Infamous Essex Women E-Book

Dee Gordon

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 211

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

Here are Essex Girls in a different light to the stereotype of modern public expectation. Murderers, mayhem-makers, swindlers, witches, smugglers and lustful adulteresses have played a part in the darker side of the county's history. From the thirteenth century onwards, Essex has produced more than its fair share of infamous women. Some got their comeuppance, some profited from their infamy and others were misguided, or with the benefit of hindsight, misjudged. The reader will find a plethora of women to hate, ridicule or secretly admire in Dee Gordon's new book. Some of the characters featured here might horrify or mystify, others will provoke empathy or disbelief, but all tales are authenticated by hours of research. Read, learn, squirm - and smile!

Leseprobe

INFAMOUS

ESSEX

WOMEN

DEE GORDON

First published in 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Reprinted 2012

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Dee Gordon, 2009, 2013

The right of Dee Gordon to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 5240 8

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Introduction . . . and not forgetting Boudicca

Maud de Ingelrica

Alice Perrers

Essex Witches

Elizabeth Blount

Mary Boleyn

Anne Boleyn

Mary I

Katherine Seymour

Elizabeth I

Thomasine Tyler

Frances Rich

Lady Penelope Rich

Frances Howard

Ann Carter

Margaret Cavendish

Abigail Masham

Catherine Canham

Elizabeth Jeffryes

Child Murderers

Mary Wollstonecraft

Anne Broadrick

Mary Anne Clarke

Lady Smugglers

Mary May

Sarah Chesham

Kitty O’Shea

Ellen Willmott

Frances Greville

Ladies of the Road

Amy Bull

Sylvia Pankhurst

Edith Thompson

Conclusion

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Introduction . . . and not forgetting Boudicca

Well-behaved women rarely make history, and this applies to Essex as to any other county. Admittedly, in recent times, Essex girls have been making the kind of embarrassing history that posterity could do without. But dig a little deeper and Essex history reveals other women, including members of the royal family and the landed gentry, who are infamous for a variety of reasons.

An interesting mixture is revealed in the following chapters. Eccentrics and elopers, mistresses and murderers, rebels and rioters, witches and . . . a warrior.

The warrior, however, although infamous in Essex, is not of Essex. This is, of course, Queen Boudicca. (or Boadicea – meaning victory). She was Queen of the Iceni, a tribe covering most of what is now East Anglia: Norfolk, North Suffolk and North-East Cambridgeshire, but excluding Essex. However, her reputation in Essex is such that she could hardly be excluded from a book about its infamous women.

She has been described (by Dio Cassius – a Roman historian writing over a century later), as tall, fierce, and harsh-voiced with a great mass of ‘the tawniest hair’. (Her red hair, incidentally, would have represented high status, but it also represented the different, and in the middle ages came to represent witchcraft.) Little is known of her origins. She would probably have been in her thirties when the Romans annexed the land belonging to the Iceni following the death of her husband, King Prasutagus. They also called in loans and attempted to levy additional taxes, reneging on the promises they had made to the Iceni King. The Romans flogged Boudicca to try to silence her protests, and violated her two teenage daughters.

Statue of Boudicca, Thames Embankment. (Author’s Collection)

Ambresbury Banks, Epping Forest. (Author’s Collection)

Of course, this did not have the desired result and, in about 61 AD, Boudicca roused neighbouring tribes until she had an army of at least 20,000 (some quote as many as 100,000 or more). Her wild army overwhelmed the Roman settlement at Colchester, leaving just a thin layer of ash behind; they moved on to burn London (a twenty-year-old settlement) and destroyed Verulamium, near modern-day St Albans, in spite of their lack of arms and preparation. Boudicca’s Britons carried out bestial atrocities – cutting off the breasts of noble women and sewing them to their mouths to make it look as if they were eating them is just one horrifying example, although allowances have to be made for exaggeration of contemporary reports, especially by Romans.

Tennyson may have described her as a heroine, but primarily Boudicca was a savage warrior, whatever allowances can be made for her motivation. About 70,000 people were killed before the Romans were able to defeat Boudicca and her Britons, wiping out the Icenis. The location of their final defeat is the subject of historic debate, but it is unlikely to have been Essex.

The details of her death are lost in the annals of ancient history. She may have taken poison after a last stand at Ambresbury Banks in Epping Forest – or maybe not. She may have also poisoned her daughters – or again, maybe not. She may be buried at Bartlow Hills (a burial ground formerly in Essex, now just over the border in Cambridgeshire), or under a platform at King’s Cross Station (a possible battle site) – who knows?

Boudicca may have been the first of many feisty women linked with Essex, but she was certainly not the last. The stories that follow are in chronological order, up to and including the twentieth century.

Maud De Ingelrica

c. 1032–c. 1083

Ingelrica was the daughter of Ingelric, an Anglo-Saxon nobleman. Her father was the benefactor of the collegiate church of St Martin-le-Grand in London, where she was born. He was reputedly one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest, man in all of England at the time. One of his ancestors was said to be Joseph of Arimathea who surfaced in England after the death of Jesus, and a golden cross was used as a device by the family as a result. As to the female line of descent, unfortunately this can only be guesswork.

It seems that her son, William, was born in about 1050, some ten years before she married Ranulph Peverel. If Ingelrica had met William the Conqueror at the time he visited her father, recorded in 1049 when William was in his early twenties and she seventeen, then the stories of their mutual attraction could certainly have resulted in the birth of a child. Legend has it that both were striking figures, tall and charismatic, and the attraction would have been perfectly understandable.

William, or Guillaume, was betrothed to his cousin, Matilda of Flanders, at the time, and returned to France to do his duty, cementing the English-French alliance. But it appears he returned after the birth of William, seeming to confirm his reputed fatherhood of the boy. There is conjecture that Ingelrica and William were actually married in a ceremony at ‘the ancient Temple church of London’.

So was she his mistress? Probably. Was William the Conqueror guilty of bigamy when he married Matilda in about 1053? Possibly. It is interesting to speculate that gossip surrounding the birth of the Conqueror’s son was one of the reasons that delayed the Pope’s agreement to William’s marriage to Matilda. But if the Pope knew about the baby, surely he could not have known about the marriage?

Once William/Guillaume was back on French soil, Ingelrica married Ranulph in about 1058 (another Norman) in Hatfield, now Hatfield Peverel, although they would have spent time in France. The Conqueror seems to have been reunited with his son at the Battle of Hastings, because young William is alleged to have been actively involved – on the side of the Normans. Just to confuse the issue, however, by 1066 Matilda also had a son named William, who would have been ten years old, so deciding on which William was which after nearly 1,000 years is a bit tricky. After the conquest, Ingelrica’s son, William, who had taken the name Peverel from Ranulph, was greatly honoured by his royal father, receiving over a hundred holdings of land and property in central England, 162 in all as listed by 1086.

The Priory, Hatfield Peverel. (Author’s Collection)

The interior of St Andrew’s church, Hatfield Peverel. (Author’s Collection)

Ingelrica and Ranulph had other sons, at least one of whom, Ranulph junior, was also well favoured by the Conqueror. There was also a daughter, Emma; all the children born in Cambridgeshire between 1060 and 1069.

It would have been regarded as a good way to atone for her ‘sins’ for Ingelrica to found a college for secular canons, and that is exactly what she did. It was sited on high ground east of the River Ter, on what is now the main A12 from London to Colchester, and later converted to a Benedictine priory by William junior, subsequently dissolved by Henry VIII in 1538. The parish church of St Andrew’s is the only surviving fragment of the Norman priory church nave.

The Peverel (Anglicised from Peuerel, meaning fearless) wealth has been the object of many stories of jealousy, animosity and concealment. Allegations of a cover-up of the Peverel connection with William the Conqueror have been well documented. The true story will now never be known.

Ingelrica, her reputation perhaps restored, and Ranulph, both died in Hatfield, the dates varying depending on the source. He seems to have been just a couple of years her senior, but it looks as if she survived him by a decade or so. An incomplete story full of theories but no less fascinating for all that.

Alice Perrers

c. 1330–c. 1400

Alice was described by a contemporary chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, a monk of St Albans, as a domestic drudge and as the daughter of a tiler from ‘Henney’ in Essex. There has since been speculation as to the truth of this claim – for instance, if Walsingham felt it appropriate to criticise Alice, then it would have been a good idea to suggest she was a) base born and b) the daughter of someone with the same occupation as the leader of the Peasants’ Revolt during her lifetime (Wat Tyler). However, the two medieval hamlets of Great Henny and Little Henny, near Castle Hedingham, did have clay sites producing tiles for local houses at the time, so there could be truth in his version of events.

One difficulty in accepting such humble beginnings for Alice is to then accept that she was later engaged in royal service, almost impossible for someone with such an unprepossessing start in life. There was a more middle-class family of Perrers from Hertfordshire, and this could have been where Alice’s roots lie, but it is also significant that in later life she chose to retreat to Essex when she was friendless and looking for peace, which could readily indicate an instinctive return to the shire of her birth.

Wherever she came from, and whatever her date of birth (never proven), she was certainly in the ageing queen’s retinue by the end of 1366, and not in a menial role but as part of the queen’s personal staff. This means that Alice had survived the Black Death that raged in East Anglia prior to her royal appointment, a period in history when half of England’s population of around four million was wiped out. Because her mother and father are both shadowy figures in the chronicles, she could have been orphaned at an early age, like so many children at the time.

The queen, Philippa of Hainault, had married Edward III in 1327. Although the Hainault of her name indicates her roots in France, rather than any links to Hainault in Essex, she too had an Essex connection, her favourite retreat being a rural, unostentatious dwelling in the woods at Havering. Philippa, French born, was admired by everyone for her pious and courteous nature, and she was in her fifties and in declining health when Alice joined her at Havering. The queen liked to surround herself with youth and beauty, and it seems that Alice reminded her of her own young self.

It appears that Alice became the king’s mistress in about 1364. This was the year when courtier Richard Lyons was commanded by Edward to allow Alice to go where she wished without restrictions. Nevertheless, Alice was among those welcome at the queen’s bedside as her health deteriorated, sharing the vigil with the king. After Philippa’s death in 1369 (possibly of the plague – records vary), Alice was among those to have received a bequest for her services. The king’s order to the Exchequer to carry out Philippa’s wishes referred to Alice as ‘our beloved damsel’ and their relationship now became public knowledge.

The king must have regarded Alice as a source of rejuvenation now that he was in his late fifties, and pre-occupied by the ongoing war with France and the tainted triumphs of his son, latterly known as the Black Prince. Her constant presence was certainly a source of comfort to Edward, and they shared an interest in acquiring money and the power that went with it.

Although Alice was clever enough to ensure that she stayed on good terms with the king’s sons – Edward (the Black Prince) and John of Gaunt – she knew her situation was precarious. She therefore urged the king to make her a gift of land, his first gift being the manor of Wendover in Hampshire, followed by the Essex manors of Gaynes and Steeple St Lawrence. As the king weakened, Alice encouraged him to battle on, giving her the opportunity to become the power behind the throne.

As manors gifted by the king could be taken away on a whim, she began to negotiate for property in her own right, offering her royal influence in exchange for a bargain, and this seems to have worked. She acquired several houses in the City of London and another in the village of Hammersmith, and she also slowly took control of courtly extravagance. Alice was the one who made decisions regarding the running of the royal palaces, including Havering, which was one of at least seven. The king moved from one to another dependent on whether he wanted to hunt, be near to London, or see what was happening in Scotland. So his mistress, now an uncrowned queen, was kept busy with arrangements for transportation, cleaning, staffing and with organising feasts and tournaments as well as with public expenditure.

Site of Gaynes Park Lodge, East. (Author’s Collection)

A minor victory for Alice was the king’s order, four years after Philippa’s death, that she should be granted all Philippa’s ‘jewels, goods and chattels’, allowing her not only to flaunt her position at palace functions, but also providing her with some security for her financial dealings.

More significantly, in 1374, the king announced a tournament in her honour as a celebration at the end of Lent. Alice was paraded in front of the rich and influential from far and near as the Lady of the Sun, bedecked in a gold cloak and ermine-trimmed gown. Such a display of chivalrous veneration was bound to annoy the Church, given her role as fornicator, and the paganism of the temporary title. For seven days of celebration, of jousting, eating, drinking, and merry-making, Alice the concubine was queen in all but name. Already unpopular with the women at court, perhaps because of her low-born status, she became more and more disliked and was not able to hang on to her relationship with the princes. It was not long before allegations of sorcery began to circulate, and there was also an allegation that Alice had been involved in the murder of a sailor, but no reason or details have been recorded – it seems merely that Alice was on the receiving end of ill-founded propaganda, or is there really, truly, no smoke without just a little bit of fire?

Additionally, over the years, Alice has acquired a reputation as an adulteress but in fact there is no confirmed evidence that her relationship began with the king before he was widowed, nor is there any evidence that she married Sir William de Windsor, a long-term friend to whom she may have been ‘betrothed’. She bore at least two, possibly three, children by either the king or by Windsor.

However, once the king’s favourite son, Edward, had died, he made no further attempt to defend her influence. He was weary of war, tired of being surrounded by death and went along with proposals to destroy her influence, resulting in her banishment, forfeiting lands and possessions. She had to swear, while kissing a crucifix, that she would never return to the king’s presence.

The exposure of sexual immorality at court tainted the probity of the court in general, leaving the way clear for charges to be levied against everyone involved in her activities. As a result, a lot of powerful figures – such as John of Gaunt – jockeyed for a stronger position in influencing the king and in determining his successor. Gaunt took his revenge on anyone daring to question his policies by nullifying parliamentary proposals. The king was happy to approve Gaunt’s activities in return for the cancellation of Alice’s expulsion.

She was now able to hasten to his side at Eltham, but, with the onset of winter, they moved to Havering. This was where Edward made his will. It appears that Alice was content with his gifts during life, avoiding controversy by being excluded from his bequests. Although Edward felt obliged to spend the following Christmas at Westminster, he and Alice returned soon after to a quiet existence at Havering-atte-Bower. The king’s jubilee in February was marked by formal recognition of all agreed pardons, including that of Alice. Her property was officially hers by legal right, as were the dead queen’s jewels. An itemised list drawn up revealed her ownership of twenty-two manors plus other land.

Apparently suffering from the effects of a stroke, Edward lingered on until after St George’s Day in 1377. He spent his final weeks in the royal palace of Sheen, and his final hours with only Alice at his bedside. The disease that killed him was described, at the time, and perhaps predictably, as ‘inordinate lust of the flesh’. A story persists that Alice, when Edward had slipped away, stole the rings from his fingers before leaving – but the truth will never be known. A pre-agreed sentimental gift perhaps? His last-known gesture to her was of a more practical nature, and reprised his first-ever gift: two tuns (nearly 2,000 litres) of Gascony wine.

When Edward was buried in Westminster Abbey in July, Alice was not admitted to the funeral. With a new king on the throne (the Black Prince’s son, Richard), a campaign of retaliation against Alice began. In spite of parliamentary pre-occupation with French raiders in the south of England, the Keeper of the Wardrobe was instructed to present a long list of items in Alice’s possession alleged to be the property of the Crown. The list included jewels, furniture, clothing, even small items such as ribbons. Any creditors who had claims against Alice were also invited to step forward so that ‘justice should be done them’. On the one hand, Alice’s possessions could be said to add to the depleted Treasury, while on the other it appears that vengeance was a stronger motive.

Alice was charged with disobeying parliamentary instructions, but she was able to prove that she had observed their orders until Gaunt had them cancelled. She was also charged with influencing the king to pardon Richard Lyons, who had been attacked (like her) by parliament. For this latter charge, the only witness she could find who was willing and able to stand up and attest to her innocence proved unconvincing in court.

On the surface, this ‘trial’ was a travesty of justice, with Gaunt acting as a hostile witness, and resulted in Alice’s banishment, which meant she had to quit the realm after being stripped of all her possessions. This was, in fact, hardly practical, given the hostilities between England and Europe at the time, but parliament just wanted her away from their vicinity. The decision to strip Alice of her assets without any need to show proof of fraud in obtaining such assets was a much harder blow. She fled with her two children to her manor of Gaines in Upminster, one of just a few properties in the area which she had managed to salvage as legally hers.

The mysterious William de Windsor, an Essex landowner, often thought to have married Alice even before her relationship with Edward, reappears at this juncture, and the couple now seemed to live openly as man and wife. Was William merely ensuring that he would have rights to Alice’s property? He was charged with harbouring a woman under sentence of banishment, but in the end Alice was authorised to remain in the realm so long as her ‘husband’ was willing to keep her by his side, and the threat of banishment remained as a suspended sentence. So was this in fact another clever move by Alice? Or was William actually a man to be trusted?

William put up a good argument in parliament that Alice had not been tried by the King’s bench, had not been permitted to be present during all proceedings, had not been given enough time to prepare her case or her witnesses, and had been tried in her single name although a ‘married woman’, bearing in mind that a single woman at that time could not usually enjoy personal rights of possession. As a result, Alice was given a full pardon, and Windsor was given possession of those manors and estates that Alice had obtained legally, giving her greater security with money to support herself and her daughters in Upminster. As for William, he disappears again from the scene, accepting the office of Governor of Cherbourg.

Alice has even been accused of involvement in the Peasants’ Revolt which flared up in Essex in 1381. It seems likely that Alice was living in Gaines Manor when the revolt broke out, but there are no records that her home was looted or that her family were harmed, as so many manors and landowners were in that part of Essex. Not that this makes her a conspirator.

William returned from Cherbourg to assist King Richard in clearing the insurgents from Essex and was appointed a baron for his efforts, but, exhausted by the campaign, he returned to his family estate in Westmorland (Cumbria) – and not to Alice. He died there in 1384, with no mention of Alice in his will. Because of the amount of debts William left behind him, his executor travelled to Upminster to try to sort out the complex nature of any Essex inheritance, but was given short shrift by Alice – not surprisingly.

She now had another fight to resist the attempts of William’s creditors to claim what she regarded as rightfully hers. Alice did manage to become socially accepted at court again, thanks to Richard, whose mother – the anti-Alice Joan of Kent – had died. Her next move was to institute proceedings in the civil courts against John de Windsor, her nephew by marriage, accusing him of illegally detaining property belonging to her and her daughter, worth in all around half a million pounds. She won her case and John was sent to Newgate Prison.

Upminster church. (Author’s Collection)

By now, Alice was in her fifties, dreaming of redress, and she retired permanently to her manor at Upminster to brood upon her situation. Richard’s abdication and death in 1399 left her with few friends at court. Her daughters had married and left their Essex home. She could look back on a life ending very differently to the harsh childhood she had experienced: a life where she had been, at one point, the wealthiest common-born woman in the country.

She died in 1400, and, although leaving her land and houses to her daughters, she did not forget her roots. She left £400 to be distributed among the poor of Upminster, gifts for her servants, and additional money for repairs to the roads in and around the village, as most of the houses in the village were on her land. Alice asked that she be buried in Upminster church, and she left one of her best oxen to be sold to provide the money for her grave, grave ornaments, candles, and for the chaplain. The amount of money (around a thousand pounds in current terms) would have provided quite a special memorial but it has long since disappeared during periodic renovation and rebuilding. Its current location, if it has not been destroyed, is unknown.

It is probable that her younger daughter, who inherited the manor of Gaines (also known as Gaines or Gaynes Park, or Theydon Garnon – its eleventh-century name) did not enjoy the property for very long, given the disputes around its ownership, and the house itself disappears from records in the seventeenth century. The name Gaynes, however, lives on in street names in the area.

Essex Witches

From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries

T