Diana talks to Susan Abernethy, author on The Freelance History Writer blog

Thank you Diana for giving me the opportunity to answer your delightful questions.

What is the genre you are best known for?

My blog, The Freelance History Writer is dedicated to medieval, Tudor and women’s history.  These are my favorite subjects to write about.  But I have left the parameters open to cover Ancient history to early modern so I can write about whatever takes my fancy.

What made you choose this genre?

History explains everything for me.  When I was a teenager, the series “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” aired on TV and I was fascinated.  That is when my interest in history started and I’ve never looked back.  It fostered my love of Tudor and medieval history and influenced me to get my degree in history in college. When I first began blogging, I started writing about women.  They have been neglected and maligned throughout history and I want to change that. 

Favorite picture or work of art?

I have many favorite portraits such as those of Tudor personalities, especially as they were painted by Hans Holbein the Younger.  But a few years ago I discovered the life of Isabel of Portugal, the princess who became the Duchess of Burgundy when she married Philip the Good in 1430.  There is a magnificent portrait of her painted c. 1450 from the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden, a Netherlandish painter who was born in Tournai.  A few months ago, I was in Los Angeles for an event and went to the Getty Museum where this portrait resides and got to see it close up.  There is so much detail that you can’t see when looking at the picture on the internet.

Portrait of Isabel of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy   

Add caption

Was becoming a writer a conscious decision or something you drifted into (or even something so compelling that it could not be denied?)  How old were you when you first started to write seriously?

Actually, I drifted into it completely by accident when I was 55 years old.  A friend was looking for a partner to write with on her blog about women’s history.  I wrote my first article on Emma of Normandy, twice Queen of England and people seemed to love it.  After that, I was totally compelled to write and I still am!  I try to write an article a week.  It’s something that allows me to read, study and research about my favorite subject which is half the fun.

Other than writing full time, what would be your dream job?

Professor of Medieval and Early Modern European history at a university.  It is my belief that people should know more about history.  It would be my mission to make it fun and compelling so people would want to study it.  I like to think this is a little of what I’m doing with the blog. 

Coffee or tea?

Coffee.  This is a guilty pleasure.  I’ve been drinking Maxwell House International Coffees since I was a teenager.  My favorite flavor is Café Français.  I also indulge in a Starbucks Café Mocha occasionally.  My parents are big coffee drinkers so I followed in their footsteps!

How much of your work is planned before you start?  Do you have a full draft or let it find its way?

In most cases, 80% of my work is planned.  I do a great deal of reading and research before I begin an article.  I then make copious notes.  Sometimes the notes turn into the article with little effort.  Other times, it takes some work to put all the notes together in the structure I want.  I enjoy this part of the process as well as the editing.

Imagine you could get hold of any original source document.  What would it be?

Recently I wrote an article on Catherine de Valois, Queen of England.  There is a small controversy regarding a statute that may or may not have been passed in Parliament putting restrictions on the subsequent marriages of a Dowager Queen of England.  We don’t know if such a statute was really passed or not as there are no existing records.  If it was, I’d like to get my hands on it.

Also, anything that would solve the mystery of what happened to the Princes in the Tower would be amazing to have.

What do you enjoy reading for pleasure?

Anything about history really.  I’ve always loved biography.  Right now I’m reading a series of biographies on Mary Tudor, Queen Mary I of England.  The author of each book tackles the subject differently so it’s fun to evaluate and compare.  The enjoyable part for me is I can take pleasure in reading the books and use them for research at the same time.  Occasionally I will read a book just for fun but it’s always a history book.

How do you get ideas for articles on the blog?

I have several lines of research that I have followed since I started the blog six years ago.  Tudor and medieval history are the top of the list of course.  One of my favorite sections is a group of articles on the Queens of Scotland, England and France.  The Queens of Scotland section is for all intents and purposes finished.  I’m about 75% done with the Queens of England and have a long way to go on the Queens of France.  For the Tudors, I want to have a survey article for each monarch and I have three more to go.  I’m always adding to the Tudor section as there are many fascinating characters from this era. 

For medieval history there are so many topics to choose from and I find a lot of ideas just from reading for research.  I want to have an article on all the Valois Duchesses of Burgundy so that is my next project.  I have a long list of other potential topics I’m working my way through.

Have you ever thought of writing a book?

Yes.  Yes I have!  The idea is a daunting one for me.  There are some women I’ve come across that would make great topics for new biographies.  However, I can come up with a hundred excuses for not doing it.  Right now my focus is on the blog.  I really enjoy it so much it doesn’t seem like work for me.  So for now I’ll just stick with blogging.  However, you never know what the future holds.

© Diana Milne January 2017 (Susan Abernethy, February 1, 2018)

  

Mary Arden - Shakespeare's Mother

Mary Arden – a Tudor woman.

Mary Arden's son William

 

This is the story of a peasant’s daughter who rose to wealth and status, who buried three of her children and lived through four changes of her country’s religion, who survived the plague and gave birth to one of the world’s best known playwrights and poets. This is the story of Mary Arden, William Shakespeare’s mother.

Mary Arden was born into a time of change and turmoil, a time of radical transformation in both history and society. It was a time of war and violence, of class conflict and the tumult of the reformation overturning a thousand years of religious history and English Christianity in just twenty years.
 

What could it have been like to live through those times for any one, let alone a woman?

Mary Arden was one of eight daughters born to an old farming family in the heart of Warwickshire but Mary married out of life on the land for the challenges of the new world of the Tudor middle class.

Her children would become haberdashers and glovers, two even made names for themselves in the entertainment industry in London! and so Mary Arden’s own story can be likened to a mirror reflecting the changing times of the Tudor era.

Tudor England was a small country with only two and a half million people, ninety percent of whom worked on the land. Life expectancy was just 38! and a third of all children died before their tenth birthday. Mary’s father farmed in Wilmcote, just outside Stratford on Avon in the parish of Aston Cantlow.

The Farm

The Forest of Arden is still a name on the map and it was this place that gave Mary’s family her name. Although Mary’s father Robert was just a husbandman - a well to do peasant - her family could be traced back to before the Norman Conquest. Robert was born around 1480 effectively making him a man from the old world, whose daughters and descendants would welcome the new. Robert built his house in Wilmcote in 1515 and amazingly, under the skin of modernity, it is still surprisingly intact. Originally it was a traditional farming house, open to the ceiling, but the need for space, necessitated it being divided into an up and down stairs.




Mary Arden's House

 Robert and Mary’s mother, whose name is lost to history, were married in 1517 or 18 and the children started to appear very soon. Mary was the youngest of eight children: Agnes, Joan, Katherine, Margaret, Joyce, Elizabeth, Alice and then Mary, in about 1535 (some sources say as late as 1537) and was baptised in Aston Cantlow.  Although religiously it was a country in flux, England was still a Catholic country then and Mary could have been named after the Virgin Mary. The West Midlands is and was a deeply conservative area and religious change came slower there than to many places but after 1540 all this changed. In Aston Cantlow, the local guild was stripped of its silver plate and land. When the monasteries were dissolved all treasures and artefacts were confiscated to raise revenue for the king and realm. The change was also secular as the dissolution flooded the country with land and money, allowing the rise of a new middle class.

By a huge stroke of fortune a list of contents of Mary’s family house in Wilmcote survived, giving us a picture of her life at home. Animals, crops, 8 oxen, 2 bullocks, 7 cows, feather beds and mattresses, cushions, eleven painted cloths for the walls, miscellaneous chattels, total valuation £77 11 10

Mary grew up, as all girls did, multi skilling and was taught to do  essential tasks around the house hold, looking after children, cattle, swine, hens and sheep, then baking, brewing, making cheese, malting and all aspect of housekeeping.  Women and girls were also required to do harder labour, like helping with shearing, ploughing, gathering and threshing corn.

At meals, Mary and her sisters would sit on benches/forms as chairs were a sign of status. Robert, however, had three - one for him, one for his wife and one for an honoured guest. Her aesthetic sense would have been stimulated by the murals in the church, depicting religious scenes and almost three-d representations of ‘what would happen if you were bad’. These were whitewashed over when she was in her twenties, but revealed, still bright, in 1804. A favourite mural was also a pageant often enacted by the guilds at Stratford and that was St George and the Dragon and most people saw this at least once in their lifetime. In 1517 Robert joined the guild.

In 1547 King Henry VIII died and was followed by his pious but cold hearted son, Edward VI, who was surrounded by Protestant fundamentalists who would change the world forever. It was the beginning of the 'commotion time'. When Mary was in her teens, Mass was abolished and all the old rites and festivities were abolished.  The Ardens remained quietly loyal to the old faith. When Mary was about 12, Mary’s mother died and Robert remarried a younger widow, Agnes Hill, who brought he own brood of four children to live at Wilmcote. Joyce and Alice and Mary were still living at home . Living space was cramped and tensions ran high, so Robert drew up 'leases' to ensure his own daughters to ensure if he died they would still inherit.

In 1553, when Mary was about 18, Edward suddenly died and Mary Tudor came to the throne; she was a Catholic who was determined to turn the clock back!

In 1556 Mary’s father fell ill with what may be a fatal flu. He assembles his will. He invokes Virgin Mary and leaves his wordly good, surprisingly provides Mary with land and money - £6 13 4 ( a bit more than a skilled carpenter would earn in a year – roughly equating to £30,000 today.) Even more surprisingly  as she is the youngest, she is named as one of his executors, together with Alice, showing respect and trust and by implication, an acknowledgement that Mary is intelligent and honest. 

Amongst other items showing his generous and thoughtful nature, he leaves 4d to everyone in Aston Cantlow  who didn’t have a team of oxen

As legal executrix  she almost certainly had basic reading skills, but could she write? On later legal documents  she makes her signature with a beautiful calligraphy M. Her wax  seal has her personal emblem , a horse (some say a running horse.) The evidence suggests that she may have known how to write.  She would have been an attractive marriage proposition. There may have been a match already in mind with the son of one of her father’s tenants, John Shakespeare. John had moved from Snitterfield to Stratford  in the early 50s. He had done a 7 year  apprenticeship with a master glover Tom Dixon. He was a young man with prospects and would be an ideal catch. In Oct 1556 he buys 2 freehold properties in town.

Within weeks of his purchase he married Mary Arden in 1557. He was in his late 20s, she was about 22. Stratford then was a small market town with maybe 1200 people and a growing middle class serviced by tailors, and hatters and glovers. 'Home' at that point was just beginning to be a venue for social display and ambition... (i.e. beginning the keep up with the Joneses)  and he needed house to fit status.

They presumably wanted to start a family, but sadly Mary’s first two children died - little Joan aged just 2 months  and Margaret aged 1.

It may have been a comfort, who can tell how she would feel after the death of her babies? but at least her husband was doing well. His freehold in Henley Street entitled him join the corporation. Corporations had replaced the guilds in 1547 and they ran the town. His civic duties ranged from constable to ale taster and charity hand out to the poor. He was a man of credit. Someone they could trust.

In 1558 Mary Tudor died and Elizabeth came to throne, but she was Church of England and so the fourth change of religion in 20 years began. Soon there were risings against her religious policies and the government responded by removing all trappings of Catholicism. In 1563 Stratford council had to do the government bidding and in winter 2/- was paid for defacing images in the chapel so no memory of them remained and the chamberlain, John Shakespeare had to sign off the job.

In April 1564 William was born. On 28^th May, Mary was purified at church, but when he was 3 months old the plague came to Stratford. Soon the town was living in fear. At the end of August the corporation held their meeting in the open air, but by then the situation was desperate.  With baby William it was best to get out if she could and Mary rode out to her sister in Wilmcote, 5 miles away where there were no deaths. Luckily William and his parents survived.  

After William, other babies born  and remained healthy; Joan, Anne, Gilbert and Richard and Mary spent time teaching them their ABC and reading prior to them going to school and telling them stories. Years later William would remember  tales of their legendry ancestor, Guy of Warwick. There is also a strong possibility that William would have seen the mystery plays that were still held.

John continued his rise in the council and in 1568 he was elected as mayor, making Mary was the wife of Alderman and High Bailiff, Mr. John Shakespeare.

Now they set out to use John’s position to make real money, investing in wool. It was the mainstay of the economy and was government controlled to prevent illegal dealers undercutting the market – and that is just what John was doing.

John’s web of contacts spread from the Cotswolds to Nottingham and down to Wiltshire. Mary would have dealt with business contacts in an informal capacity. It worked because of trust. But trust was a big issue in Elizabethan England and Elizabeth’s network of spies recorded John’s activities in the Exchequer Memoranda Roll 1572. A government informer, James Langrake, informed on John. This was not the first  time that  Langrake informed on John. The first time he informed about his illegal money lending and then in 1571 he reported him for a wool scam to the value of £210. When you  bear in mind that a waged labourer earned maybe £10 per annum and a house could be bought for £30, it shows just what an enormous sum of money is involved. This time John was able to pay off the informaer and got off with it.

Meanwhile as an alderman John was able to send his son to the Grammar school, the gateway of to university. In late 1570s the government suddenly turned on the illegal wool dealers with the whole force of the law and John’s whole informal network collapsed. Suddenly he had a network of debt everywhere with no network of income!

As the financial difficulties piled up, in 1570 their 7 yr old Anne died. The corporation book has an insight into the tragedy: 'for the bell and pall for Mr Shakespeare’s daughter for her funeral, 8d (pence)'.

Desperate to save money William was taken out of school to help John, losing him the opportunity of University.

Soon they were trying to raise money any way they could. They borrowed from friends and neighbours, inlaws and relatives. Then they start selling off land, including Mary’s 30 or 40 acre and cottage inheritance. John even divided the house up and leased half of it to neighbours who open a pub! Using the house called Asbie’s as security Mary raises £40 from her brother in law, but could not pay it back regrettably she had to forfeit the property.

Four months after Anne’s death she got pregnant again  and although by then in her mid forties, gave birth to Edmund. A couple of years later the teenage William got a 26 year old girl, Anne Hathaway, pregnant first with a daughter and then twins. The family was then squeezed into a third of their old house with William’s new wife and four new children to feed.
 

Worse was to follow 1583 the government discovered a plot to assassinate Elizabeth, the instigator being Edward Arden, a relative of Mary. Edward was head of the most important Catholic family in Warwickshire and after his arrest was put into the chamber called ‘The little Ease’ where you could neither stand up nor lie down and then all the men were tortured on the rack and condemned to death.

Around Stratford the secret police interrogated suspected Catholics and as Mary was an Arden and married to an ex mayor her household was almost certainly one of them. In 1586, having been protected by his fellow councillors for 10 years, John was struck off for non attendance. Mary’s family was now ruined

But there is a twist to the plot. William went to London to try to make it in the theatre. How he did it, we do not know, but in autumn, 1592 a famous metropolitan critic Robert Green poured scorn on the country boy taking the stage by storm. There is no such thing as bad publicity and suddenly William had made it and his box office earnings restored the family fortunes. In 1596 he bought a coat of arms for his father to make him a gentlemen, with (of course) a few rewrites of history, saying of Mary that she had been the daughter and heiress of Robert Arden Esq. and gentleman.

The family could hold their heads high again. William bought the big house near the chapel and John and Mary lived out their days in Henley street with their daughter Joan and her children. Mary had lived from Henry VIIIs reign, through Edward’s, Mary’s, Lady Jane Gray’s, Elizabeth’s and on into James’. She had known grief and disappointment but had held her family together during the commotion time. John died in 1601

John's death recorded in the Parish record

and Mary followed him in 1608, in her early 70s and was buried in the churchyard in Stratford.

*

Shortly after her death William finally published poems he had worked on for most of his life. The poems are imbued with a sense of the destructive power of time and the redeeming power of love. It is tempting to think that it was his mother who taught him how to feel the emotions contained within.

*

This biography of Mary Arden was written from copious notes taken whilst watching a fascinating documentary about Mary Arden, presented by Michael Wood.

Photographs from: 

Biography. com

Stratford.co.uk Attractions 

Shakespeare's Birthplace trust 

© Diana Milne August 2017

Diana talks to... Lizzy Drake, author of The Elspet Stafford Mysteries

Hi Lizzy, lovely to meet you. Let us crack straight on...hopefully this will be a lot of fun and enjoyable for both of us and our readers

If your latest book A Corpse in the Cipher was made into a film, who would you like to see as the main character?

 

Oooh, great question! Who would play Elspet and who could be the Dowager? I would love the historian Ruth Goodman to play the Dowager – I think she could get the expressions perfectly (though she’d need a lot of makeup to look much older). As for Elspet – someone new and fresh who could act well.

 

What made you choose this genre?

I wasn’t always interested in Tudor – but Tudor kept chasing me. My MA was in Early Medieval Archaeology but I ended up doing an internship at an Early Tudor building in York (Barley Hall). Then I ended up joining a Tudor dance group, and then re-enactment… well, you get the picture. Tudor was stalking me since before the millennium. I ran at first, but now, to get revenge on the era, I write murder mysteries set in it.

How do you get ideas for plots and characters?

I first wanted Elspet to be disabled in some way – I wanted her to have the eyes and ears and brain to collect all the information she needed and solve crimes in the Tudor court, but she surprised me when I started writing. She refused to have a disabling illness or have been born with any problem that would have hindered her chances at marriage.

So, I needed another character to balance out Elspet’s youth and beauty. That, of course, is Elspet’s partner is crime-solving, the Dowager Duchess Lettice, a cantankerous personality whose glares have more power than even Medusa’s and whose tongue can clip even Thomas Howard short.

Where Elspet is shy, the Dowager is bold. Both are clever but with Elsept’s fresh approach, the Dowager’s mind gets the workout needed to enjoy life again.

If, as a one off, (and you could guarantee publication!)  you could write anything you wanted, is there another genre you would love to work with and do you already have a budding plot line in mind?

I used to (and still do sometimes) write teen fiction. I mean the dark, urban folklore teen fiction that keeps youngster’s paranoid and up at night wondering what that scratching in the closet was.

But my next series, I’m pretty sure, will be set in the Victorian Era. And not a murder mystery, though still histfic.

Was becoming a writer a conscious decision or something that you drifted into (or even something so compelling that it could not be denied?) How old were you when you first started to write seriously.

How old? How serious? Does Attack of the Killer Sandcrabs at 8 years old count?

I’d always written, but after I’d married and moved to the UK, I had some spare time before my next job (I ended up working first at Unwins Wine Merchant, then Colchester Archaeological Trust). Between job applications, I drafted a teen fiction based on historical events in Coggeshall, Essex. It wasn’t much good – it sits still in my bottom drawer, filled with red pen – but it relit the fire for writing and after that I wrote another teen fiction which won an award.

Marmite? Love it or hate it?

I grew up in the US and during my postgraduate degree I used to make fun of the horrid ‘oil slick’ on my British roommate’s toast. I had some on a bet and never went back. I love it!

Do you have any rituals and routines when writing? Your favourite cup for example or ‘that’ piece of music...??

I must sit at my special chair. I must have silence. I must… eat. I can’t help nibbling when I write. Flaming Cheetos are my favourite, followed by a tall glass of milk.

I promise I won’t tell them the answer to this, but when you are writing, who is more important, your family or your characters?

I’m not sure what you mean… All of my characters are family 😉

Other than writing full time, what would be your dream job?

Everything, anything. Jewellery making, realtor (what I’m doing now in my day job), lifeguard, shop owner, garden designer, park ranger. You name it… I’ve probably done it!

Coffee or tea? Red or white?

Green tea. Depends on the meal. Usually I go for water. I forget what I’ve poured if I pour a hot drink and then it’s too tepid. I can’t drink more than half a glass of wine without slurring my typing, so… milk (if with Cheetos) or water. Boring, eh?

How much of your work is planned before you start? Do you have a full draft or let it find its way?

I plan it all out. Then it goes differently when I write. My characters are both divas and bullies. Especially the Dowager.

If you had free choice over the font your book is printed in, what font/fonts would you choose?

I’d go for some hand-written style that looks like Anne Boleyn’s.

Imagine that you could get hold of any original source document. What would it be?

The ciphered letters that Catherine of Aragon sent to her father when she was between husbands.

Have any of your characters ever shocked you and gone off on their own adventure leaving you scratching your head??? If so how did you cope with that!?

OMG all the time! I replan everything and see where the heck she’s gone off to now.

How much research do you do and do you ever go on research trips?

Loads. For book 1 of The Elspet Stafford Mysteries I dedicated an entire year for research. Both original documents that have been uploaded to historic sites, visiting museums, archives and yes, loads and loads of research trips (and yes, it was very, very expensive). I kept on researching while I was drafting, but it was a lower key – just using published books on the era and (real) people in my books.

Fiction authors have to contend with real characters invading our stories. Are there any ‘real’ characters you have been tempted to prematurely kill off or ignore because you just don’t like them or they spoil the plot?

I abhor Thomas Howard. I’d love to bump him off before he gets his nieces married to Henry and then killed. Alas, I can only dream…

Are you prepared to go away from the known facts for the sake of the story and if so how do you get around this?

I only offroad on facts when there is a void or debate over details. If there is a massive historical fact, I do my best to stick to it. My background is in archaeology and I like facts. I get frustrated when other authors take giant liberties and confuse or befuddle (or just plain lie to) readers on what happened in the past.

Do you find that the lines between fact and fiction sometimes become blurred?

Yes. Especially in contemporary accounts from the era. Visiting Spaniards might write what they observe with a taint of distaste, while others might have overexaggerated what really went down.

Have you ever totally hated or fallen in love with one of your characters?

I’m not at liberty to say… sigh…

What do you enjoy reading for pleasure?

When I have time. Which seems not to be very often. I’m very particular in my reading tastes. Most of my literary loves are writers who have passed away (some decades, some centuries ago).

What drink would you recommend drinking whilst reading your latest book?

Water. It’s quite novel knowing that my characters would faint at the sight of seeing someone drink it.

Last but not least... favourite author?

Right now? Daphne Du Maurier. Or Agatha Christie. Mmmm, maybe Dumas. I’m in a Musketeers phase at the moment. Musketeers and mysteries lol.

Lizzy Drake has been studying Medieval and Tudor England for over 15 years and has an MA in Medieval Archaeology from the University of York, England. She has been writing for much longer but the Elspet Stafford Mysteries began her writing career in the genre.

When not writing or researching, Lizzy can be found reading or gardening. She balances time between her two homes in Essex, UK and California.

The first in the Elspet Stafford Mystery series, is available here !

© Diana Milne January 2017 © Lizzy Drake April 2017