Footnotes on Friday

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Let’s hang out at the mall

The second royal exchange

Did you know that the first English mall was opened in 1571? Merchant Thomas Gresham, who lived in Antwerp, followed the Bourse shopping exchange in Antwerp as his model. The idea was an arcaded building housing small shops, surrounding a small courtyard for trading. With royal approval from Elizabeth 1, the mall soon became a magnet for merchants and shoppers. Idlers, too, much like the malls of today.

In the Inquest Book of Cornhill Ward, 1574 (says Mr. Burgon), there is a presentment against the Exchange, because on Sundays and holidays great numbers of boys, children, and “young rogues,” meet there, and shout and holloa, so that honest citizens cannot quietly walk there for their recreation, and the parishioners of St. Bartholomew could not hear the sermon. In 1590 we find certain women prosecuted for selling apples and oranges at the Exchange gate in Cornhill, and “amusing themselves in cursing and swearing, to the great annoyance and grief of the inhabitants and passers-by.” In 1592 a tavern-keeper, who had vaults under the Exchange, was fined for allowing tippling, and for broiling herrings, sprats, and bacon, to the vexation of worshipful merchants resorting to the Exchange. In 1602 we find that oranges and lemons were allowed to be sold at the gates and passages of the Exchange. In 1622 complaint was made of the rat-catchers, and sellers of dogs, birds, plants, &c., who hung about the south gate of the Bourse, especially at exchange time. It was also seriously complained of that the bear-wards, Shakespeare’s noisy neighbours in Southwark, before special bull or bear baitings, used to parade before the Exchange, generally in business hours, and there make proclamation of their entertainments, which caused tumult, and drew together mobs. It was usual on these occasions to have a monkey riding on the bear’s back, and several discordant minstrels fiddling, to give additional publicity to the coming festival. (https://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol1/pp494-513)

The Royal Exchange is still on the same site today, though the buildings have twice been destroyed by fire and rebuilt.

After the Great Fire of London, the place was built in nearly a rectangular quadrangle. The philosopher Joseph Addison says:

“There is no place in the town,” says that rambling philosopher, Addison, “which I so much love to frequent as the Royal Exchange. It gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see so rich an assembly of countrymen and foreigners consulting together upon the private business of mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth. I must confess I look upon High ‘Change to be a great council in which all considerable nations have their representatives. Factors in the trading world are what ambassadors are in the politic world; they negociate affairs, conclude treaties, and maintain a good correspondence between those wealthy societies of men that are divided from one another by seas and oceans, or live on the different extremities of a continent. I have often been pleased to hear disputes adjusted between an inhabitant of Japan and an alderman of London; or to see a subject of the great Mogul entering into a league with one of the Czar of Muscovy. I am infinitely delighted in mixing with these several ministers of commerce, as they are distinguished by their different walks and different languages. Sometimes I am jostled among a body of Armenians; sometimes I am lost in a crowd of Jews; and sometimes make one in a group of Dutchmen. I am a Dane, Swede, or Frenchman at different times; or rather, fancy myself like the old philosopher, who, upon being asked what countryman he was, replied that he was a citizen of the world.”

This was the Royal Exchange of the Regency. The outside shops were lottery offices, newspaper offices, watchmakers, notaries, stock-brokers, and so on. The shops in the galleries were superseded by the Royal Exchange Assurance Offices, Lloyd’s Coffee-house, the Merchant Seamen’s Offices, the Gresham Lecture Room, and the Lord Mayor’s Court Offic, with its row of offices, divided by glazed partitions, the name of each attorney on a projecting board. The vaults were let to bankers, and to the East India Company. They stored pepper there.

This building burned down in 1838. Today’s building has the layout of the original — a trapezoid-shaped building , with rooms all around the outside on the ground floor that let on to a wide internal corridor open to a central courtyard. The upper level is also given over to rooms and corridors.

The Royal Exchange today

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Vimy Ridge: Canada’s coming-of-age

Guest post from Caroline Warfield.


Last April, I posted about the 102nd anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge on History Imagined. It was a well planned, brilliantly executed operation in which all four divisions of the Canadian Corps, fighting together for the first time, successfully dislodged Germans from the top of a high ridge, a feat the French and English had failed to accomplish earlier in the war. It cost 3,595 Canadian deaths and approximately 7,000 wounded.

I will repeat most of that post here. Vimy Ridge in many ways represents to Canada, what Gallipoli does to Australia and New Zealand. Brigadier-General Arthur Edward Ross has been quoted as saying, “in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.” As Gallipoli defines the moment in which Australian and New Zealand came of age as independent countries, so Vimy Ridge took on mythological importance to Canadians. They came out from the shadow of Britain.

Weeks of training and nighttime drilling made use of models and mock-ups to prepare the troops for the attack. Unlike tactics employed at the Somme the year before, effort was made to empower leadership down to the squad level so every man knew that if officers fell, the assault would continue. Units were given as much information as possible, to decentralize command and to encourage initiative.

They built roads and railways, shored up the French trenches, made use of existing underground caverns called souterrains dug into the chalky soil, and built an additional 6km of subways to transport troops as close to the front as possible while protected from German Fire.

More important than any other innovation and preparation, however, were the overwhelming amount of artillery brought up to support the attack and improvements that enabled artillery shells to explode on contact so few simply burrowed into the mud. Steady bombardment began March 20 and lasted twenty days, raining death and destruction onto the top of the ridge. On April 3 it intensified, and Germans called it “the week of suffering.”

Coincidentally that week was holy week; Good Friday must have been hellish for men on both sides. My own interest is rarely about strategy and planning, but primarily about the men themselves, the lives of the common soldier, hiding in tunnels, trenches, and caves waiting. When the time came the stories of individual heroism at Vimy Ridge abounded. The names of Ellis Sifton, William Milne, and Jeremiah Jones, stand out as examples. Ordered to take Vimy Ridge, take it they did.

Shortly after dawn on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917, 15,000 Canadian troops, joined by a British division in their right flank, began their assault uphill in driving sleet, supported by still more artillery fire in a “creeping barrage” designed to protect them, and keep the Germans in their trenches. By the end of April 9 Canadians held the entire ridge with the exception of one hill; they pushed the Germans back 5Km, the greatest one-day advance in the war to that point. The artillery had been less effectively employed against Hill 145 (aka “the Pimple”). Defenders cut the Fourth Canadian Division to pieces in the initial assault. Renewed bombardment and a second infantry assault took the hill on April 12.

In the grand scheme of the Great War, Vimy Ridge could be defined as a mere tactical victory, its importance overshadowed by the British Army’s failure to make significant progress in the overall Battle of Arras of which it was a part, and the failure of the French action at Aisne, which it was designed to support. In the quagmire that was the war in northern France, Vimy cost the Germans an important vantage point, but only a few kilometers of ground.

Strategically vital? No. Defining? Emphatically yes. Though joined by a British division, and other the overall command of Sir Julian Byng, architect of the meticulous planning, at the end of the day Canadian soldiers accomplished the thing. Men from every part of Canada charged up Vimy Ridge, functioning as a single unit. They had good reason to be proud of their daring, initiative, and success.

They were not finished. There were battles of greater strategic importance, and more bloodshed still to come—Amiens, Cambrai, Passchendaele, and Ypres. Yet it is Vimy that is remembered as the corps’ defining moment. It is therefore fitting that Canada’s main monument to the Great War in France is the Vimy Memorial, which sits atop Hill 145.

Caroline Warfield, award winning author of historical romance usually set in the Regency and Victorian eras, reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart, believing love is worth the risk.

Her most recent release is Christmas Hope, set in France during World War I, it includes scenes at Vimy Ridge.

After two years at war Harry ran out of metaphors for death, synonyms for brown, and images of darkness. When he encounters the floating islands of Amiens and life in the form a widow and her little son, hope ensnares him.  When the Great War is over, will their love be enough?

Full blurb and excerpt

 

 

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The history of bunting and how to make it.

I’ve been writing about the use of bunting in patriotic colours to decorate a fundraising event at Haverford House, home of my Duchess of Haverford. Just to make sure I wasn’t handing my readers an anachronism, I did a bit of research.

Sure enough, bunting — in the sense of long lines of flags put up to celebrate an event — goes back to at least the early seventeenth century. The term seems to have started as the name of the material used to make the flags. Buntine was a lightweight wool fabric used for flags on naval ships. Rows of small flags are, even today, used to signal from ship to ship. One source I found said the sailor whose job it is to raise the flags is still referred to as a bunt, but I can’t find any verification of that.

Bunting has traditionally been used for street parties, patriotic processions, and the like. No reason why I can’t have it in my ballroom for an event to raise money for the widows and children of soldiers and sailors.

Just for something different, here’s how to make it, with the occasional snippet of knowledge about how the Victorians used it.

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Where viscounts came from

John Lord Beaumont, the first English viscount.

If you’ve been following this series, you’ll have realised that land is the fundamental building block of European nobility: particularly the province or county. The pivot point for understanding titles is what England calls an earl, whether they’re called some variation of ‘count’ or ‘jarl’ or ‘graf’ or some other term. Counts (or earls) ruled counties on behalf of the monarch. Marcher lords or marquises or margrafs ruled counties on the kingdom’s borders. Dukes ruled several counties.

When we get to viscount, we’re going the other way. The key part of the word is ‘vis’, from late Latin ‘vice’ meaning a deputy or substitute. Vicar comes from the same root word. In Carolingian times (in the empire of Charlemagne and his descendants), the vicecomites were officials appointed to exercise the powers of the comites (counts) who had delegated them to act. The man was a official who worked for the count (or higher official), just as the count was an official who worked for the king.

Vicecomes wasn’t, initially, a hereditary title, just a job title, as — for that matter — were the higher titles. Just as count became a hereditary title, in time, so did viscount.

France had hereditary viscounts  when it first began to differentiate itself from the Holy Roman Empire. The duchy of Normandy was divided into vicecomtes, ruled by vicecomes as deputies to the duke.

In England, the term vicecomes was applied to those who held the role of sherif, but the first hereditary title wasn’t applied until 1440, when John Lord Beaumont was created the first English viscount.

Other European countries retain equivalent titles. In Portugal and Spain, the rank is visconde, in France, vicomte, in Germany, the rank is burggraf.

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Stormy seas in a tall ship

What was it like, on a sailing ship that relied on human strength and skill to face the stormy oceans? No safety harnesses. No labour saving devices. In this video, sailors from an historic ship that sailed from England to Australia as late as the early 20th century look back 40 years to comment on the experience.

https://youtu.be/sUhKBZb7A7c

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Where earls came from

Earl is the oldest title still used today  for British nobility. Unlike the other two we’ve discussed, it hasn’t come down to us from a Roman military rank. Instead, it comes from the Scandinavian word for the highest nobility under the king: jarl.

The first jarls arrived in England under Canute, the Danish king of England, Denmark, and Norway. The Anglo-Saxon version of the term was eorl. Eorls governed shires, now called counties. That gives us the link with the equivalent  Roman-derived term from the Continent: count (the ruler of a county), although you’ll remember the Germans had a local term, graf.

Earls sat in the courts of each shire they ruled with the local bishop. After the Norman Conquest, they were restricted to one county each, and the official duties of government, military defense and justice became the responsibility of the sheriff. Earls were often sheriffs in their own counties. It doesn’t seem as if the jarls’ wives had a particular title, but the Normans introduced the French term, making a female earl or the wife of an earl a countess.

Whatever their other roles, earls held estates from the Crown as tenants in chief. In return, the earls owed the Crown their service, and in particular, they owed military service; they had to take their knights to fight for the Crown when asked. The estate descended to heirs of the body; that is, the earl’s children. In the early days, this meant the eldest son, if the earl had one, or the eldest daughter, if he had no sons. If the earldom (and the estate) descended to a woman, it would be held by her husband.

Until Edward III created his son Duke of Cornwall in 1337, ‘earl’ continued to be the highest English title. It’s now third, after duke and marquess.

By the late Middle Ages, the custom of primogeniture — male heirs only, was gradually taking over in England, but it continued in Scotland until the seventeenth century.

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Lighting London

‘The Blessed Effects of Gas Lights or a new method of Lighting as practised in Great Peter Street, London.’ Hand-coloured engraving published by S W Fores (50 Piccadilly, London) 10 November 1813. A humorous illustration of a group of men, a chair, floorboards and a dog being thrown upwards by an explosion from a gas pipe. Three men surround the blast exclaiming that gas smells, is poisonous and will kill many.

Until the 19th century, people going out at night needed strong moonlight, torches, or lanterns. In London, those enjoying an active social life would employ link boys with torches. The term derives from the word for the cotton tow (link) commonly used for the wick.

By the early 18th century, technology had progressed to oil lanterns, with fish oil and wicks. People carried lanterns, and some progressive businesses had a lantern hanging at their door to show that they were open. Certain types of business used red glass in their lantern, and to this day, areas where such businesses cluster are called red light districts.

In 1750, London installed a system of street lamps on important main thoroughfares. These were oil lamps, lit at dusk and dowsed at dawn by a lamplighter with a long brass pole with a flame on the end. To this day, London still has lamplighters (for their remaining 1,500 gas lamps). In 1760s, reflectors were added.

Oil lamps are supposed to have made the streets safer, though they gave little light and were as much as 65 yards apart. At least they were a bright point to aim for in the darkness, so perhaps lives were saved because fewer people strayed into dark alleys. Keep in mind the pools of deep shadow though, when you read of London prostitutes transacting their business up against a wall. It wasn’t necessarily the public display that we, accustomed to our never-dark cities, might imagine.

By the early nineteenth century, street lamps and lighted window displays had banished the worst of the night from the most public places.

The shop-keepers of London are of infinite service to the rest of the inhabitants by their liberal use of the Patent Lamp, to shew their commodities during the long evenings of winter. Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London During the Eighteenth Century, James Peller Malcolm, 1810,  P 383,

The first gas lights were on 13 posts set up in Pall Mall in 1807, and used several times during the next couple of years to demonstrate the feasibility of gas lighting. The pipes were made from musket barrels, and all thirteen lamps could be lit by sending a spark down the pipes.

As you’ll see from the cartoon that heads this post, people were skeptical, but by 1812, the first gas company had been approved, and plans were underway to light London. Westminster had lamps by 1813, Westminster Bridge by December of that year, and Piccadilly in 1814.

By 1823, 40,000 gas lamps covered 215 miles of streets. Gas lights were ten times brighter than oil, which still left some dark patches, but was at least an improvement.

Electric were still nearly 70 years away, but the darkness in which crime flourished had been driven back, at least a little.

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Where marquesses came from

A castle on the Welsh marches.

The title ‘marquess’ (or sometimes ‘marquis’) reaches all the way back to the Carolingian monarchs, who appointed royal officials as military governors for their border provinces. (The Carolingians were the dynasty founded by Charles Martel that ruled much of medieval Europe. Charlemange, was one, as were the Kings of France and of the Holy Roman Empire when those two territories survived Charlemange’s Empire.)

These border provinces were called ‘mark lands’ or ‘marches’. The word was Germanic, from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘edge’ or ‘boundary’.

The original Carolingian title for this military governor was markgraf, graf being the word for count. Because keeping the borders safe was a huge part of keeping the kingdom safe, the markgrafs were the most competent lords available, ranked higher than other grafs, and only a little lower than dukes.

The title came down to all the countries that the Carolingians once ruled, or that were influenced by Carolingian rulers. To this day, some provinces in Europe carry evidence of once being borderlands, including La Marche in France, Ostmark in Austria, and the entire country of Denmark (the borderland of the Danes).

As you can see from the table below, the title pops up in some form or other all over Europe.

It was imported to England in the 14th century. Up until then, the crown had appointed marcher lords. These were earls who governed land on the border with Wales (the Welsh marches) and Scotland (the Scottish marches — the monarchs of both Scotland and England relied on their marcher lords to keep the borders safe). Just as the margraves of the continent were more powerful than other counts, the marcher lords were more powerful than most earls, and governed more than one county.

The term marchis (as it was then) was introduced from France in the late 14th century. Shades of the old marcher lords survive in the English name for a female holder of the title or wife to the holder of the title: marchioness.

The French spelling became marquis, and that was the form most used in Scotland, but the usual English spelling is marquess, and that is now used today for marquesses of the peerage of Scotland and Ireland, as well as England.

Some sources say that marquess was the usual spelling in England by the 16th century, but many English marquises were spelling their title the old way all the way through to the end of the 18th century. I’ve heard quite a bit of discussion about which is correct for English lords of the regency period. In 1802, Debrett’s and other peerage books used marquis. By 1828, they’d changed to marquess. I’ve found both spellings in newspapers of that transition period.

That being the case, I’ve kept my Aldridge as Marquis of Aldridge, since he was born in 1780 and was a marquis from his cradle. His son Jonny will need to become a marquess, I think, in line with the change that had taken place by 1828, not long after his birth.