‘... the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury, for which deed he went into exile and the barony became the escheat of King Henry the king's ancestor. The same William had a son Henry de Tracy, le Bozu (a derogatory French term for a person with kyphosis or an abnormal convex curvature of the spine) was born in Normandy…’ - Inquisition Post Mortem, Saturday after St. Edmund the King, 4 Edw. I.
Nicholas Vincent, a Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia wrote in 2004 that the descent of the de Tracy’s is a ‘veritable mare’s nest, from which few genealogists have emerged unscathed’ and how right he was! If an expert can say that, what chance does an enthusiastic amateur like me have? Firstly, my interest in this family is regarding one Henry de Tracy who was the overlord of the manor of Lapford, a parcel of the barony of Torrington, held by my ancestor Richard Umfreville, and secondly the feudal baronies of Bradninch, Barnstaple and Torrington. A Henry de Tracy is known to have held these baronies, or parts of them during the reigns of King Stephen, Henry II and King John. There is a Henry de Tracy who died in 1165 and there is a Henry, his great-grandson, who died in 1274, however ‘my’ Henry appears not to be either of them. He had been quite elusive until I looked into the life of William de Tracy, one of the four murderers of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. I discovered, to my delight, that he had a son named Henry, this Henry is the one I have been looking for. In 1180, some ten years after his father died in the Holy Land, Henry, later named Henry the Hunchback* appears holding the aforementioned Devon manor of Lapford where he is said to have ‘enlarged the Norman church.’ It would seem that the families of the four murderers inherited their guilt and made amends with charitable donations and repaired or enlarging churches in their manors as a form of penance. In Henry de Tracy’s case, the church of All Saints in Lapford received a brand-new tower, and later when the cult of Becket took off, it would be rededicated and its name changed to St Thomas of Canterbury. Henry de Tracy held the manor of Lapford until it passed to the crown and in 1189 when it was returned to the aforementioned Richard Umfreville * In 1236, an inquisition into the Devon manor of Morton (Morton Hampstead) we can find Henry referred to as a hunchback:
‘... the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury, for which deed he went into exile and the barony became the escheat of King Henry the king's ancestor. The same William had a son Henry de Tracy, le Bozu (a derogatory French term for a person with kyphosis or an abnormal convex curvature of the spine) was born in Normandy…’ - Inquisition Post Mortem, Saturday after St. Edmund the King, 4 Edw. I.
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In 1649, John Bradshaw, lawyer and politician was made president of the parliamentary commission to try King Charles I. He was also President of the High Court of Justice for his trial which began on the 20th January 1649. When the trial began the king refused to recognise the authority of the court and would not plead, and despite his protests Charles I was found guilty and condemned to death on the 26th. Bradshaw called the king a 'tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public enemy' and refused him the right to speak. Charles' death warrant was signed by fifty-nine commissioners. The fear of attack saw Bradshaw accompanied by a personal guard. He carried a sword at his side and wore a velvet covered broad-brimmed, bullet-proof beaver hat lined with steel. He also wore armour underneath his robes. Despite his reputation as the 'viper from hell' or 'god's battleaxe' John Bradshaw died in his bed in 1659, unrepentant of the 'murder of a king' declaring that he would be "the first man in England to do it" if he was called upon to try a king again. He was buried in Westminster Abbey where he lay for ten years. However, an avenger arrived in the form of Charles's son Charles II, and on the anniversary of his father's execution Bradshaw's body was exhumed and hung in chains for three days, he was then decapitated and his head was displayed on pikes at Westminster Hall and his body thrown into a pit. Bradshaw's poor wife, Mary Marbury was also exhumed from the abbey and reburied in a common pit at St Margaret's in Westminster along with other followers of Oliver Cromwell.
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, is viewed in history as an 'archetypal, shadowy, creepy man' who 'operated quietly, but dangerously in the shadows.' Born on the 1st June in 1563, he was physically frail and small in stature with a curvature of the spine, and despite the pain he must have endured, he devoted himself to the service of the crown following in the footsteps of his father. He entered parliament in 1534, and very quickly established himself, but was not as popular. Robert Cecil was the son of Elizabeth I's chief minister Lord Burghley, he was a courtier, a successful politician, and an administrator who took over his father's role in government when he became too ill to do the job himself. In 1596, Cecil became Elizabeth's secretary and out-maneuvered her favourite Robert Devereux resulting the what history calls Essex's Rebellion, thus eliminating any rivals to his position as the queen's minister. He was also responsible for the smooth transfer of the crown to James VI of Scotland on Elizabeth's death in 1603. On the succession of James to the English throne, he temporarily lost some of his influence as James had been a supporter of Essex, but the king came to trust and rely on Cecil, eventually calling him his 'little beagle'. In 1605 Cecil quashed yet another rebellion - the infamous Gunpower Plot, although it is thought that Cecil was actually behind the plot with the aim of convincing James that he should not trust those of the Catholic persuasion. As well as a bit of political intrigue Cecil was a dab hand at entertaining, welcoming both Elizabeth and James to his home, he had an eye for the arts, like collecting paintings and even swapped one of his homes for one of the kings. However, the burden of work eventually wore him down and in the spring of 1612, he complained of being "in great pain and even greater wretchedness of mind" and following a trip to take the waters in the town of Bath, he died on the 24th of May in 1612 of cancer. How sad is it then that both Elizabeth I and James I referred to Cecil in an unkind manner, Elizabeth is said to have called him her pygmy and a monkey, and James called him a beetle, and after all he had done for them too! It is highly likely that Shakespeare was referring to Robert Cecil, as the unpopular hunchback, when he was writing his play Richard III, and this is captured very well in the 2011 film Anonymous where he is portrayed as a small dark creature, underhand, and skulking. Robert Cecil is buried in St Etheldreda's Church, Hatfield in Herefordshire. His tomb, seen below, deserves a blog of its own!
In the world of fiction the character of Manthara, an Aaya in the 6th BCE Hindu story Ramayana, is depicted as ‘hunch-backed, ugly and antagonistic in appearance’. In Victor Hugo’s story The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the residence of Paris are afraid of Quasimodo because of the way he looks. In history there are those who suffered the same indignity. King Richard III is one being vilified for centuries and depicted as a cruel hunchback. Richard III's scoliosis is first mentioned in 1490 by historian John Rous ~ ‘unequal shoulders, the right higher and the left lower’ but it is Shakespeare’s king ‘…deformed, unfinished, sent before my time’ that we remember. However, Richard III wasn’t the only person in history to have suffered from a curved spine and mimicked for it, Henry, the son of William de Tracy, one of the four knights who set upon and murdered Thomas Becket was another. In 1276, Henry de Tracy was referred to as le *bozu in an inquisition into the Devon manor of Morton (now Mortonhampstead) which was his father’s principal manor. ‘Morton. The manor, tenure unknown for, William de Tracy who held the barony of Braneys and Morton of the king in chief, took part (fuit in auxilium) in the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury, for which deed he went into exile and the barony became the escheat of King Henry the king's ancestor. The same William had a son Henry de Tracy, le Bozu, born in Normandy, who long after came to Geoffrey son of Peter, chief justice of England, grandfather of John son of John, praying him to aid him in recovering his inheritance…’ - Inquisition Post Mortem, Saturday after St. Edmund the King, 4 Edw. I. *Bozu or Bossu is a derogatory French term for a person with kyphosis or an abnormal convex curvature of the spine. My family history research into the Umfreville family led me to Henry de Tracy, he held, among others, the manor of Lapford in Devon. Here, in 1180, he granted the village a market/fair. By 1184 Lapford had passed to the Umfreville's and descended to John Umfrevilles in 1241.
On the 18th July 1892, Thomas Cook, preacher, businessman and forefather of English tourism, died at his home in Leicester. Thomas Cook was born in 1808 in the Derbyshire town of Melbourne, he began his working life at the age of ten in a local market garden and later as a cabinet maker. In his mid-twenties he became involved with the Temperance Movement, a society that promoted moderation and abstinence in the use of alcohol, he organised meetings and anti-drink marches. It was while Cook was "walking from Market Harborough to Leicester to attend a meeting of the Temperance Society" that he came up with the idea of the excursion which led to the foundation of the travel agent company Thomas Cook and Son in 1872. Also born and living in Melbourne at the same time as Cook's family, were my 3x great grandparents George and Anne Tivey. An incident in Anne's life, a generation before Thomas Cook was born, would bring Anne, in her later years, into the Temperance movement, Anne knew too well the perils drunkenness could bring. Anne and George's marriage was a short one, the entry in the Melbourne burial register explains why: “George Tivey was kill’d by a fall in ye belfry, being taken up by ye rope as he was ringing. He languishe’d about 30 hours after ye accident. N.B. He was in Liquor.” There is no other written evidence regarding George's accident, therefore we can only speculate whether or not he was a serious drinker or how it affected Anne and their marriage. George would have certainly died at home, leaving her a widow at twenty-five and a baby to bring up, however, what would keep Anne going was her religion. The growth of Methodism in the second half of the 18th century, the teachings of the Baptist church, and its involvement with the Temperance Movement would have been a comfort to Anne, she had, as we have seen, good reason to be been keenly involved with this movement and its attempts to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed within a community and in society.
Most of the movement's main supporters would have been women who were opposed to the domestic violence associated with alcohol abuse, and the large share of household income it could consume, which was especially burdensome to the low-income working class. Anne remarried, and she went on to have six children with her second husband John Calow. As if to prove her commitment to their religion, six days before they were married, Anne and John were baptised at their local Baptist church. Robert and Philadelphia Carey were two of the many children of Henry Carey, the son of Mary Boleyn and Anne Morgan. This family connection made them cousins to Elizabeth I. Robert was an ambassador and courier, and Philadelphia had risen through the ranks of the Tudor court, and by 1590 she held the important position of Lady of the Bedchamber. Tradition has that this brother and sister were tasked with informing James VI of Scotland of the death of Elizabeth I. The story goes that James VI of Scotland had given Philadelphia a 'blue ring' with the instructions that it was to be sent to him as a notification of Elizabeth's death. On the 24th of March 1603, the queen died, and waiting under the window of the royal bed chamber was Robert. As soon as the queen had died, Philadelphia dropped the ring to Carey so he could take it to the Scottish king. A great story but was it true? We know that Philadelphia was with the queen, and Robert Carey is known to have been in Elizabeth's court in the days before her death, but he made nothing of the ring in his memoirs, he only states * 'that I heard with my ears, and saw with my eyes I thought it my duty to set down, and affirm it for the through, on the faith of a Christian, because I know there have been many false lies reported of the ed and death of that good lady' I always thought Robert Cecil sent word to the king, perhaps he sent it via Carey. Cecil had, about three years before the queen's death, begun secret correspondence with James continually assuring him that he favoured his claims to the English throne. So, how did James VI hear of Elizabeth's death?
A weekend away in our motorhome proved to be rather interesting. We stayed at a campsite just a few miles from the tiny hamlet of Strubby in Lincolnshire whose church we were able to visit before we headed home. To my delight, I discovered that a man of some note was from this tiny hamlet. Thomas Wilson was born there in 1523, the son of a landowner/farmer, he would go on to be a writer and Privy Councillor in the court of Elizabeth I. Nothing is known of Thomas’s life until 1537 when he attended Eton College. Twelve years later he received an MA at Cambridge and went on to write what he is remembered for, that is Rule of Reason and The Arte of Rhetorique written in 1552 whilst staying at Scrivelsby, the Lincolnshire home of Edward Dymoke. It is possible that he or his family had connections to other prominent local families as later in his career he can be found as tutor to the sons of Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk whose family were at Ewerby. He would also tutor the children of John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland. Wilson is known to have been tortured for his writings in regard to his views on the Protestant faith and to have tortured those of the Catholic faith. He also spied for Francis Walsingham.
Thomas Wilson was married twice, his first wife was Agnes Wintour, whose great nephews were Robert and Thomas Wintour, of the Gunpowder Plot fame and his second wife was Joan, daughter of Richard Epsom, one of the first men to be executed by Henry VIII. Henry Percy had played his part in the usurpation of King Richard II and aided Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV in his successful attempt to gain the crown of England. By 1402 however, the Percy's had changed their allegiances and on the 19th of February, Henry, Ist Earl of Northumberland faced the king's army, under the leadership of Yorkshireman Sir Thomas Rokeby, just south of Wetherby in Yorkshire at Bramham Moor. "The exact sizes and compositions of the contending armies is not recorded but they were certainly far smaller than the thousands engaged at Shrewsbury three years earlier and little detail of the actual engagement survives. It is likely that the action followed the course of many medieval battles where the armies and generals were evenly matched. Lord Percy is said to have positioned his men carefully and awaited Rokeby’s arrival at 2.00 p.m. when battle was instantly joined and, though not long in duration, was said to be sharp, furious and bloody. It is generally believed that the English longbow, the ultimate weapon of its day (as evidenced at Agincourt seven years later), thinned the rebel lines before the English charged the northern forces and violent hand-to-hand combat ensued in a huge melee, probably with little tactical direction " (1) Henry IV's army defeated Percy's forces, in the final battle of the “Percy Rebellion”. This victory removed the threat of a rebellion in the north.
Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt, and his older brother George Clayton Tennyson, had been brought up with the story of their connection to the ennobled family of d’Eyncourt. This tale greatly impressed Charles, who would spend the rest of his life trying to obtain the right to the d’Eyncourt name and the peerage that went with it. By 1831 Charles was employed as Clerk of the Ordnance, an inferior position that he considered did not fit his social status. As part of a government reshuffle, he was persuaded to leave this post with an offer of a position as a member of the privy council, gleefully he wrote to his father. ‘... this rank is the nearest to a peerage, and given the title of Right Honourable is a distinction for life.’ With a change of his position in government and a step closer to his heart's desire Charles Tennyson pestered his father to change the family name to d’Eyncourt, but he would not. He did succeed however in getting his father to add a codicil to his will so that he could be called Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt and on the death of his father, he added d’Eyncourt to his name. Four years later he petitioned government for permission to officially use the name, but he was refused. At the same time, he had begun work on a ‘grandiose building programme’ on his house in Tealby, turning it into an ‘extravagant Gothic castle.’ Charles’ delusions of grandeur I think are rooted in his childhood and his father’s dislike, and disinheritance of his brother George.
One reason for the name change could be that he saw himself superior in person, and in rank, to George who was living as a rector of the parish of Somersby, but pride they say comes before a fall, and Charles’ fall was the jealously he felt regarding the achievements of his nephew. Alfred Tennyson’s success as a poet irritated him, but it was the rewards that came with it that angered him the most, especially when he was granted the prestigious post of Poet Laureate, but what really made him seethe was the offer of the one thing he desired above anything else - a peerage. Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt would never receive a peerage, his lowly brother’s son however would become Alfred, Lord Tennyson. ‘... this rank is the nearest to a peerage and given the title of Right Honourable is a distinction for life.’ In 1587 Elizabeth I made Robert Deveraux the Earl of Essex, Master of the Horse, six years later in 1593 she made him a Privy Councillor. That year he led a successful attack on the Spanish port of Cadiz. Three years later he returned home a hero. Deveraux was intelligent and charming and he thought by flattering the aging queen he could get away with anything, the events of this day in 1601 would prove him wrong. While Deveraux was away changes within Elizabeth's court affected his standing, his major problem was the promotion of Robert Cecil who Deveraux regarded as an enemy, in fact, Robert Deveraux was his own worst enemy - for making peace in Ireland against the order of the queen he was banned from court and thus financially ruined, was this the reason behind his rebellion? On the morning of the 8th February in 1601, Deveraux and his followers, notably the Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, made their way through the city of London in, it is thought, to plead with the queen, Robert Cecil however thought otherwise and sent a message to the London's mayor. Deveraux was publicly denounced as a traitor and eventually captured, he would be tried for treason before the month was out. So, was Robert Devereaux a real threat to the monarchy? Was the queen in real danger and what really motivated William Cecil to see off the Earl of Essex? This rebellion is nicely played out in the 2011 film Anonymous, and here you can see Robert Deveraux (Sam Reed) persuading Henry Wriothesley (Xavier Samuel) that the plot couldn't fail!
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After ten years in the workplace I became a mother to three very beautiful daughters, I was fortunate enough to have been able to stay at home and spend my time with them as they grew into the young women they are now. I am still in the position of being able to be at home and pursue all the interests I have previously mentioned. We live in a beautiful Victorian spa town with wooded walks for the dog, lovely shops and a host of lovely people, what more could I ask for.
All works © Andrea Povey 2014. Please do not reproduce without the expressed written consent of Andrea Povey. |