Thief of Barnsdale

I have just compiled the three separate parts of my Robin Hood series to date (currently available on Kindle), and released them as a single volume in paperback.

'Robin Hood: Thief of Barnsdale' is a bit pricey, but at over five hundred pages I was unable to bring the price down from a set minimum. I will be holding various competitions to win free copies of the paperback, so if interested keep your eyes peeled!

Those who have read any of the series so far will know that I have attempted to do something different with the well-worn tale, moving Robin out of his usual Richard I/Prince John comfort zone and re-locating him in the early years of Henry III's reign. The story is based on contemporary chronicles and legal records, principally on the handful of intriguing references in the Pipe Rolls to a Robert Hood or 'Hobbehod', fugitive, who fled from the justices at York in the mid-1220s for crimes unknown.

I have tried to capture the grim and gritty feel of a realistic 13th century England, and merge the content of the earliest surviving ballads with historical events and people. At least three more chapters of Robin's story are sketched out in my head, including a potential trip to Constantinople and the Holy Land.

Note: readers of the Kindle versions may notice that I have changed Robin's name from the more authentic 'Robyn Hode' to the standard Robin Hood - this was more for convenience than anything, so apologies for any apparent lack of continuity.

Link to Thief of Barnsdale on Amazon  

Goodreads giveaway

I am offering three FREE paperback copies of "Leader of Battles (I) Ambrosius" as part of a giveaway on Goodreads. If interested, please see the link below: the giveaway runs from 10th July-10th August, and you just have to enter your name when the competition opens on the 10th!

Giveaway link on Goodreads

Remember...Ambrosius wants you!

The Arthur of the Welsh

Following up on recent posts focused on Ambrosius Aurelianus, the 'last of the Romans', I want to write something about his far more famous successor, and the figure who has largely replaced him in our collective memory as the hero of native resistance after Rome abandoned Britain to her fate: Arthur.

Arthur playing 'gwyddbywll' in The Dream of Rhonawby

Arthur barely needs any introduction. The Once and Future King is virtually inescapable, having endured and flourished over the centuries, and if anything become even more popular in recent years, starring in dozens of novels and films and plays. He has been portrayed as an atypical medieval king, sitting inside a fairy tale castle surrounded by his knights, a Bronze Age chieftain, a Dark Age warlord, a resurrected Victorian gentleman 'of the stateliest port' (Tennyson), and even a sort of green space alien thingy. The character is extremely malleable, and can be re-shaped according to the desires and perceptions of individual writers. Like Robin Hood, he has come to stand for rather basic notions of justice and virtue, and can be turned into just about anything.

My favourite Arthur is the one who storms through the early medieval Welsh texts, hunting magical boars, slaying giants and fighting witches. This Arthur seems to have got lost, hidden behind the shadow of his far more famous counterpart - the one expressed by Chrétien de Troyes and Malory, of Camelot and Lancelot and Guinevere, Round Tables and Holy Grails (and killer rabbits) and all the rest of it. I have no problem with the Arthur of later romance - he informed possibly my favourite Arthurian novel, TH White's The Once and Future King - but there is something altogether more vital and intriguing about his Welsh twin.

The earliest reference to the 'Welsh Arthur' - and Arthur in general - is generally accepted to be a passing reference dating from the 7th century in a stanza from Y Gododdin, an ancient Welsh poem containing a series of elegies to the northern Brittonic kingdom of Gododdin. The stanza reads:

"He glutted black ravens on the rampart of the fort,
Though he was no Arthur,
Among the powerful ones in battle,
In the front rank, Gwawrddur was a palisade."

The stanza is actually written in praise of the exploits of Gwawrddur, but no matter how many ravens he feeds with the blood of his enemies, he is 'no Arthur' i.e. Gwawrddur might be a bit tasty in a fight, but Arthur was even tastier.

Further references to this shadowy Arthur, a hard-edged warrior rather than the urbane monarch of later legend, appear scattered throughout the writings of Nennius and the Historia Brittonum. From these we learn that Arthur was thought to have fought twelve battles against the enemies of Sub-Roman Britain, culminating in the Siege of Mount Badon, where he wore the image of the Virgin Mary on his shield and personally slaughtered 960 enemy warriors. He met his end at the 'the strife of Camlann', where Medraut also died (the chronicle is unclear if Medraut, later turned into Arthur's deadly foe Mordred, was fighting on Arthur's side or not), a mysterious battle accompanied by plague in Britain and Ireland.

No Welsh medieval writer appears to have tried to emulate Geoffrey of Monmouth or Malory, and write an epic narrative spanning the character's life from his birth to Camlann. Possibly the character was already well-known to his audience from earlier stories, now lost, and no such explanation was needed. Instead he tends to appear as a supporting character in tales such as Culhwch and Olwen and The Dream of Rhonawby, both preserved in the 19th century compilation of medieval Welsh poetry and legend known as The Mabinogion.

Arthur's court

The Arthur of Culhwch resides in a court or llys with a company of over two hundred warriors, every one of whom is named by the writer(s). Many of them possess bizzare attributes, such as Henbeddestyr son of Erim, who never found any man who could keep up with him, on horseback or on foot; or Penpingion, who goes about on his head to save his feet, neither looking to heaven nor the ground, but like a rolling stone on a court floor; or Arthur's close friend Cei (the formidable ancestor of the buffoonish Sir Kay of romance), who can withstand fire and water better than any man, and project heat from his hands, a sort of Dark Age superhero.

Like the knights of romance, Arthur and his men embark on quests, but they are strange affairs, full of dark magic and weird imagery. Cei and the one-handed warrior, Bedwyr (later turned into Sir Bedivere) accompany Culhwch on his mission to win a bride from her father, the coarse giant Ysbaddaden. They perform all sorts of feats, such as riding a salmon in order to free a prisoner from an underwater prison, hunting a gigantic magical boar named the Twrch Trwyth and her seven piglets - much harder than it sounds, since the lethal swine destroy most of Ireland and slaughter many of Arthur's warriors - and slay Dillus Farfog, the 'greatest warrior to ever flee from Arthur.'

Cei slays Dillus through treachery, as a result of which Arthur mocks him in verse:

"A leash was made by Cei,
From the beard of Dillus son of Efrai,
Were he alive, he would kill you."

In response to Arthur's mockery Cei goes into a massive sulk and leaves court. Thereafter he refuses to help Arthur, even when the latter's men are being killed, and no peace can be made between the two men. This may reflect some ancient memory of internal tensions in Arthur's war-band, eventually leading to it breaking up and the disaster of Camlann. Shortly after Cei leaves, Arthur is required to go north to heal a feud between warring princes. Before he can get there one of the princes, Gwyn son of Nudd, has murdered a captive, cut out his heart and forced another captive to eat it. Again, the savagery of this episode might reflect some grim Dark Age reality underlying the tale.

The giant shepherd in Culhwch and Olwen

Surreal, offbeat imagery permeates the earlier Welsh tales of Arthur, conjuring up a very different atmosphere to the courtly environment of Malory. There is something wild and untamed about Arthur's men, who appear more supernatural than human, capable of extraordinary feats of strength. In The Dream of Rhonawby, a furious Arthur crushes a set of golden playing pieces to powder in his hands, and laughs in contempt at the 'scum' and 'little men' who are left to defend Wales after he has gone. A giant-slayer, he is himself a giant, the matchless Amheradwyr or Emperor, whom no other Welsh/British hero can measure up against.

And then there is ultimate surrealism of the Cauldron of Annwn, but that shall be for another post....

 

Leader of Battles

Following on from my last post, I'd like to announce the release of my latest novel - Leader of Battles (I): Ambrosius. 

The Leader of Battles series is my take on the grim Dark Age reality behind Arthurian legend, and Book One focuses on the career of Ambrosius Aurelianus, the 'Last of the Romans', whose life and career I described recently. Book Two will concentrate on his successor, Artorius  - who barely needs any introduction as the 'historical' Arthur!

Leader of Battles (I) is currently available on Kindle and will also be available as a paperback very soon.

"My father was a warrior. He bade me fight..."

      

Britain, 427 AD. Rome has abandoned the province, leaving it exposed to waves of barbarian invasions. To the west, savage pirates from Hibernia ravage the coastline. In the north, the crumbling defences of the Wall cannot contain marauding bands of Picts as they sweep down from the highlands. Worst of all are the Saxons, the dreaded sea-wolves. Under their chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, they wish to drive out the native Britons and claim the entire island for their own.    

Attacked from all sides, the Britons find a champion in the form of Ambrosius Aurelianus, the last of the Romans. A modest man, riddled with doubts and fears, Ambrosius reluctantly takes on the mantle of Dux Bellorum, Leader of Battles. Placed in command of Britain's only standing army, he fights to preserve the dwindling light of civilisation while the treacherous High King, Vortigern, plots his destruction.

Set before the coming of Arthur, the first book of the Leader of Battles trilogy charts the rise and fall of post-Roman Britain's first great hero, and his desperate struggle to hold back the shadows threatening to engulf his country.

Leader of Battles (I): Ambrosius on Amazon

The last of the Romans

 I'm delving back into Roman/Arthurian history today, with a look at a shadowy figure who might have been the inspiration for 'King Arthur'. 

Ambrosius as he may appeared

The figure in question was one Ambrosius Aurelianus, described as 'the last of the Romans' i.e. the last of the Romans to hold any sort of power in Britain after the departure of the legions in the early 5th century. He is an obscure figure, remembered only in a few garbled tales in which he gets hopelessly mixed up with Merlin the magician, and his deeds and existence have been largely crushed under the weight of The Once and Future King. Unlike Arthur, however, we can be reasonably certain that Ambrosius existed, and played a major role in the Romano-British resistance against the Saxons.

The Dark Ages are suitably named. A blank curtain lies over British history from c.400-600 AD, between the departure of the Roman legions and the rise of the Saxon kingdoms. Modern archaeology is helping us to discover more about the period, but the sheer lack of written sources remains a crippling problem in trying to piece together events.

One of the very few surviving sources is De Excidio de Conquestu Britanniae, or ‘On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain’, written by a somewhat mysterious and irritating British cleric named Gildas. Probably written in the first quarter of the sixth century, it is intended as a sermon in three parts rather than a history. Gildas doesn’t mince his words, and uses the history of Britain from the coming of the Romans as a stick to beat the British rulers of his own day, condemning them as lazy, sinful and incompetent. 

The red dragon and the white fight over Britain

In fact, Gildas doesn’t have a good word to say about almost anyone. One of the few to escape his censure is Ambrosius, who he describes as ‘the last of the Romans’ and the man who ignited the British resistance against the marauding Saxons in the mid-5^th century. 

Gildas has this to say about Ambrosius and his times:

"The poor remnants of our nation, being strengthened by God, took arms under the conduct of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a modest man, who of all the Roman nation was then alone in the confusion of this troubled period by chance left alive. His parents, who for their merit were adorned with the purple, had been slain in these same broils. Under him, our people provoked to battle their cruel conquerors, and by the goodness of our Lord obtained the victory. 

After this, sometimes our countrymen, sometimes the enemy, won the field, to the end that our Lord might in this land try after his accustomed manner these his Israelites, whether they loved him or not, until the year of the siege of Mount Badon, when took place also the last almost, though not the least slaughter of our cruel foes, which was (as I am sure) forty-four years and one month after the landing of the Saxons, and also the time of my own nativity."

The reference to Ambrosius' parents wearing the purple may indicate they enjoyed some kind of senatorial or government rank, or alternatively that they were effectively martyred during the Saxon revolt: 'clothed in scarlet' is another suggested interpretation of the phrase used to describe them, meaning their bodies were covered in blood. 

According to Gildas, following the initial shock of the Saxon revolt, the Britons fled to Ambrosius ‘as eagerly as bees to a beehive when a storm threatens’. Under his leadership, they regained their strength, and challenged the Saxons to battle. The war raged on for an uncertain length of time – Gildas is frustratingly vague on dates – with victories and defeats on either side, until the year of the ‘siege of Mons Badonicus’, where the Britons finally scored a major victory that stopped the invaders in their tracks for a generation. 

Mons Badonicus, or Mount Badon, is traditionally the career-defining victory won by Arthur, perhaps Britain’s most famous legendary hero. Strangely (or tellingly?) Gildas makes no mention of Arthur. The only British hero he names in connection with the fight against the Saxons is Ambrosius, but he stops short of also naming him the victor of Badon. The earliest feasible dating for Badon is c.482, which makes it a little late for Ambrosius, since the Saxon revolt started some thirty years earlier.

It is possible to reconcile these issues. Possibly 'Arthur' was an officer serving under Ambrosius, his Magister Equitum or similar, and assumed command of the British forces after Ambrosius died or retired. Piecing together a coherent narrative of Ambrosius' career is impossible, since the evidence is so fragmentary, but he pops up in various disparate sources. The Historia Brittonum, written by Nennius in the ninth century, talks of the High King of the Britons, Vortigern, ruling in dread of Ambrosius, and of a battle at Guoloph (Nether Wallop in Hampshire) fought between the forces of Ambrosius and one Vitalinus. 

A depiction of Merlin

The Historia also relates the tale of Ambrosius being discovered as a child by Vortigern while the latter was trying to build a fort in North Wales. The fort kept on collapsing, and the king's advisors told him the only solution was to sprinkle the foundations with the blood of a child born without a father. Ambrosius was said to be such a child, but when brought before the king, he revealed the real reason for the problem: below the foundations was a lake containing two dragons. The dragons, one red and one white, fought a battle representing the struggle between the Britons (red) and the Saxons (white), and the shockwaves of their battle was causing the fort to collapse. One day, Ambrosius prophesied, the red dragon would triumph over the white, and cast it back into the sea. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c.1136, took this tale and altered it, giving Ambrosius the name 'Merlin Ambrosius' and conflating him with tales of a 6th century bard named Myrddin Wyllt, who was said to have run mad after witnessing the horrors of battle. Thus the figure of 'Merlin' as we know him today was partially derived from the historical Ambrosius. 

Arthurian novelists have generally been keen to skim over Ambrosius in order to get to the main event, or even omit him altogether. He has a cameo in Marion Zimmer Bradlay's The Mists of Avalon, where he limps on for a few pages before quietly expiring offstage, and doesn't appear at all in Bernard Cornwell's Warlord trilogy. Rosemary Sutcliffe and Mary Stewart did him justice, allowing Ambrosius a share of the limelight before he makes way for Arthur, but he is still a supporting character.  This seems slightly unfair on one of the few definite historical personages we know anything about from this period, and one who initiated the fight-back against his country’s enemies.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

     

   

  

  

   

  

  

  

    

  

  

  

   

  

  

  

  

   

  

      

  

  

  

  

  

    

  

  

  

    

  

    

   

  

     

    

   

   

    

'Put to silence'...the fate of the Princes in the Tower.

"...their breath failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls into the joys of heaven, leaving to the tormentors their bodies dead in the bed."

- Sir Thomas More

"Of their death's manner was many opinions, for some said they were murdered between two feather beds, some said they were drowned in malmsey, and some said they were sticked with a venomous poison..."

- The Great Chronicle

"The princes, by some unknown manner of destruction, had met their fate..."

- The Crowland Chronicler

"In this year (1483) the two sons of King Edward were put to silence in the Tower of London."

- Robert Ricart, recorder of Bristol

The princes

I've held off writing this post, to allow some of the dust over the discovery of Richard III's remains under the now-famous Leicestershire car park to settle down. Richard has always been a controversial subject, but the finding of his bones caused some tempers to get a wee bit risen, especially via social media. He has plenty of admirers and detractors, and I sincerely hope the more extreme members of either faction never meet in person, unless there is a police van in attendance. 

Much of the controversy over Richard stems from one of England's most famous unsolved mysteries: what happened to the sons of his brother, Edward IV? The traditional view is that their Wicked Uncle Richard, regarding the boys as an inconvenience after he had snatched the crown, caused them both to be quietly disposed of. The murder of two innocent boys, even by late medieval standards, was so shocking that Richard's reputation lay in ruins for centuries, until the likes of Clements Markham and Paul Murray Kendall decided to redeem it.

Kendall's book on Richard III, published in 1955, proved hugely influential, and inspired a spate of pro-'Ricardian' fiction and nonfiction. Authors such as Josephine Tey, Sandra Worth, Sharon Penman, John Ashdown-Hill, Philippa Langley and others have all scrambled to declare Richard innocent of any wrongdoing, and reached for alternatives to the traditional version of events. Many alternative candidates for the death of the princes have been put forward, including Margaret Beaufort, Lord Stanley, Henry Tudor, the Duke of Buckingham, even John Howard, Duke of Norfolk and Richard's principal ally. 

Margaret Beaufort

The problem is lack of evidence. Not a shred of genuine evidence can be produced to implicate any of the above, including Richard. All we know for certain is that the boys were last seen playing in the grounds of the Tower between July-November 1483. Dominic Mancini, an Italian eyewitness to events in London, wrote that Edward and his brother 'were withdrawn into the inner apartments of the Tower proper and day by day began to be seen more and more rarely behind the bars and windows, till at length they ceased to appear altogether.' A similar version appeared in various versions of the London Chronicle, and the Great Chronicle records that 'the children were seen shooting and playing in the garden of the Tower by sundry times' before November 1483, and were then seen no more. 

The second problem is the nature of the crime, and the creeping horror of it: two innocent boys, swallowed up by the dreaded Tower and never seen again. No-one who has read the positive accounts of Richard, and who admire him for his undoubted talents, wants to believe that he ordered such a thing. Far more comforting to pin it on someone else - and who better than his various enemies? After all, Henry Tudor and his hard-nosed mother also had vested interests in getting rid of the princes. 

Arms of William, Lord Hastings

For me - and this is where I make myself unpopular - there is a fatal lack of practicality to most of the alternative theories. How, for instance, was Margaret Beaufort supposed to have gained access to the princes, held securely inside the strongest fortress in England? She had only recently been placed under house arrest in the custody of her husband, Lord Stanley, and all her assets confiscated. Even if she was able to hire an assassin to do the deed, he would have needed superhuman powers to get inside the castle, creep past Richard's guards, murder the boys and creep out again, all without being detected.

Another theory is that Henry Tudor found the princes still alive in the Tower when he arrived in London after his victory at Bosworth in 1485, and quietly murdered them himself. A few years later the cunning rat tortured Sir James Tyrrell, a loyal Yorkist knight, into 'confessing' that Richard was responsible, and then executed Tyrrell. Job done! 

Henry VII

It won't do. If Margaret planned to clear the way to the throne for her son, then her Super-Assassin would have to bump off not only the princes, but Richard himself, his son, and all the male de la Poles, who were next in line to the Yorkist succession. The eldest, John de la Pole, would cause Henry VII serious problems immediately after Bosworth.

The crux is the rebellion of 1483. Kendall tried to explain away the rebellion as a Woodville conspiracy, but Woodville influence was limited, and the ringleaders were essentially Edward IV's old retainers. Men such as Sir George Brown (who carried the banner of St George at Edward's funeral), Sir John Fogge and Nicholas Gaynesford, among many others, cannot be accused of being traitors to the House of York. They had spilled much blood in the Yorkist cause, and gained great rewards. Having served the old king so faithfully, they wished to know what had become of his sons, and yet Richard would not produce them. Why?

It looked suspicious then, and still looks suspicious now. Richard's defenders point to his previous record of loyal service to Edward, but his loyalty didn't prevent him from trying to smear Edward's mother (also his own) as an adulteress, from killing Edward's best friend (William Hastings) without trial, from declaring Edward's sons illegitimate and taking Edward's crown. Whether or not you believe in the Stillington pre-contract and everything that flowed from it is a moot point, and too complex to go into here. The timing of it, however, was extremely convenient for Richard's purposes.

What of Richard's character? Here was a man whose father and brother were killed in battle when he was just eight years old, who presided over his first treason trial at the age of eighteen, and from an early age was exposed to the lethal, bloodstained politics of late medieval England. His role model was the Earl of Warwick, later know as the Kingmaker and the living embodiment of realpolitik. Richard was happy to benefit from the ruthless carve-up of the estates belonging to Warwick's widow (Edward IV had her legally declared dead!), and later mercilessly persecuted the aged and defenceless Countess of Oxford, until she agreed to sign over her lands to him for half their annual value. He was no innocent lamb riding guilelessly to the slaughter, as some would have him portrayed.

The man himself...Richard III

Richard's actions in the immediate aftermath of Edward IV's unexpected death show a man trying to act decisively and in haste, in order to protect and secure his own position as Lord Protector. I don't personally believe he always planned to take the throne: rather, his behaviour suggests he was making it up as he went along. Rivers, Grey, Vaughan and Haute were seized and despatched to Pontefract Castle, to be later judicially murdered after a show tribunal presided over by the Earl of Northumberland. Hastings was dragged out of a council chamber in the Tower, on vague suspicion of conspiracy, and brutally slaughtered on the green beside the chapel. Buckingham was executed after deserting his former ally, and many of his fellow rebels, including 'divers of the king's own household' also ended on the block.

None of these ruthless acts, however you interpret them, suggest a man who was incapable of ordering the death of his own nephews, if he thought it necessary. Ricardians may throw their hands up in horror at such a statement, but I find it impossible to read him any other way. His brother Edward, the other great exemplar in his life, was himself guilty of breaking the rules of sanctuary at Tewkesbury, ordering a private gangland-style execution of their troublesome brother Clarence, and murdering the defenceless madman, Henry VI.

For all these reasons, I believe the traditional verdict still stands, and that Richard is the most likely candidate for the murder of the princes. They vanished while under his official care and protection, so at the very least he stands charged with criminal negligence. His decision to kill them may have been prompted by a bungled effort - probably instigated by the Woodvilles - to rescue the princes from the Tower in the late summer of 1483. Feeling himself threatened, Richard reacted as he always did in such circumstances, and struck out. Blindly, hastily, and mistakenly. He paid for the mistake two years later, in a marshy field a couple of miles south of Market Bosworth.

Far-fetched notions of the boys being smuggled out of the country to Burgundy, where one later re-emerged as Perkin Warbeck while the other found his true calling as a bricklayer, are (for me) so much hogwash, and take wishful thinking to the extreme. By the summer of 1483 the princes had become surplus to requirements, and in this era spare royals had the life expectancy of a kitten in a furnace.

To ram home the point, I'll leave the last word to Prince Geoffrey and his brother John, sons of Henry II, from The Lion in Winter:

Geoffrey: We are extra princes now, and you know where extra princes go?

John: Down. 

The White Hawk IV: Redemption

Part IV of The White Hawk, my series following the fortunes of a family of Lancastrian loyalists during The Wars of the Roses, is now available on Kindle. 

Those who have been following the series will know that the Boltons have taken some pretty hefty knocks in the past, and the beginning of this installment (possibly the last) finds the surviving members in a very bad way indeed. Can they scrape themselves up the floor and hit back? There's only one way to find out...

“Loyaulté me lie…” 

The dynastic wars are over. The House of York reigns supreme after the shattering victories of Barnet and Tewkesbury, and King Edward IV can look forward to a long and happy reign. 

For diehard Lancastrian loyalists such as the Boltons, there is no peace or happiness. James is a prisoner in the Tower, and has been for the past twelve years. His brother Martin is reduced to a common sell-sword, fighting in the service of the Black Army, the most ruthless and destructive army in Christendom. Elizabeth, their niece, lives under a false name as a prostitute in the stews of Southwark. 

Everything changes when King Edward dies unexpectedly, leaving his crown to an underage boy. The young Edward V is controlled by the Woodvilles, his mother’s relatives, who seek to use him as their puppet. Edward’s uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is named as Lord Protector. Suspicious of the Woodvilles, Gloucester takes drastic action to protect himself and seize the person of his nephew. 

Across the Channel, the few surviving Lancastrians sniff an opportunity to restore their fortunes. Their last hope is Henry Tudor, the exiled Earl of Richmond, who possesses a faint claim to the throne. While the House of York threatens to tear itself apart, Richmond slowly gathers allies and plans to invade England. 

From the cold ashes of defeat and despair, the Boltons are handed an opportunity to redeem their fortunes. Victory or death awaits as they fight like never before to claw back what was lost. 

The White Hawk (IV): Redemption on Amazon