The Ridolfi Plot

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When the Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland seized control of Durham in November 1569 it was the first time that a Catholic Mass had been celebrated for a decade.  So many people attended the Mass held in Durham Cathedral that it was almost impossible to get through the throng.

When the earls rallied their men at Durham they also marched under the banner of the Firve Wounds of Christ. More importantly at home, many people set about overturning communion tables and destroying protestant prayer books in their parish churches. At Sedgefield they made a bonfire from the Protestant prayer books.  The churchwarden, who had attended services regularly, fanned the flames! It was also an opportunity to have babies baptised and to get married the old way. This demonstrates that the majority of people in the north accepted official changes even if they did fully adopt those changes in their minds.  

For Queen Elizabeth the Northern Rebellion was part of the testing times dating from the arrival of her cousin Mary in 1568. Pope Pius V’s excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570. The crisis extended to 1572 when the Duke of Norfolk was finally executed because of his implication in the Ridolfi Plot which also sought to put Mary on the throne and which is usually regarded as the first of the major plots against Elizabeth.

When the pope excommunicated the queen, Parliament responded to the Papal Bull with a new Treason Act. It became treason to say that Elizabeth wasn’t the rightful queen and illegal tp publish the papal bull. Some Catholics left the country. Parliament gave them a year to return home or else their lands would be confiscated by the states. 

The key plotters in 1572 were Roberto Ridolfi, an Italian banker, The Spansih Ambadassador, de Spes and the Duke of Norfolk who was released from custody but still fancied being king of England. He was descended from George Duke of Clarence so had his own claim to the throne. In addition Mary was becoming increasingly desperate to escape custody so she was more willing to be involved as was her priest, Bishop Leslie.

Ridolfi had taken a very minor part in the northern uprising but his role as messanger carried him deeper into the new intrigue. He visted the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands carrying letters in coder with the aim of encouraging the Spanish army to invade England. A Spanish army, it was argued, would topple Elizabeth from power and place Mary on the throne, restoring Catholicsm to England. Mary agreed to the plan in May 1571.

From the Low Countries, Ridolfi carried messages from Queen Mary to Pope Pious V and to Phiip II of Spain in Madrid. He was able to travel as a banker without attracting too much attention. 

King Philip was not keen on the idea of assassinating Elizabeth but he was fed up of English privateers attacking Spanish ships carrying gold destined for the Netherlands to pay the army under the command of the Duke of Alva.

Fortunately for Elizabeth one of Queen Mary’s messengers, Charles Baillie, carrying a message to Ridolfi was intercepted by William Cecil’s agents at Dover. He eventually revealed the plot under torture. Bishop Leslie was arreseted and so were  two of Norfolk’s secretaries were also arrested. They provided helpful information. Leslie blamed Mary. 

Norfolk who was already in trouble with Elizabeth was returned to the Tower and convicted of treason.  He was executed on 2 June 1572. 

Ridolfi had the common good sense to remain in Italy (He died in France in 1612). Mary acknowledged that she sought financial advice from Ridolfi. She had dower lands in France.However, she absolutely denied trying to topple Elizabeth from power. Elizabeth did not want to execute her cousin so Mary was kept in closer confinement.  There were also diplomatic repercussions. The Spanish ambassador was expelled from England.

In England the crisis was a test of Elizabeth’s political and religious settlement. It also saw a hardening of attitudes – religious identities became more polarised with the passage of time. As the treason laws tightened, Catholics who had the money to do so went abroad or had to practise their faith in secret.

The Rising of the North – a quick run through.

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The rebellion took place in the autumn of 1569 -in all the crisis lasted for three months, possibly prompting William Cecil to say ‘I told you so!’ when the council considered that it was Mary’s presence in England that triggered the uprising.

The North had a reputation for recusancy – or Catholicism. In 1536 as the smaller monastic houses were being shut the Pilgrims of the North rebelled under a banner bearing the five wounds of Christ. The following year Bigod’s Rebellion was similarly associated with a demand for Henry VIII to return to Catholicism, restore the Mass and bring back the monasteries. The Rebellion of 1537 gave Henry the excuse to punish the rebels of the previous year. He sent an army north, imposed martial law and had 100s of rebels hanged virtually on their own doorsteps.

In 1569, the desire to place Mary Queen of Scots on the throne and restore the country to Catholicism wasn’t the only reason for the rebellion. Oh no – not by a long chalk.

  1. The northern earls were somewhat rattled by the administrative interference coming from London. They were not keen on William Cecil. Men like Northumberland and Norfolk also felt frozen out of power by Elizabeth’s choice of advisers.
  2. For reasons best known to themselves a group of powerful men including Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Arundel decided that in order to cancel out the threat posed by Mary that she should marry an English nobleman, convert to Protestantism and then the English could help rule Scotland and everything would be simply wonderful. No one quite plucked up the nerve to tell Elizabeth this cunning plan or that the proposed groom was Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk (think vain and ambitious and you’ll be in the right ball park).

The plot when it first began was not a Catholic plot! Mary’s half brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray is for the plan to begin with but after he’s had a think about it decided that he doesn’t really want Mary back in Scotland whatever her faith might be, and certainly not with Norfolk at her side. For the English earls loyal to Elizabeth who came up with the idea this was a killer blow – the game, which was never a good one if the truth was told, was over by the start of the autumn. Besides which they still haven’t told Elizabeth about their plan to marry Mary off to one of themselves …and no one wanted that particular job. So they probably all heaved a sigh of relief.

However, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk had also had some thinking time and he rather fancied a crown of some description…and besides which he resented William Cecil who he regarded as having too much power, which he thought ought more rightfully to have belonged to him….so asked the northern earls for support to marry Mary.

Robert Dudley, the queen’s favourite, recognising that things were getting out of hand told Elizabeth in September 1569 that Norfolk intended to marry Mary without the consent of the privy council – which was treason. Norfolk had also left court without royal permission. By October Howard, who really wasn’t rebel material and hadn’t done any serious planning before he asked his northern pals to lend a hand, was back in London and begging for mercy. Elizabeth had him sent to the Tower.

In the north, the Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland, who were both Catholics, were still plotting but not, it appears, actually doing very much. In reality although they had an alternative to Elizabeth in the form of Mary they really weren’t very organised and were a bit vague about their aims. They were hauled up in front of the president of the Council of the North who cleared them of any wrongdoing and sent them on their way.

In London, Elizabeth wasn’t so convinced about the loyalty of the two men, so decided that she wanted a little chat with Northumberland and Westmorland. Not to put too fine a point on it, the earls panicked. Not wanting to end up in the Tower with Norfolk the two terrified men finally…rebelled, raising about 4,600 men from among their tenantry and kinship networks. They marched south. One of their key demands was that Cecil had to go – And the second was that they wanted the Religious Settlement of 1559 overturned so that the Mass could be restored.

On 14 November, 1569, Westmorland and Northumberland captured Durham; restored it to Catholicism, threw out the Protestant hymn books, and celebrated the Mass. They also called on all Catholics to take up arms in the defence of the true faith. Fortunately for Elizabeth most of England’s Catholics ignored the demand. Even though Barnard Castle and the port at Hartlepool fell to the rebels – the whole affair was really rather restricted.

It should be noted that James Pilkington was made Bishop of Durham in 1561 and had imposed Protestantism on his diocese despite the fact that the locals really weren’t that keen on the idea. His attitude helped rubbed the earls up the wrong way and added to the opinion that London was interfering in the way things were done in the north.

In London there was some difficulty raising a force to resist the rebels. Finally the Earl of Sussex (who wasn’t a fan of Robert Dudley) was appointed Lord Lieutenant of the North, put an army together and headed north to restore order. Elizabeth had Mary moved for safe keeping to Coventry and by December it was all over. Mary Queen of Scots and King Philip II of Spain hadn’t backed the rebels and neither had the majority of the kingdom. Recognising that the game was up the earls fled to Scotland.

Elizabeth registered her irritation by having at least 400 rebels executed for treason. The Earl of Westmorland spent the rest of his life in exile and the Earl of Northumberland was executed in 1572 when he was captured and given back to the English.

It was the only armed rebellion of Elizabeth’s reign – discounting the Earl of Essex’s failed uprising at the end of her life. The lack of support at the time is an indicator of her popularity. Her response to the rebels indicated that she was a chip off the old block and not to be trifled with. And laws were passed that made any further Catholic threat punishable as treason. She also appointed Robert Dudley’s brother-in-law Henry Hastings 3rd Earl of Huntingdon as the President of the Council of the North after Sussex (who held the post from 1569 until his death in 1572.) Huntingdon was an active Puritan who spent the next 23 years keeping the north in check.

William Cecil ponders the problem of Mary Queen of Scots

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Mary Queen of Scots was also Queen of France when her husband, Francis, became king in July 1559. Eighteen month later Francis II died from an ear infection and in August 1561 she returned to the homeland she had not seen since she was a child. At first her rule was successful even though the Reformed Church held sway. But then in 1565 she married her cousin, Henry Lord Darnley. Matters deteriorated to the extent that the queen’s secretary David Riccio was murdered in front of her on 9 March 1566 and her husband’s home at Kirk o Field was blown up the following February. Had he died in the explosion eyebrows would have been raised but since he was founded strangled in an orchard near the smouldering ruins there can be no doubt that he was assassinated. Mary’s marriage three months later to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell may not have been to her choosing but it added fuel to the fire that she had taken part in her second husband’s murder.

On 13 May 1568 following imprisonment, flight and defeat on the battlefield she sailed across the Solway Firth where she remained for the next nineteen years until she was executed in February 1587.

Her arrival triggered a series of plots to put her on the English throne. From the start of her visit to England, Elizabeth I’s advisors were aware of the danger that Mary’s presence presented. To many Catholics it seemed that Mary was the rightful queen of England rather than Elizabeth. Her presence made her a focus for plotters.

William Cecil, wrote a paper about what to do with Mary in 1568. The English government could not just pack her up and send her back to Scotland or to France. She was Elizabeth’s heir by right of blood. The Government had a duty to protect her. Even worse, in 1558 she had signed a secret agreement giving Scotland and England to France if she died without an heir. A claim to her right to the crown had been made on her behalf by her father-in-law, King Henry II, following Mary Tudor’s death the same year. It seemed to Cecil that if Mary was freed and sent to France that they would use her claims to England’s throne as an excuse to go to war with Elizabeth.

Cecil summed it up eloquently, ‘we find neither her continuance here good, nor her departing hence quiet for us.’

Clearly Cecil didn’t much care if Mary had blown up Darnley or not. he wanted an alliance with Scotland’s Protestants and he didn’t want to see the ‘Auld Alliance’ between France and Scotland resurrecting itself. it seemed sensible that Mary should be tried at York for the alleged crime. He thought that if she was acquitted she would agree to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh which renounced her claim to the English throne before being restored to the Scottish throne and if she was found guilty she might be ‘sent to live in some convenient place without possessing her kingdom’ (p Donaldson, p.77). He went on to argue that the restoration would not be in her own interest…it certainly wasn’t in Elizabeth’s.

Gordon Donaldson, The First Trial of Mary Queen of Scots

Tudor succession – the problem-a spot of light revision

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By February 1553 it was clear that King Edward VI was likely to die. Until then, with the notably unsuccessful exception of Henry I’s daughter Matilda, no woman had sat upon England’s throne. Now though all heirs to the Crown were female:

Mary Tudor – the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon. She had been declared illegitimate by her father but under the terms of his will and the Third Act of Succession passed in 1544, she was next in line to the throne.

Elizabeth Tudor – the Protestant daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn. She had also been declared illegitimate. Under the terms of Henry’s well and the act of succession, she was next in line after Mary, if Mary had no heirs. Elizabeth’s birth in 1533 had been something of a disappointment to Henry VIII who wanted a legitimate male heir. In 1536 Anne Boleyn was executed after failing to provide him with one and Elizabeth was rendered illegitimate. Eleven days after Anne’s execution, Henry married Jane Seymour who produced Edward before dying as the result of complications in childbed. No one expected Elizabeth to ever become queen. Her upbringing was difficult as her status shifted.

Mary Queen of Scots – the grand daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret Tudor. There was no doubting her legitimacy but she was married to the French dauphin and was Catholic.

Lady Jane Grey – the eldest grand daughter of Henry VIII’s youngest sister Mary. She was legitimate, Protestant and English. Initially Edward decided to leave his crown to Jane’s legitimate male heirs but it became clear that he did not have enough time to see his teenage cousin married with a child in her arms. Certainly the idea appealed to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. If either Mary or Elizabeth took the throne he would lose the power that he wielded during Edward’s reign.

On 25 May 1553 Jane was married to Guildford Dudley, the fourth son of the Duke of Northumberland. She had been bullied into the match. On 12 June Edward changed the wording of his ‘Device’ leaving the throne to Jane but the Device was not ratified by Parliament. Mary and Elizabeth were deemed illegitimate. When King Edward VI died on 6 July 1553 Northumberland hoped that Jane would sit upon the throne and he would continue to wield power. In time he hoped that the House of Tudor would become the House of Dudley.

In reality Mary realising what was about to happen went to Kenninghall in Norfolk and on 8 July was proclaimed queen to popular acclaim. Her supporters began to assemble at Framingham Castle. Northumberland’s council began to panic even though Jane was proclaimed queen in London on 9 July. She was deposed on the 19th turning in an instant from queen to prisoner.

Elizabeth wrote from her home in Hatfield in support of her sister and joined Mary for her entry into London. Mary had the support of most of England because she was Henry VIII’s eldest daughter. religion was not an issue at that stage of Mary and Elizabeth’s story. Mary would become increasingly suspicious of her sister, especially as religion became a factor in England’s political life. There were times when Elizabeth feared for her life before Mary’s death in 1558. It was perhaps unsurprising. Mary soon lost her popularity. Wyatt’s Rebellion followed hard on the heels of her coronation and she increasingly saw Elizabeth as a symbol for Mary’s enemies. Elizabeth had the opportunity, if she could survive, to watch and learn from her sister’s mistakes.

There were three threads that would follow Elizabeth through her long reign:

  1. John Knox stated that it was against natural law for a woman to rule a man – they being ‘weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish creatures’ – essentially a queen needed a king to be in charge – so when Mary and Elizabeth each became queen in turn the need for a husband for both an heir and wise leadership was something that exercised the Privy Council’s mind.
  2. Who exactly was illegitimate? For some Catholics, Elizabeth was an illegitimate child born to Anne Boleyn when Henry VIII put his legitimate wife to one side. After Mary Tudor’s death, in the eyes of some it was Mary Queen of Scots who was the rightful queen of England because she was the child of Henry VIII’s eldest sister. It helped that she was Catholic.
  3. Religion became an increasingly important factor in politics in England. The Northern Rebellion of 1569, the Rudolf Plot of 1571, Throckmorton Plot of 1583 and the Babington Plot of 1586 sought to topple Elizabeth from her throne and replace her with her Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots who had been a prisoner in England since 1568.

Katherine of York

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Katherine was one of Elizabeth of York’s younger sisters. Her parents were Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. When her father died in 1483 she was not yet four years of age but like her older siblings found herself in sanctuary at Westminster and declared illegitimate under the terms of Titulus Regius which accepted Bishop Stillington’s declaration that Edward was pre-contracted in marriage to Lady Eleanor Talbot (Butler) prior to his secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville.

Eventually Elizabeth Woodville came to terms with Richard III and her daughters returned to their nursery or to court. Richard promised that he would provide for his brother’s children but the marriage of an illegitimate daughter of a king would never be as sparkling as that of a princess.

However, in 1485 Fortune’s wheel took a downward turn for Richard on the battlefield at Bosworth and Henry Tudor became king. He had sworn to marry Katherine’s sister Elizabeth, and with no sign of the two sons of Edward IV, Titulus Regius was revoked and an order was issued for all copies to be destroyed. Katherine was once again a Plantagenet princess. Her care and education lay in the hands of her sister Elizabeth who married Henry uniting the houses of York and Lancaster but her marriage was in her brother-in-law’s gift.

Katherine and her sisters were valuable pawns in the marriage game. it was suggested at one time that she marry the Duke of Ross but nothing came of the proposal. It was essential so far as Henry was concerned that the princesses were either married out of the country to countries sympathetic to Henry Tudor or else they should be married to men he trusted at home. Henry trusted precious few people – which isn’t surprising given the number of rebellions he had to deal with once he became king.

In 1495, Henry thought he had found just the man – William Courtenay, heir to the Earl of Devon. She was packed off to Tiverton where she became a mother in 1496. In 1497 her husband rose further in royal favour when he helped to defeat Perkin Warbeck, a royal pretender. Two more children followed, a daughter Margaret and another son named Edward. Catherine could often be found at court with her sister and she took an active part in royal events including the betrothal celebrations of her niece Margaret Tudor to James IV of Scotland.

Unfortunately Courtenay’s favour was not to last. He was implicated in the Duke of Suffolk’s rebellion in 1502 and found himself incarcerated in the Tower – although evidence was lacking. Henry VII swiftly confiscated all his goods leaving Katherine and her three children dependent on Elizabeth of York, but at least they were still free and Courtney did not suffer a traitor’s death. His main problem was that he was married to a Plantagenet princess and Henry VII simply didn’t trust that he wouldn’t make an attempt on the throne. Poor Katherine faced difficult times which were compounded by the death of her youngest son while she was with Elizabeth. Without the funds to pay for Edward’s funeral, Katherine was reliant upon her sister’s kindness for the burial of the little boy and for her mourning robes.

The following year, it was Katherine who led the mourners to Westminster where Elizabeth of York was buried. The queen had died as a result of complications following childbirth. Katherine had lost the sister to whom she was closest and the source by which she was able to live. Now she had to turn to her father-in-law for help and to her young nephew Prince Henry who was fond of his aunt.

After Henry VII’s death, Katherine’s life changed for the better. She was welcome at court, her husband was finally freed from his prison and Katherine was granted estates by which the couple could live, although she had to sign away her rights to her share of the earldom of March. When Courtenay died in 1511, Katherine took a vow of celibacy so that no new husband could be found for her. She also set about ensuring that her son, Henry Courtenay, who was now ten years of age should inherit his father’s title. In 1512 she arranged for her daughter Margaret to marry the heir of the Earl of Worcester.

She came rarely to court after that but she did become Mary Tudor’s godmother in 1516. She did not know that her Plantagenet bloodline would send Fortune’s wheel turning once more when her nephew Henry VIII attempted to divorce his wife Katherine of Aragon. Her son Henry Courtenay would be executed for corresponding with another cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole. Her grandson Edward Courtenay would spend time in prison and because of his involvement in Wyatt’s Rebellion, which sought to topple Mary Tudor, be exiled from the country.

Katherine died on 15 November 1527 having spent the latter part of her life living in Tiverton.

Anthony Babington

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Anthony was born at Dethick in Derbyshire on 24 October 1561. His father died when Anthony was just 9 years old and his mother remarried into another of Derbyshire’s gentry families. At some point the boy, who was a third son, was employed in the household of the Earl of Shrewsbury where he served as a page to Mary Queen of Scots.

In 1580 he met with Thomas Morgan, in the employ of Mary Queen of Scots agent James Beaton and probably Sir Francis Walingham, Elizabeth I’s spymaster. He was persuaded to take letters to Mary. In early 1586 he refused to carry letters as by then the Earl of Shrewsbury had been relieved of his duties as Mary’s gaoler and the terms of her confinement were much stricter. It was at about that time that he made the acquaintance of Robert Poley, who unknown to Anthony, was yet another of Walsingham’s agents (who needs James Bond?)

When Walsingham captured Gilbert Giffard and turned him (well who wants to die a very nasty death anyway) the stage was set for a more letters to be smuggled to Mary. Giffard contacted the French and arranged for letters to be smuggled into Mary by beer barrels at Chartley Castle. No one realised the whole set up was carefully staged by Sir Francis Walsingham. In July 1586 Babington laid out the details of a plot to put Mary on the throne and condemned himself and by her response, Mary, to death.

By the 3rd September 1586 Babington was in the Tower. His house at Dethick was searched. Two of his sisters were there and his 2 year old daughter Ellen. Ellen’s mother, who was married to Babington 1579 had fled.

Unsurprisingly Babington was convicted of treason, hanged, drawn and quartered on 20 September along with Ballard and five others somewhere near Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Seven more conspirators died the following day. It was a week since their trial.

babington

The Babington Plot

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In 1586, 25 year old, Anthony Babington of Dethick in Derbyshire and a jesuit priest, John Ballard, plotted to remove Elizabeth I from her throne and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots – restoring Catholicism to England in the process. The plot when it came to Sir Francis Walsingham’s attention resulted in letters sent to Mary being monitored and her eventual execution when one of the letters was used to entrap her.

It was the third plot against Elizabeth since the Rudolf Plot of 1571 and the Throckmorton Plot of 1583. The Elizabethan world was full of agents and plots. Robert Poley and Gilbert Giffard were double agents working for Walsingham who wanted to have Mary executed because of the danger she represented while she still lived. Anthony Babington was drawn into the conspiracy by Thomas Morgan who asked him to carry letters to Mary. Morgan worked for Mary’s official agent in Paris, James Beaton, but it is likely that Morgan also worked for Sir Francis Walsingham. Robert Poley ensured that the young man did not back out when he got cold feet.

On 7 July 1585, Babington sent a letter to Mary at Chartley Castle in code. The letters were sent to Mary inside beer barrels – but it was Walsingham who masterminded the method. Babington was watched every step of the way. It was intercepted and decoded by Thomas Phelippes who also decoded Mary’s reply which indicated her desire to be rescued from her imprisonment which began in 1569. Since 1585 she had been under the supervision of Sir Amias Paulet, a Puritan who had torn down her cloth of state and restricted her movements even more than they were in the past. It was essential that it could be proved that Mary was plotting to overthrow Elizabeth, otherwise the English queen would not have her cousin put on trial or executed.

The Babington Plot advocated a Spanish invasion of England to ensure that the Protestants were deposed from power and to ensure that Mary became queen. It was essential that Elizabeth was assinated. Ultimately it was agreed that the Spanish would finance a French army to invade England.

Babington’s letter identified six stages for the plot to succeed . Step 5 was to free Mary and step 6 was to kill Elizabeth. Mary’s letter, written on 17 July 1586, affirming her desire to escape assented to the plan and did not forbid the murder of her cousin. She was guilty by association. The Bond of Association devised in 1584, and signed by Mary Queen of Scots, after the failure of the Throckmorton Plot in 1583 clearly stated that not only were plotters to be executed but anyone in whose interest the plot was made – i.e. Mary.

When Phelippes translated the letter he drew a gallows to signify that Mary had incriminated her self and the Bond of Association would bring an end to her life.

The end result was not only the execution of Mary but also of Anthony Babington who may have made Mary’s acquaintance when he was a ward of the Earl of Shrewsbury who was Mary’s long term gaoler.

Derby 1745 – a view across the Derwent.

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An East Prospect of Derby – Derby Museum

Samuel and Nathantial Buck’s engraving of Derby shows the town dominated by the tower of All Saints Church which was constructed at the turn of the sixteenth century and in the middle by Exeter House, owned by the Earl and Countess of Exeter. Exeter was not at home when Bonnie Prince Charlie arrived on 4 December 1745.

But who was the Earl of Exeter and why did he have a house in Derby? Brownlow Cecil, Lord Burghley had only recently succeeded his father, similarly named, as the 9th Earl of Exeter. It turns out that Brownlow’s mother, Hannah Chambers, was from Derby. Her father Thomas Chambers who ran his business from London was a merchant in copper and lead – which immediately provides the Derbyshire connection as well as a reason for the marriage of the younger son of an earl with the younger daughter of a ‘gent’. In short they were very wealthy. The 8th Earl’s elder brother died within two years of Hannah’s marriage and she became a countess.

Hannah’s grandfather is buried in All Saints. By then the family extended their home in Derby with the pleasure grounds depicted on the near side of the river to the viewer but it doesn’t seem that the earl and his countess spent much time in their Derby residence.

Having provided accommodation for the Jacobites it was sold in 1758 to the then Mayor of Derby.

Incidentally, the long narrow plots of land are the footprints of the Anglo-Saxon burgage plots – what’s not to love? A burgage consists of a long narrow plot with a house fronting on to the street – usually burgage plots were rented for cash rather than service although the latter was possible. Tenantry of a burgage plot also often accrued voting rights. Obviously Exeter House involved the purchase and amalgamation of two burgage plots because of the width of the house when the area became fashionable.

Lost Houses – Exeter House, Derby

William Longspée the Younger who did not become an earl of Salisbury

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Sir William Longspée the Younger was born in about 1212. His father, William Longspée, was an illegitimate son of Henry II, friend of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke and husband of Ela of Salisbury, the suro jure countess.

William’s father was an influential man and chivalrous man but the earl died not long after he was shipwrecked in 1225. Rumour whispered that Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent had a hand in his death through poison but by then Hubert was not a popular man. Unfortunately for William II, his mother Ela held the title in her own right so William the Younger could not legally carry the title although he did attempt to claim it.

In 1233 he sailed close to rebellion because of his friendship with Richard Marshal who took the Marches to war when one of Gilbert Basset’s manors in Wiltshire was unlawfully seized on the kings orders. Another of Marshal’s adherents Richard Siward was wrongfully imprisoned at about the same time. The king was accused of listening to the advice of his advisor the Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches who advocated that kings could do as they wished.

The so-called Marshal War was largely a March affair but it resulted in Shrewsbury being burned and Henry III experiencing the embarrassment of the Welsh routing his army – who were sleeping soundly in their tents at Grosmont Castle when Llewelyn’s army arrived. Longspee did not become involved but he was required to hand over his daughter as a hostage for his good behaviour when he threatened to join the rebellious barons. The Crown perhaps recognising that they were on thin ice placed the girl in the custody of her grandmother.

By 1240 William decided to go on Crusade in the service of Richard of Cornwall, Henry III’s younger brother, who sailed for the Holy Land via Marseilles. Two other groups of nobles set off at the same time including Simon de Montfort. Cornwall’s party included his own extended family, of whom Longspée was a part. William didn’t see action, returning with Cornwall in the spring of 1241.

He returned to the Holy Land in 1247 on a second crusade with the French king, Louis IX against the Egyptian mamlukes. To raise the funds for the endeavour he sold a charter to the town of Poole. It was during this crusade that he gained renown for his daring and ultimately his death as reported by the chronicler Matthew Paris which, in the long term, did nothing to help Anglo-French relations. It was reported that the Count d’Artois tricked Longspée into making an attack before the French king was in place with his own troops. Longspée, his men and 280 knights templars were killed during the encounter.

An effigy was erected in Salisbury Cathedral although his remains were buried in the Holy Land at Acre.

Although William was married and had several children, his own heir, another William, also predeceased Ela of Salisbury who died in 1261. William the even younger’s (sorry couldn’t think of anything snappier) only child, Margaret, married Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln. Margaret became suo jure Countess of Salisbury in her own right following her grandmother’s death.

The female line continued to hold the earldom of Salisbury. Margaret’s daughter Alice de Lacy became the suo jure countess of Lincoln and Salisbury after one of her brothers fell down a well and the other one fell off a parapet at Pontefract Castle. Alice was unhappily married to Edward I’s nephew Thomas of Lancaster from childhood. The inheritance, when it fell into Thomas’s lap, made him the wealthiest man in the kingdom. Alice’s turbulent life is well worth the retelling: it includes two kidnaps and imprisonment demonstrating that, on occasion, life as an heiress wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Alice died without children in 1348.

The earldom of Lincoln fell into abeyance but the earldom of Salisbury had already been forfeited in 1322. The lands which had once belonged to the Longspée dynasty passed back up the collateral line to James Audley who was descended from William Longspée the younger’s eldest daughter Ela who was married into the Audley family.

The title would be recreated for Edward III’s friend William Montagu or Montacute depending upon your preference. And from there it’s a hop and a skip to Richard Neville Earl of Warwick (a.k.a. The Kingmaker).

If you would like to find out about William Longspée, Earl of Salisbury’s mother she can be found in Medieval Royal Mistresses and Alice Montagu, 5th Countess of Salisbury appears in my forthcoming book about The Kingmaker’s Women.

Popinjays – watch the birdie…

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By Wikimandia – This vector image includes elements that have been taken or adapted from this file:, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16924691

What’s not to love about a parrot or in this case a popinjay? This is Robert Tweng’s coat of arms according to a certain well known online encyclopaedia site – argent field; fess of gules and three birdies – no that’s to a technical term. The popinjays or parrots first turn up on a Tweng coat of arms in 1255. Apparently parrots became popular during the reign of Henry III.

This particular manifestation was created in 1690 for Richard Lumley , one of the so-called Immortal Seven who invited William of Orange across the Channel to depose his father-in-law James II. He was created Viscount Lumley as a reward although the title had existed previously in Ireland. The family were of royalist stock during the civil wars of the seventeenth century.

So how do the Lumleys and Robert Tweng fit together? Robert Tweng, or William the Angry, had three sons who all died without legitimate heirs of their own. In 1374 his barony which he had in his own turned acquired through marriage to an heiress, passed through Tweng’s daughter Lucy into the Lumley family. Simples… though I’m still not sure why anyone would opt for a goose-stepping parrot.