15 April 2016

Shakespeare’s England: A Land of Lords – Preview #5

Attractions The northward leg of our journey will take us to Northumberland, land of the Percys. The family’s most famous son is also the Percy who features most heavily in Shakespeare’s works: the fierce and bellicose Hotspur, one of the chief antagonists of Henry IV, Part 1. Shakespeare places him in opposition to Prince Hal, the future Henry V, going so far as to have Henry IV lament:

Henry IV: Yea, there thou makest me sad and makest me sin
In envy that my Lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son,
A son who is the theme of honour’s tongue;
Amongst a grove, the very straightest plant;
Who is sweet Fortune’s minion and her pride:
Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,
See riot and dishonour stain the brow
Of my young Harry. O that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call’d mine Percy, his Plantagenet!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.
But let him from my thoughts.

The Percy family is one of England’s most enduring, and Alnwick Castle (pictured in a 1750 painting, below) has been their seat of power since they were mere barons in the early 14th century. They were raised to the earldom by Henry IV, whom they later rebelled against, but found royal favor again during the Wars of the Roses, where they first supported the Lancastrian cause of Henry VI. The second earl (Hotspur’s son) died at the Battle of St. Alban’s, and the third earl died in the Battle of Towton. Shakespeare dramatizes both of these battles: Henry VI, Part 2 ends with St. Alban’s, and Act 3 of Henry VI, Part 3, featuring the famous scene where a father kills his son and a son his father. After Towton, the family briefly lost their title, but the fourth earl got it back by pledging fealty to Edward IV. From then, the Percys became Yorkists, fighting for Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Though taken prisoner after that battle, the fourth earl evidently won Henry VII’s regard, as the king released him and entrusted him with several prominent government posts during his life.

1024px-Canaletto_Alnwick

The family fared less well under later Tudors. The sixth earl was briefly engaged to Anne Boleyn, until Cardinal Wolsey scolded him into jilting her — perhaps because Henry VIII had already expressed interest in Anne. His brother Thomas took part in the Pilgrimage of Grace uprising against Henry VIII, was convicted of treason, hanged, drawn, and quartered — though considered a Catholic martyr. The seventh earl led the Rising of the North, an attempt to replace Queen Elizabeth I with her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. When the plot failed, he fled to Scotland, was captured, and beheaded at York. The Percys’ apparent inability to pick a winner continued into the 17th century. The ninth earl took part in the Gunpowder Plot against King James I, and the family supported first the royalists, then the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War.

After what could be regarded as two centuries of bad decisions, the Percys settled down, with the family raised to the dukedom in the 1700s. The Percy name has twice fallen extinct in the male line, but been revived when husbands of Percy daughters chose to take the surname — a testament to the family’s enduring legacy. They also have a few interesting American connections — one Percy was an early governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the illegitimate son of the first duke was James Smithson, founder of the Smithsonian Institute.

Because the Percys’ Alnwick Castle is in better condition than many castles from the same period, it has enjoyed fame through film and television, appearing in Becket, Black Adder, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. More recently — and perhaps more notably — its exterior played the part of Hogwarts Castle in several of the Harry Potter movies, and fans of Downton Abbey may recognize it as Brancaster Castle, site of the 2014 and 2015 Christmas specials.

Next time on the NKSC Preview: Hadrian’s Wall and a castle by the sea.

We do still have a few slots on the trip open, so if you find these previews enticing and have been sitting on the fence, register now to join us in July!

Posted in Blog Post
Tagged 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI, England, history, history of England, hotspur, nksc, nksc16, No Kidding Shakespeare Camp, Northumberland, Shakespeare, the Percys, travel, travel to England
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2 March 2016

Shakespeare’s England: A Land of Lords – Preview #1

This is the first of a series about No Kidding Shakespeare Camp 2016: Shakespeare’s England: A Land of Lords. Over the course of the ten-day trip, we’ll be staying in three wondrous hotels. The farthest north of those is Middleton’s in York. York has been a center of power throughout the history of the British Isles. During the Middle Ages, its distance from London meant that it could almost function as a separate political entity. Understanding the city better will be a way of getting a grip on the War of the Roses that Shakespeare stages in the plays about Henry VI and wraps up with Richard III.

Among the things we’ll do is walk some of the walls of York, which are a mere 7 minutes from our hotel. York has more miles of intact city walls than anywhere else in England. While city walls were once common, even crucial to York2 a city’s survival, most have deteriorated in the modern age. York’s extant walls are not entirely contiguous, nor all from the same era. The first walls were built in 71 AD, around a Roman fortress on the River Ouse. Little of this original stonework remains, but some can be seen in the Multangular Tower in the Museum Gardens.

A legion at the time encompassed 5500 men, and their presence encouraged trade with enterprising locals. Through these interactions, the fortress eventually grew into the city of Eboracum, a busy port and cosmopolitan provincial capital. The Emperor Hadrian visited this fortress in 122, on his way north to plan his great frontier wall (the focus of a future Preview Email!), and Emperor Septimius Severus made it his base of operations for campaigning in Scotland in 208.

The city went into decline following Rome’s withdrawal from Britain. By the 9th century, the walls were in poor repair, and when the Danes (“the Great Heathen Army”) invaded in 867, renaming the city Jorvik, they demolished all the towers except for the surviving Multangular. The Danes buried what was left of the Roman walls beneath earthbanks and wooden palisades. These were badly mangled during the 1069 “harrying of the North” that followed the Norman invasion and brought the northern counties under William the Conqueror’s control. The majority of the remaining walls, encircling the medieval city, date to the 12th-14th century and were built during the reigns of some early Plantagenets: Henry III and the three Edwards.

York1 There are four main gatehouses, or “bars”, which restricted traffic in medieval times and served as tollbooths. Initially the walls also had 6 secondary gates and 44 intermediate towers, stretching over 2 miles encompassing the city and castle. York was an important outpost during the Plantagenet wars with Scotland, so much so that Edward I actually moved the seat of government to York in 1298. In the 15th-17th centuries, York and the surrounding county were the sites of many battles and sieges during the Wars of the Roses, various Tudor rebellions, and the English Civil War. (The map at left dates to 1617).

The walls of York play their largest role in Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part 3, which features several scenes that actually take place on the walls as the two factions, each a branch of those ever-contentious Plantagenets, struggle for control not just of the city but of the nation. Early in the play, the Duke of York is captured by the Lancastrians, and in giving his execution order, Queen Margaret taunts:

Off with his head, and set it on York gates,
So York may overlook the town of York.

Margaret’s later reference to the head, when welcoming Lord Clifford to York, suggests that a prop may actually have been placed upon the “walls” — the gallery above the stage — to add to the gruesome spectacle:

Welcome, my lord, to this brave town of York.
Yonder’s the head of that arch-enemy
That sought to be encompass’d with your crown:
Doth not the object cheer your heart, my lord?

We’re unlikely to encounter anything so appalling on our trip, but we may pass by the very spot at Micklegate Bar (below) where the Duke’s head once stood, bearing a paper crown.

Micklegate_Bar

In 1800, the Corporation of York applied for an Act of Parliament to demolish their walls, as London and other cities were doing (since none of them had been invaded by ground in quite some time). They were met with fierce opposition from the populace, however, and instead of being torn down, were restored starting in the mid-19th century. Today they are a Scheduled Ancient Monument — just waiting for us to tread the same paces that legionaries, nobles, rebels, and monarchs have for nearly 2000 years!

For more on the history of York and some great interactive maps of the city and its walls, visit historyofyork.org — or join us to see for yourself in July!