The Man Who Slew Wat Tyler

 William Walworth is remembered chiefly as the man who slew Wat Tyler in an impetuous and possibly unnecessary show of concern for the safety of a fourteen year-old king, Richard II. It earned him an immediate knighthood, on the spot, at Smithfield. That was in 1381.

Ten years earlier, the Carthusian House of the Salutation of the Mother of God, had had less dramatic but nonetheless genuine reason to be grateful to Walworth. He had provided money towards the construction of the first cell for a choir monk.

The establishment of a Carthusian monastery just outside the walls of the City of London was an unusual project. Carthusian houses were traditionally built in isolated locations. But, the idea of a house of constant prayer alongside the place where so many victims of the 1348 plague lay buried was a popular one. It had the approval of the then king (Edward III). The Priory of St Bartholomew donated the land. The next thing that was required was money to start building. And so began a fund-raising campaign among the wealthiest Londoners. 

The driving force was Sir Walter Manny, a courtier and member of the royal inner circle. He had been Queen Philippa’s Esquire Carver and the Keeper of her Hounds. After many bureaucratic delays, Sir Walter recruited William Walworth to be a donor of funds. Walworth was, at this point in his life, on the up and up. He had prospered as a saltfish merchant and member of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and had recently become Member of Parliament for the City of London.

Manny and Walworth pooled resources and in 1371, construction began on a cell for the monastery’s first Prior. Not, perhaps, the kind of monk’s cell you might imagine. More like a little two-storey cottage. That became known as Cell A, now lost, thanks to the depredations of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and subsequent repurposing of the site. The following year William Walworth paid for another cell to be built; Cell B, of which remnants - its doorway, tiled threshold and food hatch - have survived in what is now The Charterhouse. The floor tiles are Flemish, as was Walter Manny. Perhaps he gave his friend Walworth some decorating suggstions?

The monastery took 60 years to complete and during that time Walworth sponsored a further four cells, either directly from his own wealth or by persuading acquaintances to leave bequests.

At the end of May 1381, with the population in revolt against a poll tax and Wat Tyler’s band of Kentish protestors heading to London, young King Richard bolted to the safety of the Tower. William Walworth, at that time Lord Mayor of the City, called out the City Guard, but the men of Kent pressed on and, on June 15th, assembled at Smithfield to make their demands to the King. 

The meeting seemed to start well. The King was amenable. What happened next is contested. Did Wat Tyler become over-familiar with the King? Did he spit, disrespectfully, in his direction? Did one of the King’s entourage respond by insulting Tyler? In a heated moment someone made the first move, perhaps Tyler, perhaps Walworth who had ridden out to Smithfield with the King.

According to one version of the story, William Walworth despatched Wat Tyler immediately with the thrust of a dagger. Another version is that Tyler, seriously wounded, was carried into St Bart’s hospital, but was soon dragged from there by Walworth’s men and publicly executed. Whatever the actual timeline, Tyler perished and his dispirited followers went home. It was effectively the end of the revolt.

Was Walworth a dagger-happy oppressor of working men or a good citizen and brave defender of his monarch? Whatever the truth, he was rewarded with a knighthood and a pension and is today counted as one of London’s worthies. The north-eastern pavilion on Holborn Viaduct, linking the viaduct to Farringdon Road by stairs, is named after him and bears his statue.

Caroline Herschel

  I've been interested for some time in the network of artists and scientists who coalesced around the wealthy, charismatic and imposing figure of Sir Joseph Banks. Banks launched his career (which was initially as a botanist) first by voyaging to Newfoundland and Labrador to study their natural history, and then by travelling with Captain Cook, in 1768, to explore the southern seas. He later became a friend of King George 111, was instrumental in developing the botanic gardens at Kew, and, among many other interests and activities, became the President of the Royal Society (the national academy for the advancement of science).

He was very good at spotting and encouraging talent. And one of the young scientists who came to his notice was William Herschel. William was an astronomer - as was his younger sister, Caroline.

William came from a family of musicians in Hanover. He moved to England in 1757 and initially worked as a musician, first in the north and then in Bath, where he became organist at the Octagon Chapel and Director of Public Concerts. It was during this time that he invited his younger sister Caroline to come and live with him - his brother Alexander also shared the house, which is now the Herschel Museum of Astrony.

Caroline was seventeen when she arrived in England. She had been very close to William and must have been devastated when he left home - particularly as her mother, who really only had time for her oldest son, Jacob, neglected the child. Caroline was treated as a servant: she contracted typhoid as a child, as a result of which her growth was stunted; she was tiny, just a little over four feet tall. But things took a turn for the better when William came back to Hanover and rescued her. He taught her to play music and to sing - so well that she was offered a post with an opera company in Birmingham.

But by this time, Caroline and William were both becoming fascinated with astronomy. (I've noticed that there's often a connection between music and science, though I don't know enough about either to understand why this is.) William learnt how to grind and polish lenses, and built increasingly large telescopes which he used to sweep the night sky. Caroline was initially his recorder and note taker, but she progressed to making her own observations. 

One day, a friend of Banks named William Watson noticed Herschel in the street in Bath, making observations with his telescope. Intrigued, he fell into conversation with the astronomer, and later brought him to the notice of both Banks and the Astronomer Royal, Neville Maskelyne. Not long after that, Herschel discovered a new planet, which was eventually named Uranus. This caused a great stir, not just in Britain, but further afield on the continenet too. Meanwhile Caroline was making her own discoveries in the night sky: she specialised in finding comets.

In 1782, they both moved to Datchet, and initially William, but later Caroline, came to be employed as astronomers by the King. Caroline was the first woman in England to be honoured with a government position, and the first to be given a salary as an astronomer. Imagine, for a child neglected by her own mother to have achieved so much, and in a country where she arrived not knowing a word of English - it must have felt wonderful!

But there was a shadow over this period of her life. Hitherto, Caroline had worked closely with her beloved brother, and had managed his house for him too. But now, William decided to marry - and everything had to change. Fortunately, Caroline's salary, though not large, allowed her to be independent. But these were difficult years for her; so much so that she later destroyed her journals for this period.

Mr. Keynes' Revolution and Mr Keynes' Dance by E.J.Barnes.

 The first, MR KEYNES REVOLUTION, creates a picture of the clever, complex man at the centre of the intellectual Bloomsbury group. Maynard has close relationships with the artist Vanessa Bell, her sister Virginia Woolf, her lover Duncan Grant and others as they move between their busy lives in Edwardian London and the artistic freedom of Charleston, a secluded farmhouse on the South Downs. This circle of friendship is suddenly disturbed when the homosexual Keynes falls in love with his Lilac Fairy, Lydia Lopokova, a Russian ballerina. Lydia, who has fled the Revolution, is kind, practical and worldly, and the sisters feel little empathy towards her.

Alongside the dramas of these and other characters, the novel follows Keynes’ public life, from when he walks out of the International WWI Paris Peace Talks in protest at the punitive terms imposed on the defeated Germany. Returning to his academic life in Cambridge, with his parents close by, Keynes starts developing the economic theory that will bring him back to political and economic attention.

I particularly enjoyed the way that the novel flowed between these private and public lives, illustrating the social impacts of the political clashes of these decades. Although the conflicts E.J. Barnes describes are less 'heroic' than scenes of soldiery, she shows that Maynard Keynes’ battles for sound economic practices were also relevant to the lives of small ‘s’ socity.

Ther second novel, MR KEYNES’ DANCE, follows the now-married Keynes and Lydia as they face all the changes of the post war years. I had been waiting for this second novel to appear, and I was not disappointed.The pair move into Tilton, a farmhouse not for from Charleston, where they keep pigs, garden and grow vegetables. Vanessa is too jealous and Virginia too troubled by snobbery for them to act as any more than social friends. Will the group ever be at peace again?

 Vintage 30s Maid Costume / 30s Servant Dress / Downton Abbey / 1930s ... 

Meanwhile, a contrasting thread continues through the interweaving the lives of the young servant girls, often moved between one or other of the ‘Bloomsbury’ homes. Lydia herself is often more at ease with servants than with Chartwell and company. Drawn from working-class backgrounds in Wales and London, the novels show the servants hopes and social awakenings developing during the decade.

The second novel takes place against the wider powerful political changes arriving between the wars: the General Strike, the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression and others. They all drive Keynes onwards, to working harder and harder, analysing fresh economic theories and solutions. 

Earth Mysteries - Torre d'en Galmés

 At the beginning of October, I went to Menorca on a Yoga Retreat. Weather perfect, lovely place and I love the Balearics. I've spent time on Ibiza, but I’d never been to Menorca. It is smaller than Ibiza or Majorca, less busy and less well known. 

Apart from the yoga and the prospect of a little sun before winter sets in and the storms start rolling in from the Atlantic, I wanted to see the megalithic sites that are unique to this island. I'd read about them years ago in a book about Earth Mysteries and they were on my list of places I'd like visit. We have plenty of megalithic sites in Britain and I've visited a lot of them, but so many have been worn away, degraded, ironed out by ploughing, their stones robbed for later building by people who had no respect or reverence for those who had occupied the land before them.

Menorca is a small island and for much of its history sparsely populated, so much survives here. It was also isolated, at the far eastern end of the Balearic archipelago and distant from Continental Europe. The first settlers apparently arrived in the Early Bronze Age and by the end of the 2nd millennium, it had begun to develop its own distinctive culture with large settlements, roads, dwelling places and open spaces surrounding tower shaped monumental structures called talayots. 

Torre D'en Galmés is one such settlement. It occupies an extensive site and is the highest point on the island. It is on the southern coast, looking out to sea. All along this coast are silo milar sites. Apart from the tower-like talayots, there are stone enclosures, containing monumental structures, Taula (table in Catalan), huge slabs of stone topped by massive stone lintels, eerily reminiscent of Stonehenge and the even more mysterious Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. What was their purpose? Table? Platform? Altar? Who constructed them? How? And most of all, why? The same mysteries surround these sites as swirl about so many other remnants of ancient cultures that have disappeared from our memory. They suggest many questions but answer very few.  

Very little is known about the purpose of these impressive stone enclosures and the significance of the monumental Taula that they enclose. Some kind of sanctuary where the community could gather to perform celebrations, ceremonies and rituals, but of what nature and to what purpose? There are so many enigmas - the massive size of the monolithic slabs which form the Taula, made of local stone but how did they get the stones there, how did they form them, how did they erect them? As with all these enigmatic remnants of the past, we don't know and will probably never know.