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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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Tea with Becky

 

This is another excerpt post. The Duchess of Haverford has come to help Becky recover from the deep depression she fell into after the birth of her child. Find out more in A Baron for Becky.

Her Grace descended to the kitchen, and her visit inspired the cook to new heights in preparing small, tasty meals for a flagging appetite. Becky was served something tempting to eat every couple of hours. Hugh took her walking in the snow when the sun shone, and up and down the stairs and the halls when the weather closed in. And, on the advice of the duchess, he moved back into their bedchamber.

“She thinks you have moved out because you no longer want her,” Her Grace said bluntly. “And if you continue to treat her like a plaster saint, Overton, you are a great fool. She is a woman, and if her needs are blunted at the moment by her sadness, that will not last.”

So, Hugh slept spoon-fashion against his wife, but he continued wearing a nightshirt and made no attempt to make love to her.

Aldridge took over the work of the estate and the factories Hugh owned, so Hugh could spend most of his time with Becky, and Aldridge and Sarah reached an understanding to restore him to ‘Uncle’ status, a privilege Sarah’s sisters also deigned to confer.

These activities kept him mostly away from Becky, and he treated her with cautious courtesy when they could not avoid being in the same room, as if she might explode if he ventured any familiarity. “I do not understand, Overton,” he said once. “Was it so bad, being with me?”

Hugh could afford to be generous. “Not so bad. She said you were kind, Aldridge, and she will always be grateful.”

Aldridge shook his head as if emerging from water, his mouth twisted in disgust. “Grateful! I did not want her to be grateful!” He never mentioned it again, but his puzzled gaze followed Becky when she was not watching.

Twice a day, Hugh and Her Grace took Becky to spend time with the children, and once a day Mrs Goodfellow brought them to her. And not just to be in the same room. “She needs to do things with them,” the duchess insisted. “Read them a story, teach them a sewing stitch, or help them on the pianoforte.”

Becky resisted only the duchess’s last change.

“Did you intend to hire a wet nurse?” Her Grace asked.

Becky paused before she answered, as if she had to come a great distance to hear the question. “No,” Hugh answered for her. “She said she would feed our baby herself.”

The duchess narrowed her eyes, thinking, then nodded decisively. “It has been not quite two months, and you have fed before.”

Becky shook her head. The duchess said nothing more then, but must have spoken to Becky later. Hugh came back from signing correspondence to find the duchess watching benignly, and the wet nurse anxiously, as Belle suckled at Becky’s breast.

At first, Belle was as angry at the change as Becky, but the duchess persisted, and Belle was put to each of Becky’s breasts every two or three hours for four days.

“It is no use,” Becky said. “I have no milk.”

But that very afternoon, a delighted Belle came away too replete to suckle from her wet nurse, and an equally delighted duchess reported success.

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Cholera would have been a neat plot device

Some years ago, I read The Ghost Map, the story of John Snow’s careful plotting of the Cholera Outbreak of 1854, which led to the discovery that cholera is a waterbourne disease. The book I’ve just started was going to use cholera as a plot device. My hero is a recluse. My heroine is asked to bring his female dependents to him to escape a cholera epidemic at their school, but by the time she arrives at the house she realises that they’ve bought the disease with them. Sadly, the book is set in 1812, and a bit of research showed that the first outbreak in England didn’t start until 1831. In the video clip below, they talk about the 1832 outbreak, in which 55,000 people died, most of them poor and hungry.

 

I guess I’ll have to save cholera for another time. Meanwhile, there’s always typhus or smallpox. Or measles, come to that. Measles might work well!

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Join the library! (Regency-style)

My heroine Charis didn’t like much about the social rounds in Bath. Had her mother been prepared to pay the subscription she would have enjoyed the circulating library.

By 1814, many towns and most cities had at least one circulating library, perhaps run by a bookstore or printer, but often a stand-alone business. Books were expensive. A 3-volume novel cost the equivalent of 100 dollars in today’s money. Paying a yearly subscription to a library meant you could borrow books that would otherwise be out of your reach.

Rules for a Subscription Library

Circulating libraries became social places, where ladies could meet and be seen. The reading rooms often offered games, and the libraries might also sell other merchandise.

As a member, you could purchase a copy of the library’s catalogue (for about sixpence). You could choose your book from the catalogue, and take a couple home, then another couple when you’d finished those ones. (The number you could borrow at a time varied from library to library.)

What would they think of my library, which I ‘visit’ over the Internet, and which allows me to download 15 ebooks at a time? Or, for that matter, my personal ebook collection, which numbers in the 1000s, many of which have cost me less than five dollars?

(Charis appears in The Beast Next Door, a novella in Valentines from Bath.)

Also see:

The Circulating Library in Regency Times: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/

The Circulating Library:

https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/
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Tea with Mrs Hackett

Why on earth, Eleanor wondered, had the duke her husband asked her to have this unlikable pair to afternoon tea? She knew he did business with the man, who continued to claim his naval ranking, though he had retired to run a large import export business.

But that did not require socialising with the man and his wife. The duke must owe Captain Hackett a large favour. He had even stayed to exchange a few pleasantries, before carrying Hackett off with him for a game of billiards, leaving the ladies, as he said, to get to know one another.

Mrs Hackett, a quiet faded woman who had said little in the past half hour looked alarmed at her husband’s desertion.

“Another cup of tea?” The duchess asked her. Mrs Hackett bobbed her head and pushed her cup forward. Eleanor prepared the cup with cream into sugars while she contemplated how to draw the woman out.

In the end, she decided on bluntness. “It seems our husbands mean me to be of some assistance to you, Mrs Hackett. Perhaps if you can tell me what it is you need?”

Mrs Hackett blushed. “I am so embarrassed, your grace. I hardly know how to ask. Is it true what they say? Does your husband expect you to acknowledge his by-blows?”

Eleanor had seldom been asked a more impertinent question. “I hardly think, Mrs Hackett,” but the woman compounded her rudeness by interrupting.

“I know I am being very impolite and forward, but indeed the captain assured me that such was quite acceptable in the best families, and that you were a lady who took such circumstances in your stride. That is why he asked the duke if I might meet you. I know it is most presumptuous of me, but, your grace, I have no one else to advise me.”

Despite herself, Eleanor found her sympathies were engaged. “You had better tell me the whole story.”

Mrs Hackett’s words tumbled over themselves as she explained her failure to bear her husband a son, and his determination to have a boy of his own blood to inherit his business.” The captain, it seemed, had such a son — a boy born to his mistress after he had dismissed the girl.

“He plans to claim the lad, and give him his name, and bring him up with our daughters. Tell me, your grace, is he mad?”

Captain Hackett is one of the villains in Unkept Promises, the fourth novel in the Golden Redepenning series, which I’m currently writing. The boy in question and his half-sisters, whose father is Jules Redepenning, are currently on their way to England with Mia Redepenning, who has adopted them after their mother died of consumption.

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Tea with Cecily

 

Cecily was older. Of course she was. More than fifteen years had passed since the season they shared; the season that ended with Eleanor’s broken heart and Cecily’s marriage. She and her husband Alec had taken a long wedding trip, to see the Orient, they said. And then… nothing. Until she appeared again in England, just a few weeks ago.

Through the ritual of greeting, of inviting her guest to be seated, of preparing a cup of tea for each of them, Eleanor kept shooting glances, comparing the composed and still lovely woman before her with the gangling clumsy teen Eleanor had taken under her wing at first meeting. She glowed with happiness, but the lines barely visible on her brow and around her eyes spoke of suffering and pain. What had happened in all those years away?

They spoke of nothings: the weather, the fashions, who was and who wasn’t in Town, until all of the maids had left the room and they were alone. Then they both spoke at once.

“Did you wish to hear of…?” Cecily began.

“Lady Sutton and Lady Grace Winderfield tell me…” said Eleanor, stopping herself and waving her hand for Cecily to carry on.

Cecily nodded, as if Eleanor had confirmed what Cecily had been about to ask. “I met with Lord James Winderfield late last year. That is what you wished to know, is it not, Your Grace? Where I saw him, and how?”

“It is,” Eleanor agreed, grateful that decades of training and practice allowed her to keep her face and posture from reflecting her inner turmoil. “His sisters told me he was alive, but little more.” Married. To an Eastern princess. With children. Happy, or so Cecily had told them. It was silly to feel hurt. Did she expect him to wear the willow for her for a lifetime? She did for him, but look at the alternative! She had never been given the least incentive to fall in love with the tyrant she had been forced to marry. She was glad James was happy. Of course she was. Or would be, given time.

Cecily had kept on talking while she scolded herself, asking her something. Ah. Yes. Was she certain she wished to know the details?

“You loved him, once,” Cecily said, her voice kind.

She could answer that. “He was a dear friend, Mrs McInnes, and I have grieved him as dead these many years. I would dearly love to know how he survived, and how he now lives. And he has children, his sisters say. Many children. Please. Start at the beginning and tell me all about him.”

James Winderfield is hero of Paradise Regained, in which Cecily McInnes is the other woman. Paradise Regained can be found in Follow Your Star Home, the Bluestocking Belles’ 2019 holiday anthology, now on pre-release. See the link for more information and preorder links.

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Tea with Lady Avery

“Such a nuisance, Perkins,” Her Grace the Duchess of Haverford consoled her coachman. “But I know you will have it repaired as soon as you may.”

She was sitting on a blanket spread over a grassy bank, perfectly comfortable, and had been hardly at all bruised when the coach lost its wheel, as she assured her companion, Adeline.

“I’ve sent to the nearest village, ma’am, but they don’t have a wheelwright, seems like, and Chipping Sodbury is a good fifteen minutes ride, if these coach horses of Lord Aldridge’s will let us ride them. I don’t like to leave you out here in the open, and that’s a fact.”

The duchess looked up at the clear blue sky, and around at the four strong outriders who stood ready to guard her. What Perkins thought might happen to her in this quiet country lane while he and the two footmen attended to the coach, she had no idea. But the coachman refused to send one of the outriders to the market town, and the outriders would not leave her side nor their horses, so Perkins must be on his way or she would be sitting on this bank until nightfall.

“I shall be perfectly comfortable,” she soothed.

At that moment, a man came hurrying into view; a tall young gentleman with a flaming thatch of red hair displayed when his tricorne hat tumbled off in his haste. The gentleman looked familiar, and in moments the duchess had placed him. “Lord Avery,” she called. “How pleasant to see you.”

Lord Avery reached them, after a quick glance that took in the broken wheel and the hovering attendants.

“Your Grace,” he said, bowing. “I am sorry for your troubles. May I offer you the comfort of Avery Hall and the company of my mother while your men see to the coach?”

The duchess accepted with pleasure, and soon she and Adeline had washed, taken advantage of the conveniences, and been escorted down to where the dowager Lady Avery waited in a pleasant sitting room on the ground floor.

“My apologies for not rising to greet you, Your Grace,” the lady said. Ah. Yes. Eleanor had heard that Lady Avery had been injured in the accident that had killed the previous Lord Avery. Eleanor rather thought that the viscountcy was now in better hands, but it would not be polite to say so.

“My condolences on the death of your husband,” she murmured. “Is that a Merlin chair? How clever.”

Lady Avery showed off the attributes of her chair with every sign of delight. “And I am to have one for outside, as well,” she said. “Like the ones they use in Bath, designed for rough paths. The chair designer was here last weekend, and I had the most wonderful time. Oh, but I do run on. Will you and Miss Grenford take tea, Your Grace.”

The duchess accepted on behalf of her and Adeline, but her mind was carefully sorting through the little bits of news and gossip that came to her attention in her copious correspondence. Yes. That was it. “Tell me more about the chair designer, Lady Avery,” she said. “A carriage maker’s daughter, and a talented designer of chairs, I have heard.” And, according to Lady Cresthover, who was in some way related to one of her aunts, the next Lady Avery, however unlikely such a marriage might be.

Minerva Bradshaw, the chair designer mentioned above, is the heroine of Candle’s Christmas Chair, in which Lord Randal Avery does not allow the difference in their social classes to prevent him from courting the lovely woman from whom he is buying his mother’s Christmas present. Click on the book link for more.

I first met Min and her viscount in Farewell to Kindness (which is Rede’s, the Earl of Chirbury’s, story). Min provided the invalid chair that Rede’s cousin, Alex Redepenning, has collapse under him during a vigorous chair based rendition of a line dance. I wondered how a carriage-maker’s daughter with a business making invalid chairs came to marry a viscount, and next thing I knew, a tall skinny viscount with bright red hair turned up at her carriage-maker’s shop to order a chair as a Christmas present for his mother.

More about the history of wheel chairs

Tea with Min

 

 

 

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Bookshop now live

If you take a look at any of the book pages for my published books, you’ll see a new button: ‘Buy from Jude Knight’. That takes you to my book shop, where I plan to have my new releases up a week before anywhere else, to offer discount codes from time to time so you can get my books on special, and to put bonus content, such as deleted scenes and background pieces, into the books (a project I haven’t had time for yet, but it is on the list).

The Realm of Silence is due out on 22 May, but is available from the book shop now. And if you buy any of the books before I add the bonus content, I’ll send you a free update once I get the new version finished.

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The Georgian population boom

Throughout early modern history, Britain’s population changed at about the same speed as the rest of Europe. A really bad epidemic of the plague would drop the total numbers for a while, but on the whole there was a gradual increase, averaging less than one percent a year up until 1625, then remaining stable for 125 years, then increasing at a slow rate again to take 150 years to double.

Britain followed the pattern until the 1700s. In 1714, George 1, the first of the Hanoverians, came to rule over a country of 5.25 million. In 1760, the population had grown to 6.15 million, a healthy 17 percent at a time population growth in most of Europe was static. But the next 50 years would see a massive change. In 1815, the population was 10.25; almost double the 1714 figure. France in the same period saw a 35 percent increase, and the Dutch figures remained much the same.

Why did the population grow so fast?

Scholars give two reasons why Britain’s growth was faster than that of other nearby countries.

The first was a drop in mortality. Britain had more people because fewer of them died. From early in the eighteenth century, Britain began imposing quarantines on imports and ships sailing from places known to have the plague or other highly feared diseases. Innoculation against smallpox helped, too. People still died of typhus, cholera, and other diseases, but the number of deaths in each epidemic dropped dramatically.

The second was the age at marriage. Before the eighteenth century, the mainly agriculture-based workforce would put off getting married until they could afford a cottage and a small piece of land. Average age at marriage for women was 26 in the 17th century, and for men it was 28.  Fertility drops (on average) after 30, so not marrying until after 26 means fewer children overall.

The enclosure acts changed all that. The biggest landowners scooped up all the land, and people who would have been small-holders had to work for wages or migrate to the new jobs in city manufactories. Our working couples no longer had a reason to wait, so they married earlier and faced the challenges of finding work together. By the 19th century, the average age of marriage was 23 for women and 25 for men. (Not in the aristocracy. They married for different reasons, sometimes as young as 13 or 14.)

Since women now had a longer fertile period in marriage, and less chance of dying of disease, the number of children per couple increased.

In the next 150 years, decreasing infant and maternal mortality meant the British population doubled every 40 years, providing factory workers for industrial revolution and upsetting theorists like Malthus, who thought the upwards curve was the way things had always been, and that it would continue.