. After all, what says Christmas like two robins with their toes turned up – besides, of course the small boy being attacked by two geese and a Christmas pudding (see previous post). I don’t hold out much hope for the third robin given the cat lurking in the back ground. But in any event the sender, having provided a troubling image of massed robin extermination, wishes the recipient the usual seasonal greetings…

A slice of cake

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Jane Austen describes rout cake while Charlotte Bronte mentions spice cake in her letters. Leaving the former aside, it seems that spice cake was something of a treat to be taken as part of alms given at Christmas as part of her duties as a clergyman’s daughter and wife.

Mrs Beeton’s book of Household Management was first published in 1861 and was an immediate best seller. Her recipe for spice looks remarkably like Yorkshire Parkin without the addition of oatmeal and without quite so much ginger. Spice cakes were not a new invention, they are listed in The English House Wife of 1615.

8 oz plain flour,

3 oz butter (or rather alarmingly good beef dripping)

2 oz brown sugar

1/2 a gill of golden syrup (a gill is equivalent to a 1/4 pint)

1 oz self raising flour

a pinch of salt

1 teaspoon of mixed spice (cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg)

1 egg

milk.

Essentially the fats, golden syrup and sugar are melted and then added to the flour, spice and salt which is stirred well. The egg is added to the mixture and sufficient milk added to make a soft batter which is then beaten well and poured into a buttered cake-tin. It says it takes an hour to bake but Mrs Beeton doesn’t provide oven temperatures – a moderate oven is as good as it gets.

In Cumbria and Westmorland you might be more likely to receive a slice of pepper cake which contained pepper as well as ginger and treacle. More like a tea loaf, it also contains dried fruit. Like the spice cake it was part of a tradition of festive or celebratory cakes. The increasing amounts of spice used in celebratory cooking from the sixteenth century onwards tells a story of the triangular trade and slavery. In Cumbria the addition of rum to Christmas cakes reflects the import of rum into Whitehaven from the West Indies. And I will admit to being very partial to a slice of Cumberland rum Nicky. Certainly the arrival of cheap sugar made the iced Christmas fruit cake we are familiar with today much more affordable. The Victorians called it Twelfth Cake because that was when they tucked in to it. The consumption of cake on the 25th December is still a relatively new one.

And just when I thought that history had been covered in every possible way I discover Alysa Levine’s Cake: A Slice of History which outlines the evolution of our cake eating habits. You can also take a tour of the country in a book entitled Around Britain by Cake by Caroline Taggart. As it happens I already have the latter in my possession but I have the feeling that Levine’s book is about to make its way into my life.

I would also have to say that the Victorians had some strange ideas about Christmas cards. I’m not sure if anything quite says Christmas like the image of a small boy being attacked by a giant Christmas pudding and two angry geese.. as a warning against indigestion of all things. I was actually looking for a card featuring cake! The image originates from Pinterest via Reddit.

For more information on Victorian Christmas cards follow the link to a video from the Victoria and Albert Museum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdULP-VYuXk.

Scroggling Holly

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https://olddesignshop.com/2013/11/stetcher-holly-and-berries-free-christmas-image/

Apparently if you go searching for holly in hedgerows at this time of the year, at least in Yorkshire, then you’re scroggling it. I’ve never heard the expression before but in Haworth it’s a definite thing.

Mind you, it turns out that in some parts of Yorkshire you might call holly ollins and its turns out that the modern word – holly- is an abbreviation of the older hollen or holen. In some places, again Yorkshire, the plant is also called hulm.

My rather wonderful Complete Language of Flowers states that holly brings luck, which is not entirely surprising as its also supposed to repel lightening, the evil eye and is protection against witchcraft. No wonder it grows in so many old gardens. And apparently if you attach a sprig to the bedpost it will bring sweet dreams. If of course, you’re into weather forecasting, an abundance of berries is supposed to herald a particularly harsh winter.

The first commercial Christmas card, printed in 1843, did not feature holly but it swiftly became a popular image for festive greetings cards and Edith Holden’s diary dating from 1906, which became famous when it was published in 1977, the plant and its glossy red berries.

So – if you’re off scroggling – sweet dreams and keep warm!

Medieval Roads in the Peak District.

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Minninglow

After the Romans departed from Britain’s shores the towns and roads that they established began to decay. Even so, the roads continued to be used as did earlier prehistoric trackways. A road running between Buxton and Wirksworth, known as The Street, was still being used in the eighteenth century and lets not forget that King Alfred used Watling Street to mark the boundary between his own realm and Danelaw. The addition of the name ‘Gate’ to any road was originally the Norse ‘gata’ meaning road while street, meaning a paved road, originated from Latin but which was adopted by Anglo-Saxon road users.

It wasn’t until 1285 that the Statute of Winchester required individual manors to maintain highways that passed across them. It also required tracks and bridleways to be maintained. At Norbury, Sir Henry FitzHerbert was required to obtain a licence in 1305 to divert the old road which rather inconveniently passed through the courtyard of his house.

More people began to travel as markets were established and monastic houses founded. The Earl’s Way, heading east, from Leek was established by the Norman earls of Chester using some preexisting tracks. In addition to the earl using the route to travel to various parts of his estates in meant that his tax gatherers could also access the area more easily. Other routes from Leek to Macclesfield permitted monks to send wool towards Chester for export.

Long distance packhorse routes including Portway and Doctor’s Gate near Glossop carried goods from Manchester to Nottingham. It is thought that some of the way originated during the Bronze Age. Pack horse routes, often in the form of hollow ways, caused by the erosion of countless feet, carried salt, wool, lead and any other merchandise that required transport. Hartington which had its own market from 1203 onwards was at the hub of a number of pack horse routes including a route passing Minninglow in the direction of Wirksworth.

One of the paths running eastwards is called Gallowlow Lane. The low refers to a Bronze Age bowl barrow, long since robbed out. Its name is suggestive of a place of execution but there’s no extant evidence for a gallows there other than the name and its position in a prominent place in the landscape. More cheerily there’s also a Jaggers Gate heading from Buxton in the direction of Macclesfield. A jagger was another name for a carrier or packhorse man while a jag was the load that a mule carried. In Derbyshire the term began as a name for the packhorse trains that carried lead ore. Meanwhile, Doctor’s Gate was named after Dr John Talbot who is recorded as improving a section of the old road during the late fifteenth century. Black Harry Gate is an eighteenth century addition to the names of Derbyshire’s roads. He was a highwayman – which possibly explains why there are so many references to gallows and gibbets scattered across the area. Daniel Defoe would call the region a ‘howling wilderness’ when he visited, so it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t necessarily always particularly law abiding.

There are also coffin roads that enabled isolated communities to carry the coffins of their loved ones to the nearest church. The best known one runs from Edale to Castleton. Hollins Cross marked the point where funeral parties might stop for a rest and to offer prayers. The Peak District has nowhere near as many of this kind of path as Yorkshire and Cumbria.

Dodd, A.E. and Dodd, E.M. Peakland Roads and Trackways

William Wickham – spymaster

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William Wickham

Wickham, from Cottingley near Bradford in Yorkshire (these days more usually associated with the Cottingley fairies) began his career as a barrister having studied for his degree at Geneva. In 1793 he was appointed as a stipendary magistrate and it was at that point that he began to work on clandestine operations at the behest of Lord Grenville under the power given to magistrates as a consequence of the Aliens Act.

It was thanks to Wickham that the London Corresponding Society, whose members agitated for democratic reform, demanding annual parliaments and universal suffrage for all men found themselves subject to arrest and treason trials. Wickham actually uncovered nothing treasonous and failed to entrap any of its organisers into ill judged sedition. Even so it was bruted abroad that members of the society planned to assassinate the king.

In 1794 Wickham was made ‘superintendent of aliens’ – a snappy job title if ever there was one- and then sent off to Switzerland where he eventually became the English ambassador. It was his task to liaise with enemies of the revolution, set up a spy network of his own and encourage the French to revolt against the new regime. Ultimately the French persuaded the Swiss to expel him. He returned to England in 1801, after some not entirely pleasant adventures.

While not all of his ventures were a rip roaring success – the uprising in the Vendée (1793-1796) was something of a disaster it was thanks to Wickham that the English began to approach the collection, analysis and dissemination of information in a more wholistic fashion rather than the fragmentary approach to spy work that was evident in previous years.

Wickham returned his attention to the London Corresponding Society and in 1798, Father James Coingly was executed for treasonable correspondence with the French. Edward Despard (who was Irish despite the surname) was executed in 1802. Both men were active in the Irish republican movement. Somewhat ironically Coingly had been in Paris at the start of the French Revolution and narrowly avoided being hanged from a lamppost as a royalist sympathiser because of his clerical garb. The story recounted at his trial did nothing to sway the sympathies of the judge or jury.

Not that all went well for Wickham. In 1800 he was accused of misuse of public funds during his time in Europe and it has been suggested that Jane Austen’s choice of the name Wickham in Pride and Prejudice was as a direct consequence of William Wickham’s portrayal in the press at that time.

In 1802 Wickham was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland but reigned two years later following the execution of Robert Emmet for treason (who’d have thought there were so many treason cases during the ‘Regency Period’?) While Wickham believed in the importance of surveillance and the use of informers he also believed that such spying should only be carried out in the interests of national security.

Durey, Michael (2009). William Wickham, Master Spy: The Secret War Against the French Revolution. Pickering & Chatto.

Shire reeves and sheriffs

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Buchel, Charles A.; Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917), as King John in ‘King John’ by William Shakespeare; Theatre Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/herbert-beerbohm-tree-18521917-as-king-john-in-king-john-by-william-shakespeare-30514

By the time of Edward the Confessor the shire reeve was responsible for collecting royal taxes and collecting rents from royal lands across a hundred hides of land. With the passage of time, the reeve, a royal official, found himself taking pledges, or oaths, and keeping the peace for the hundred, or wapentake. They were also responsible, at least since the days of Cnut, for apprehending criminals and trying them in some locations. And just to confuse matters the term sheriff was also used from Cnut. Not all sheriffs, prior to the Conquest, possessed the same powers. It depended upon the aldermen and the earls of a region from whom the shire reeve, or sheriff, derived some of his power, not to mention the relationship that existed between the king, his earl and the shire reeve or sheriff. The latter might find himself working for both the king and the earl and their wishes were not always aligned. If a monarch was weak, then it was the local lord who wielded the power and to whom the sheriff/reeve would defer. Of more interest is that the post of sheriff is the oldest secular office in Crown employment.

And just as an aside, In 1066 it was Godric, Sheriff of Berkshire who led the shire levies for the county and who was killed at Hastings and it was Ansgar, Sheriff of London and Middlesex, who negotiated with Duke William (Morris, p27). Ansgar’s father had been London’s Port Reeve – essentially meaning sheriff of the town.

After the conquest the role of sheriff became much more clear cut. Roughly equating to Norman viscount (Morris, pp 41-42) the office evolved from the necessity of the Conqueor to continue the smooth administration of his new realm. William retained the services of the sheriffs and shire reeves who served Edward and Harold unless they had fought against him during the conquest. Ansgar, once one of the most powerful men in England, was dismissed from his post and imprisoned. His ancestry was Danish which made him dangerous and he appears to have spent the rest of his life in custody while his lands were given by William the Conqueror to his own men. Geoffrey de Mandeville became sheriff in his place.

Most sheriffs at the start of their documented existence in Anglo-Saxon England were men of moderate means but now they were often the most important man in the region they administrated. The only matters that they had no say on within their area of office was in Church law. Church land lay outside the jurisdiction of common law. The sheriff became the head of the judicial authority within a shire as well taking oaths such as the giving of the frank pledge, collecting royal taxes and enforcing the king’s will. By the time that Philip Marc became the hated High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire during the reign of King John, shrievalties were much sought after, often semi-inherited positions even though the post came with no pay. Their power, which came from farming taxes, meant that they were able to keep a hefty portion for themselves.

And why you might wonder have I deviated to sheriffs? Well, mainly because several members of the Fairfax family were sheriffs of York during the latter Middle Ages and the Tudor period. By the end of the Tudor period, sheriffs retained their role ensuring law and order but it was the newly appointed Lords Lieutenants who dealt with military matters from 1547 onwards. Even then it was only in 1908 that the latter became more important, administratively, than sheriffs. Sheriffs, who also had the responsibility of returning a county’s two members of Parliament, often served in that office as well as being sheriff.

Morris, William A. The Medieval Sheriff to 1300. (1968)