The Act Against Multipliers, 1404

The Act Against Multipliers was signed into law by King Henry IV of England on 13th January 1404. It ordered that “None from hereafter shall use to multiply gold or silver, or use the craft of multiplication; and if any the same do, they incur the pain of felony”. 

This had nothing to do with mathematics but everything to do with alchemy, which was the forerunner of modern chemistry. The idea of alchemy was that it was possible to turn base metals into precious ones, particularly gold. We know today that this is impossible, except possibly during massive stellar explosions, but that was not the case in 1404, when many people labored long and hard to achieve this aim. 

The Act was not passed out of a desire to stop people wasting their time on something that could never work, but from fear that it actually might do so. The last thing a medieval king wanted was somebody getting very rich and not only upsetting the economic order but becoming more powerful than the monarch. 

In practice, the law provided a loophole for would-be alchemists in that they could apply for a very expensive licence that allowed them to pursue their dark art. However, it has to be assumed that not many such licences were applied for. 

The Act was eventually repealed in 1689, partly due to the lobbying efforts of Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry. Surprising as it might seem, he was also a keen alchemist!

© John Welford

The explosion of Mount Tambora, 1815

The explosion of Mount Tambora, a volcano, in April 1815 is generally regarded as the largest explosion ever recorded. Not only did it kill thousands of people, but it also had lasting effects on a worldwide scale.

Before the explosion, Mount Tambora rose to 13,500 feet on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. However, after the mountain blew itself apart it would be 4,500 feet shorter. This happened after three huge columns of fire rose from the volcano’s crater followed by the explosion which has been estimated as having had the power of 60,000 Hiroshima-type atom bombs. The blast could be heard up to 1,000 miles away.

The eruption of the volcano lasted for two days, during which time some twelve cubic miles of ash were pumped skywards. This was more than double the amount that would be ejected by the more famous eruption of Krakatoa 68 years later.

When the ash fell to earth it covered the area nearest the volcano to a depth of 90 feet. The area of land and sea that received at least half an inch of ash was around 200,000 square miles, which was roughly the size of France. This coverage was enough to destroy growing crops and lead to mass starvation. Around 12,000 people were killed by the original explosion but another 50,000 died as a result of crop failures caused by the ash.

Much of the ash was sent so high into the atmosphere that it was taken right round the world by air currents moving at high latitudes. This had the effect of dimming the sun and causing spectacular sunsets with brilliant orange and red colours. These were featured in a number of paintings produced by the famous British artist J M W Turner.

The following year was known in northern latitudes as the “year without a summer”, due to the disruption of weather cycles caused by the ash cloud. The temperatures were abnormally low and in parts of Europe the rainfall was up to three times what it should have been. This led to disastrous harvests and agricultural distress, and must count as an important factor in the rise of radical protests and riots in the period up to 1820.

The 1815 eruption was followed by smaller Tambora eruptions in 1819, 1880 and 1967. Could the monster roar again at some time in the future? Maybe!

© John Welford

How China's emperors selected their civil servants

Senior civil servants in the United Kingdom (and possibly elsewhere) are often referred to as Mandarins, and Mandarin is the most widely-spoken dialect of Chinese. Is there a connection? There certainly is!

The Qin emperors of China, who ruled from 221 BC to 206 BC, were the first to establish a civil service to enable the emperors to administer their territories. Subsequent Chinese dynasties refined the process of selecting the people who would take up positions in the civil service, and by the time that the Song dynasty was in power (AD 960-1279) a system of competitive examinations was well established. The Song emperors refined the process to make sure that successful candidates were selected without fear or favour and entirely on merit.

A candidate would begin by taking a local test which would qualify them for progressing to the second stage in the provincial capital. Only those who cleared this hurdle would be allowed to travel to the imperial capital to sit the final exam, after which the best candidates would be awarded the “Jinshi” that signified their admission to the civil service. Only about one in a hundred candidates would get all the way through, and there was a three-year wait before one was able to try again, which many people did.

The Song emperors instituted a marking system according to which three examiners would mark each paper independently and the name of the candidate would not be made known to the markers, thus ensuring that nobody could win the Jinshi through favouritism or corruption. 

A later development, under the Ming emperors who ruled from 1368 to 1644, was to make the candidates write an essay of limited length that was split into eight sections, each with a specific function. 

The Song tradition of competitive examination was so successful in getting the best people into high office that it was still in use up to the end of imperial China in 1912. That was why it was copied by western governments, including that of the United Kingdom.

However, the subject of the examinations was very different when the system was taken up by Europeans. Chinese civil servants had to be extremely well versed in the philosophy of Confucius, who flourished in the 5^th century BC, and his later interpreters.

© John Welford

The bizarre origin of the Tour de France

The Tour de France is surely the World’s best-known and most celebrated cycle race. It takes 23 days to stage, with the competitors, who come from many countries, completing a series of grueling stages that take them all round France and usually across borders to visit neighbouring countries en route. 

Most people are not aware that the race began as a competition between two daily sporting newspapers, and was linked to the notorious Dreyfus case and the death of one of France’s most famous writers.

Alfred Dreyfus was a captain in the French army who was tried and convicted of spying for Germany in 1894. The problem was that Dreyfus was completely innocent. The evidence against him was weak in the extreme, but he was not only a native of Alsace – which was then part of Germany – but he was also Jewish. It did not take much for an anti-Semitic and anti-German military court to find Dreyfus guilty and pack him off to the penal colony of Devil’s Island.

Many people in France were far from satisfied that justice had been done, and one of these was the writer Emile Zola, who in 1898 wrote a piece that condemned the French establishment over the Dreyfus case. This was splashed across the front page of L’Aurore newspaper under the heading “J`Accuse” (I accuse). 

This made Zola extremely unpopular with the anti-Dreyfus faction in France, and Zola was forced to flee to London until the situation calmed down.

Zola was still a marked man in the eyes of some extreme anti-Semites, and his support for Dreyfus – who in 1899 had been allowed to return to France but without a full pardon – was not forgotten. 

In 1902 Emile Zola died as the result of what appeared to be a tragic accident, when he and his wife were overcome by carbon monoxide fumes after lighting a fire in their Paris apartment. It was not until 1928 that it emerged that their chimney had been blocked deliberately by a right-wing fanatic and that Zola’s death (his wife survived) had been murder.

However, this was far from clear at the time, especially as tests carried out the day after Zola’s death showed that there was nothing wrong with the chimney. Of course there wasn’t – the killer had by then removed the obstruction.

The fact that there was still a huge amount of controversy in France about the whole Dreyfus affair led to accusations flying in all directions. In particular, two sporting daily newspapers, Le Velo and L’Auto, took opposite sides on the question of whether Emile Zola’s death was related to the Dreyfus case. The arguments went on right through the winter of 1902-3, but eventually tempers died down and the two newspapers decided to settle their differences in a way that might have been expected of publications devoted mainly to sport – a bicycle race!

And so the first Tour de France took place in July 1903 and it has been run ever since, apart from during the two World Wars. The event soon caught the attention of the French public and sales of L’Auto (the original main sponsor) went through the roof.

A particular feature of the Tour de France is the wearing of coloured jerseys by certain competitors. A yellow jersey is worn by the overall leader. The colour is no accident, being a recognition of the fact that L’Auto was printed on yellow paper. In the early days the rider with the lowest standing wore a green jersey, although from 1953 this became a mark of pride rather than shame, because it is worn by the leader of the various sprint stages on the Tour. Green was the colour of paper used by Le Velo!

© John Welford

The seven kingdoms of old England

If you have ever wondered about the names of the English counties Essex and Sussex, not to mention the region of Wessex as beloved by the novelist Thomas Hardy, you might be interested to know that they are not as “sexy” as might be imagined. They were all ruled by their own kings many centuries ago, and the names are relics of those times.

The seven kingdoms were established by the Germanic tribes that moved into what is now England as the Roman Empire faded away and left a power vacuum. In 410 AD the last Roman troops departed and left the “Romano-British” to fend for themselves. 

One account states that in about 450 a chieftain named Vortigern invited two brothers named Hengist and Horsa to bring an army to Britain to defend the British against the Picts who were invading from the far north. However, once this threat had been seen off the invited mercenaries decided not to go home but to settle in what became the Kingdom of Kent in the south-east corner of Britain.

Not long after, settlers from Saxony (modern Germany) arrived on the south coast and spread across a wide area, eventually creating the kingdoms of the East Saxons (Essex) South Saxons (Sussex) and West Saxons (Wessex). 

Other settlers, who are generally referred to as Angles, arrived in what is now Norfolk and Suffolk, leading to the founding of the Kingdom of East Anglia. Despite their relative unimportance in the overall history of the country, it was the Angles who would eventually give their name to the whole country south of Scotland and east of Wales, namely England.

The last kingdoms to be established were those of Mercia (the Midlands) and Northumbria (north of the River Humber).

The seven kingdoms that emerged in the 5^th to 7^th centuries are generally known as the Heptarchy. They would remain in place for about 200 years until Danish invaders put an end to the eastern kingdoms and were only kept from taking over the whole of England by the obduracy of Wessex.

During the period of the Heptarchy the kings spent much of their time warring against each other. Their aim was not so much to absorb each others’ territory as to establish themselves as ‘senior king’. The king who achieved temporary domination was known as the Bretwalda which translated as ‘ruler of Britain’ but it did not signify anything other than that the holder was more powerful than the other kings and could make demands on them. The title was not hereditary, and any other king might become Bretwalda when the holder died or was defeated in battle.

During the period of the Heptarchy only Essex failed to produce a Bretwalda at some time or another. The only Bretwalda of the 8^th century who came close to being ruler of all England in any meaningful sense was Offa of Mercia (757-96), who used the title ‘King of the English’ but was never completely dominant.

The last Bretwalda was Egbert of Wessex (802-39), who can be titled the first true ‘King of the English’, in that he united Wessex and Kent (Sussex, Essex and East Anglia had already been absorbed by their neighbours) and then conquered Mercia and received the formal submission of Northumbria. However, he could not hold on to his gains for long and Mercia again became independent.

The end of the Heptarchy came with the Danish invasions of the 9^th century that left Wessex, led by Egbert’s grandson Alfred, as the sole bastion of the English in resisting the onslaught.

© John Welford

Crossbow pages

In medieval times it was common for aristocrats to employ boys as young as seven in their households. These were often the sons of other nobles, and the practice of passing one’s son on to a neighbouring lord would be a means of establishing friendly relationships or maybe of discharging a debt. 

The boys would work as “pages”, doing menial jobs within the household, but would also be treated well and be given education and military training, including being taught to ride a horse. 

One aspect of the military training would be learning to use weapons, but there would be limits on what weapons boys could use, given that lances and longbows were large weapons that required considerable physical force to operate them. However, one weapon that a young boy could use was the crossbow. 

Crossbows were operated by winding the “string” back with a handle, which needed far less physical effort than that involved in firing a longbow. Boy pages were therefore expected to be able to use a crossbow should an aristocrat’s castle come under siege. A child could thus be an effective killer without having to engage in hand-to-hand combat with an enemy. 

Boy pages would also be expected to accompany their lord into battle, their main duties being to dress and arm their employer. Even if they did not use a crossbow in the field, they could assist the archers by winding the crossbows between shots. 

Medieval military etiquette decreed that boy pages could not be targeted during a battle. This convention was ignored by the French side during the Bartle of Agincourt in 1415, a circumstance that so annoyed King Henry V that he absolved himself from another aspect of the military code and proceeded to slit the throats of his prisoners.

© John Welford

The Children's Crusade, 1212

Many stories have been told about the Children's Crusade of 1212, and it is not easy to distinguish fact from myth, but it does appear that there was such an event and it did not end well.

The Crusades were a series of attempts to wrest the “holy places” of Palestine back from Muslim rule. The First Crusade was sanctioned by Pope Urban II in 1095 and the final official Crusade – the Ninth – took place in 1271-2. There were also several unauthorized attempts to achieve the same (or a similar) end, and the Children's Crusade was one of these.

A young French shepherd boy, Stephen of Cloyes, had the idea that Jesus had called him to lead a peaceful crusade that merely sought to convert Muslims to Christianity. Stephen was apparently able to perform miracles – or what other people might regard as such – and he gathered a sizable following as a result.

As many as 30,000 adults and children from across Europe rallied to the cause and headed south to the Mediterranean Sea. Stephen had claimed that Jesus had promised that the sea would part like the Red Sea in the book of Exodus, thus giving them safe passage to the Holy Land. However, not surprisingly, this did not happen.

Many of the Crusaders gave up at this stage and turned back, but some were more determined and looked for other means of progressing in their quest. They were therefore easy prey for slave traders who were only too happy to give them free passage aboard their ships, which promptly headed for the slave markets of Tunisia. Some of the ships were lost at sea, with the loss of their human cargoes.

The whole affair was therefore a dismal failure, as was always likely to be the case.

© John Welford

The sinking of Vice-Admiral Tryon

Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon died on 22^nd June 1893, at sea in the eastern Mediterranean. As he acknowledged shortly before going under, it was entirely his own fault.

Born in January 1832 into a wealthy Northamptonshire family who owned a country estate, George Tryon was educated at Eton and entered the Navy at the age of 16. His promotion through the ranks was rapid, although much of his experience was away from the sea. He became a Vice-Admiral (following a failed bid to enter Parliament and a post that gave him responsibility for coastguard buildings) in 1889.

As a Vice-Admiral during peacetime, his main responsibility was to direct “naval manoeuvres”, which in layman’s terms means “war games”. It was during one such operation in 1893 that disaster struck.

Tryon had a reputation for keeping his captains on their toes by issuing orders at the last minute and seeing how responsive they were. His aim, as he saw it, was to encourage initiative and quick thinking. It was unfortunate that these were qualities that he did not always demonstrate himself.

On the day in question, Vice-Admiral Tryon was aboard his flagship HMS Victoria at the head of a double column of eight battleships and three light cruisers. They were steaming in two rows about 1,200 yards apart.

Tryon gave orders that the two rows were to turn inwards towards each other in a complete 180 degree manoeuvre, after which they would steam in the opposite direction before turning at 90 degrees and coming to anchor.

There was one huge problem with this idea, which was that the turning circle of a battleship was at least 800 yards. This was pointed out to the Vice-Admiral by some of his officers, and he agreed to increase the distance between the columns to 1,600 yards, which would just be sufficient if the ships continued at their current speed.

However, not long after the new formation had been adopted, Sir George went back to Plan A. Just for good measure, he ordered the ships to increase their speed. It would now be impossible for the manoeuvre to be made safely. All the senior officers knew this, with the sole exception of Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.

He then raised a signal flag to order the ships to make the 180 degree turns. Rear-Admiral Albert Hastings Markham, who was in charge of HMS Camperdown at the head of the opposite column, had serious doubts about the order – which he knew to be unsafe – and he hesitated to obey it. Sir George sent a tetchy signal that was visible to all the other captains, to the effect of “what are you waiting for?”

So the turn was made. Knowing Vice-Admiral Tryon’s reputation for pulling rabbits out of hats, it might have been the case that everyone was expecting another order to come that would have saved the situation. But that was not the case.

HMS Camperdown hit HMS Victoria and tore a large hole below the waterline, causing Sir George’s flagship to sink in 13 minutes. Fortunately, none of the other ships in the column had followed the order as quickly as the two at the front and there were no other collisions.

Vice-Admiral Tryon went to the bottom along with 358 members of his crew. One of the 357 survivors was John Jellicoe, an officer who would later become Admiral of the Fleet and take charge at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

So why did the disaster happen? There was an enquiry, at which various explanations were put forward. One was that Sir George made a simple arithmetical mistake. Another was that the intention had been for the columns to cross each other as they turned, with one ship passing behind its opposite number. 

However, what was going on in Vice-Admiral Tryon’s head will never be known.

© John Welford

The assassination of King Carlos of Portugal

The Kingdom of Portugal began in 1139 when Afonso I (“The Conqueror”) declared himself King. It ended in 1910 when the last monarch, Manuel II, was chased into exile and Portugal became a republic. During that time only one King was assassinated, that being Carlos, who was the last King but one.

Carlos came to the throne in 1889, at the age of 26, and proceeded to demonstrate his unsuitability for the role by maintaining a profligate lifestyle at the time of a severe economic downturn. As the crisis got worse and republican agitation grew, Carlos appointed Joao Franco as Prime Minister, which meant virtual dictator. The popular perception was that Franco was siphoning off money from the treasury to fund Carlos’s personal spending at the same time as causing great distress to the people with his attempts to get the economy back on track.

Eventually, government oppression coupled with hatred of King Carlos led to open revolt and the deaths of Carlos and his son Luis Filipe. They were gunned down on 1^st February 1908 as they rode in an open carriage through Lisbon. Their two assassins, who were immediately killed by Carlos’s bodyguards, may have been members of the Carbonaria, a republican secret society.

Carlos’s 18-year-old second son, Manuel, was also in the carriage but only suffered a minor injury. He was declared King but only reigned for two years before a second Carbonaria revolt, in October 1910, ended the monarchy for all time. Manuel spent the rest of his life in England, where he died in 1932.

© John Welford

The slapping of Pope Boniface VIII

King Philip IV of France (reigned 1285 to 1314) is known to history as Philip the Fair, on account of his blonde hair and good looks, but whether he acted fairly towards the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Boniface VIII (Pope from 1294 to 1303) is a matter for debate.

Philip and Boniface shared certain character traits, such as arrogance, cunning and ruthlessness. Boniface had shown his true character by the way he became Pope, namely by forcing Pope Celestine V to resign and then taking his place, after which Celestine was imprisoned and died ten months later. 

Philip was keen to gain some of the wealth of the Church for himself, so he levied taxes on the clergy and imprisoned a French bishop as a means of gaining secular control over the clergy. Boniface’s response was to excommunicate Philip.

Philip reacted with fury and dispatched a small army, under Guillaume de Nogaret, to confront the Pope at his summer palace at Anagni, which is about 45 miles south-east of Rome. Nogaret was joined along the way by Sciarra Colonna, who had his own quarrel with Pope Boniface.

Nogaret and Colonna reached the palace on the night of 7^th September 1303, and had no trouble the following morning in breaking down the barricaded doors in order to confront Pope Boniface. The cornered Pope, now effectively a prisoner of King Philip, expected to be killed on the spot, but Nogaret preferred to humiliate Boniface instead.

Nogaret and Collona openly discussed in front of Boniface and his papal court what they should do with him, including executing him on the spot, which reduced the elderly man to a quivering wreck. They then read out a list of charges that Boniface should answer, including heresy, idolatry and sodomy, slapping him across the face as each one was announced. They then left the room.

Boniface was now a broken man, having been mortified and treated with contempt. The excommunication of Philip was promptly forgotten about and Boniface returned to Rome. He died there only a month later.

This was a rare instance in medieval times of a Pope who tried to impose his will on a civil ruler but was then thoroughly put in his place.

© John Welford

The origin of the Cape Colony

The Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa, was always going to be an important place for a European nation that was interested in establishing colonies anywhere further east. Before the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the Cape had to be rounded by any ship bound in that direction. Seeing that several countries besides Britain, most notably the Netherlands, France and Portugal, had imperial ambitions to the east of the Cape, it is hardly surprising that competition for control of the Cape was fierce.

The Portuguese were the first to use the Cape as a repair and refreshment station on the way to India, in the mid-16^th century, but it was the Dutch who established a permanent colony there in 1652, under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company.

The hinterland of the Cape itself is notable for its suitability for European settlement, having a temperate climate that supports both arable and pastoral farming, and is mercifully free of the banes of much of tropical Africa, namely the tsetse fly and the mosquito. However, the Dutch did little at first to develop their colony, their main interests lying elsewhere. Hence the small Dutch community was not augmented by new arrivals, and for 150 years the population only increased by natural means. Whereas there were probably a million settlers of British origin in North America by 1760, the Dutch population of the Cape was only 5,000.

The Cape Colony came into British hands in 1795 during the Napoleonic Wars, when the Netherlands had become part of France’s continental empire. It was not in Britain’s interest for the French to have control of such a strategically important place on the route to India. The British recognised that this was essentially a Dutch colony and fully expected to return it to Dutch hands at the end of hostilities. Indeed, in 1803 this was just what they did, when it looked as though the Netherlands would be free of French domination. However, the situation changed again in 1806, so the Cape Colony was recaptured. After that, especially after the 1815 Treaty of Vienna decided how Europe was to look in the post-Napoleonic era, it seemed expedient to keep control of the Cape.

The Dutch settlers, who became known as Afrikaners, had far more interest in developing the hinterland of the Cape than did the British. They were essentially farmers, and during the years of British ownership of the Cape they had moved eastward along the coast, where they came increasingly into conflict with native Africans. The Xhosa wars lasted, on and off, for much of the 19^th century, with the Africans gradually losing out and having their lands in the eastern Cape appropriated by the Europeans.

The Afrikaners’ attitude towards the Africans reflected their religious belief that the black-skinned races were condemned by God to be subservient to the white-skinned ones, this being rooted in the legend that the descendants of Ham (son of Noah) were black and were cursed by God for Ham’s disrespect towards his father. This Afrikaner mindset was to percolate down through the generations to culminate in the Apartheid system that bedevilled South Africa until late in the 20^th century.

Having not been particularly interested in colonizing the Cape, as long as the French did not do so, the British began to encourage settlement there from around 1820. About 5,000 settlers, whose passage was paid for by the British Government, arrived and established themselves as farmers in the eastern part of the Cape Colony, with a view to countering the Dutch influence and, if possible, protecting the Africans who were being threatened with oppression and slavery. The British farmers started by attempting to grow grain, but later found that sheep farming was easier and more profitable.

However, many of the British settlers had no background in farming and preferred to settle in towns and cities where they could practice their crafts and skills. The division between urban Brits and rural Afrikaners soon became clear. This strengthened the position of the British governor, and English became the official language of the Colony. The Afrikaners, on their remote farms, had no great problem with this at first.

For some years the Cape Colony carried on as three fairly distinct communities, with a prosperous and flourishing community around the port of Cape Town to the west, occupied almost entirely by the British, a farming community to the east and along the coast, peopled by a mixture of Brits and Afrikaners, and the interior, where the more adventurous Afrikaners were developing greater tracts of land. These pioneers were independent-minded people who tended to mistrust governments of any kind, be they British or Dutch.

It was the efforts of the British to curtail the Afrikaners’ oppression of the Africans that led to trouble. Not having the same religious attitudes as the Afrikaners, the British governors, encouraged by missionaries who had travelled widely throughout the colony, administered justice according to British principles, which meant that British, Afrikaners and Africans were to be treated as equals in legal terms. This was established by law in 1828, which the Afrikaners simply could not understand; to them, the British were acting contrary to the laws of God. Justice was served against a number of Afrikaners, including the death sentence being passed on those found guilty of the murder of Africans.

In time, many Afrikaners found it impossible to live under British rule, and thousands of them made the “Great Trek” to the north and east in the 1830s and 1840s to set up their own Afrikaner provinces of the Transvaal, Orange Free State and Natal. The Cape Colony, now the Cape Province, therefore lost many of its Afrikaans-speaking population, which accounts for the high proportion of English-speakers who live there to this day.

© John Welford

The defeat of the Spanish Armada

The defeat of the Spanish Armada was one of the great turning points of English history. Before, there was a real possibility that England could suffer another “1066” and be conquered by a foreign power. Afterwards, Queen Elizabeth I enjoyed security on her throne and England was set to become a major world power and the champion of Protestantism in Europe.

The Armada was a fleet of 132 ships sent by the Spanish king, Philip II, to invade England and seize the throne from Elizabeth. He had been the husband of Elizabeth’s half-sister, Queen Mary I, who had died childless in 1558. Mary had sought to return England to Roman Catholicism, and Philip had the same end in view.

The gap of 30 years between Mary’s death and the sending of the Armada is evidence of the political power game, played by the European nations, which had given Philip some hope that England might return to Rome by other means (including a proposal of marriage to Elizabeth!). Elizabeth was a consummate politician and the mistress of delay and indecision when it suited her. She was thus able to keep Philip at arms’ length for many years.

Philip also had other things on his mind, not least the struggle to retain control of the Spanish Netherlands (modern day Netherlands and Belgium).

However, Philip’s patience was sorely tried by the activities of sea captains such as Francis Drake who behaved virtually as pirates in their attacking of Spanish ships and colonies. Spain was the major colonial power in the Americas, and Spanish ships, laden with gold and other treasure and produce, were easy targets for seamen who were not easily controlled by their home government, even had that been intended. The fact that Elizabeth was happy to accept captured Spanish booty, and the honours bestowed on Drake and other “pirates”, suggests that little such control was to be expected!

England also began to have colonial ambitions. In 1584, for example, Walter Raleigh had founded the colony of Virginia, named in honour of Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen”. England and Spain were therefore brought into conflict as colonial as well as religious rivals.

Preparations on both sides

The construction of the Armada began as early as 1585, but there were many delays and setbacks to its completion. Not the least of these was the action by Francis Drake in 1587 of sailing into the port of Cadiz and destroying much of the Spanish fleet. The action was described by Drake as “singeing the King of Spain’s beard”.

One thing the Spanish did not have was the element of surprise. The English knew all about the invasion plans and were well prepared for it when it came, which was in 1588. The story of Drake insisting on finishing his game of bowls before taking on the Spanish is probably apocryphal, but it summarises the relaxed approach that the English were able to take.

The idea behind the Armada was not to defeat the English at sea, but to carry troops, some of whom were to travel from Spain but the bulk of whom were to be transported from the Spanish Netherlands across the English Channel to the Thames Estuary, where they would be landed and then make a direct assault on London. Only 22 ships in the Armada fleet were purpose-built warships, the rest comprising adapted merchant ships of various types.

The English fleet that confronted the Spanish Armada was similar in composition to that of the Armada, in that the bulk of the ships were armed merchant vessels rather than purpose-built warships. These warships were similar in design to the Spanish galleons but smaller and therefore more manoeuvrable, although having similar armaments.

One huge advantage that the English had from the outset was that their commanders knew what they were doing but the Spanish did not. The English Lord High Admiral, Howard of Effingham, was both a seaman and a politician, as well as being a first cousin of Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s late mother. He was ably assisted by Francis Drake, who was a consummate seaman (he had sailed round the world and been knighted on his return in 1581) who also knew the Spanish inside out from his frequent skirmishes with them.

On the other hand, the Spanish fleet was led by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had no experience of fighting, either on land or sea, and was probably appointed (as a late substitute for the Marquis of Santa Cruz who died in February 1588) because Philip knew that Medina Sidonia would follow his orders to the letter, and the last thing Philip wanted was a commander who would show any initiative of his own.

Medina Sidonia knew all along that he was the wrong man for the job, and pleaded with Philip to be relieved from the responsibility. Apart from anything else, he suffered badly from sea-sickness! However, his pleas were turned down, and it is even possible that his letter to Philip was never shown to the King, because his courtiers knew exactly what his response would be.

Indeed, Philip’s main fault was his desire to micro-manage the whole affair. The plan was Philip’s from the outset, namely to use the Armada to collect the 30,000 strong army of the Duke of Parma and sail it across the channel to England. Parma had already suggested to Philip that he could do this without naval support, relying instead on surprise, a fleet of lightly armed barges, and an expected uprising by English Catholics, but he was overruled. He had no choice but to wait for the Armada to arrive.

The progress of the Armada

As the Armada reached sight of England on 19^th July, beacons were lit that conveyed the news to London faster than any messenger could achieve; as the hill-top watchers saw the distant light from a burning beacon they would light their own so that it would be seen by the next in the chain.

As it happened, Drake’s response was delayed not so much by an unfinished game of bowls as by an unfavourable tide. Most of the English fleet was holed up in Plymouth Harbour, ready to pounce on the Armada as it came into sight, but the low tide prevented this. The Spanish had an opportunity to take advantage by blockading the harbour and attacking the English ships when they emerged, but this idea was turned down because it did not accord with Philip’s orders.

Instead, the Armada was allowed to continue up the English Channel with the English fleet, once the tide had turned, in pursuit. Several small engagements took place, notably at Eddystone near Plymouth, and off Portland Bill, but little damage was suffered by either side.

Two Spanish ships managed to collide with each other and Drake, ever the opportunist, decided to raid the crippled ships at night for whatever they might have on board. However, this move led to other ships of the fleet not knowing where he had gone and, when dawn broke, the fleet was completely out of formation. It took a day for the ships to regroup, by which time the Armada was out of sight. However, the greater speed of the English ships allowed them to catch up.

The most significant engagement on the way up the Channel occurred off the Isle of Wight, when the English fleet divided into four squadrons and sailed towards the Armada ready for battle. However, Medina Sidonia was afraid that his larger ships might be driven on to sand banks close to shore and ordered them to escape to the open sea. He now had no choice but to sail straight for the French coast at Dunkirk, where he hoped that Parma’s army was waiting.

However, the Duke of Parma had problems of his own, and his army was far from ready to embark and be escorted to England. Apart from anything else, the 30,000 troops had been reduced to 16,000 by disease, and Dutch vessels were blockading the port of Dunkirk.

The Armada therefore had to wait offshore near Calais, anchored in a crescent formation. Medina Sidonia now had a dilemma. Parma wanted him to send part of his fleet along the coast to deal with the Dutch blockaders, thus enabling the troops to make their way to the waiting Armada, but Medina Sidonia was wary of weakening his fleet as the English approached. It was a marine version of rock versus hard place.

As it happened, the initiative now lay with the English, who used a trick that had been used in similar situations in the past. This was to sacrifice eight of the fleet’s ships as fireships, setting fire to them and letting them drift towards the enemy at night. The effect of this tactic was mainly psychological, because the Spanish had no idea whether the burning ships might not contain large charges of gunpowder that would explode with devastating consequences. They did not know that the English did not have that much gunpowder to spare.

The result of the fireship attack was exactly what Howard and Drake intended, namely that a number of Spanish ships cut their anchor chains and broke formation to escape. No ships were actually set alight by the fireships, but that did not matter. The Spanish now had no choice but to engage in direct battle with the English.

The Battle of Gravelines

The Battle of Gravelines, on 29^th July, was the decisive action of the campaign, and was fought very much on English terms. The Spanish ships were not prepared for a full-scale naval engagement but for an invasion, and this was what led to their defeat. As it happened, they had plenty of ammunition for their cannons, but were in little position to use it. For one thing, the gun decks were so cluttered with stores that the guns could only be fired once, there being no space to run them back far enough to reload. For another, the Armada had more Catholic priests on board (for the expected forced conversion of England) than trained gunners.

The Spanish tactic was for the cannon to be fired once and the gunners then to man the rigging in preparation for boarding the crippled English ships. However, this would only be possible if the English ships got close enough, and the English captains made sure that this did not happen.

Instead, once the Spanish guns had fired their single shots, the English closed to a range that enabled their guns to have maximum impact on the thick oak timbers of the Spanish ships, especially when the ships heeled over and timbers were exposed that were normally below the waterline.

Given the tactics employed by each side, the Battle of Gravelines could only have one winner, although it was the English who were forced to disengage when they ran out of ammunition.

In terms of ships lost, the number of Spanish casualties was not all that great, given that only five ships were rendered unserviceable. However, many others had been badly damaged and had to withdraw from the battle. Apart from the fireships, no English vessels were lost. More than 600 Spanish sailors and soldiers died, to fewer than 100 on the English side.

The Armada escapes

With the wind blowing from the south, the Armada had no choice but to escape northwards, into the North Sea. There was now no chance of Philip’s plan being put into action and, for the Spanish fleet, there was only one way home.

The English chased the Spanish ships northwards as far as the Firth of Forth, so that any thoughts of returning to the Spanish Netherlands were made impossible. The English army force at Tilbury was reinforced in case any further attempts were made at an incursion up the Thames Estuary, and it was therefore at Tilbury that Queen Elizabeth made her famous victory speech on 8^th August.

The Armada limped home, suffering far more losses than it had done during the battle. Due to a navigational error it sailed much closer to the western coasts of Scotland and Ireland than it should have done, and those ships that had jettisoned their anchors in panic during the fireships attack were unable to find shelter when the weather turned bad, instead being driven ashore and wrecked on the rocks.

September 1588 was a particularly bad month for Atlantic storms which, combined with the weak condition of many of the sailors due to disease and lack of food and water, led to many of the Armada ships, particularly the smaller and lighter ones, being lost. A number of Armada wrecks have been discovered in recent years, with the contents giving evidence not only of the daily lives of Spanish sailors and soldiers but of the supplies that were intended to support an invasion force.

Some Spaniards who were driven ashore did survive, and there are stories of “Spanish-Irish” children being born during the following years. Only about 10,000 of the men who set out from Spain, and half the ships, returned there.

The aftermath

Despite this massive setback for Philip of Spain, the balance of power on the high seas was little changed, with Spanish hegemony being scarcely dented. Most of the 22 galleons survived the battle and the Atlantic storms, and, after repair, remained perfectly serviceable.

However, English confidence was greatly boosted, as was the position of Protestantism in England. Above all, the role of the weather in deciding the issue was seen by many as divine confirmation of the rightness of Elizabeth’s rule and of the English Reformation. The phrase “He blew with his winds and they were scattered” was inscribed on a victory medal and the storm was also given the name of “the Protestant wind”.

Even without the intervention of the elements, there is little chance that the Armada could have succeeded, simply because the English people would surely never have allowed themselves to be ruled by an autocratic (and Catholic) Spanish monarch. Even if Queen Elizabeth had been overthrown and executed, it is surely inconceivable that “King Philip of England” would have lasted very long.

Why the Spanish Armada was defeated

The traditional view held by the British as to why the Spanish Armada failed in its objectives was that the Spanish were out-fought and out-manoeuvred by Sir Francis Drake and Lord Howard of Effingham, aided in no small measure by the vagaries of the British weather. There is much to support this opinion, but it is not the whole story.

Philip had also deluded himself into believing that England was longing to return to being a Catholic country, which it had not been since the death of Queen Mary I (who was married to Philip) in 1558. However, that was 30 years ago, and the bulk of the English population saw no reason to change. Those with long memories had no desire for a savage regime similar to that of “Bloody Mary” with anti-Catholics being burned at the stake.

England under Elizabeth was entering a golden age, partly thanks to the overseas enterprises of men like Drake and Raleigh, the latter of whom was trying to establish a colony on the coast of North America, and which was to evolve into the state of Virginia. The English (later British) Empire was in its infancy and the future looked good. This gave the English pride and a sense of independence that they had no intention of surrendering by making a backward step. Philip had not taken this on board.

In other words, the plan for the Armada was never going to work. Had the Armada been able to collect the Duke of Parma’s troops and sail up the Thames with them it would have been met with the full might of the English army, then assembling at Tilbury, as well as being trapped by the English fleet that would have followed them closely. Without any chance of reinforcement, the Spanish soldiers would have stood no chance of victory.

Philip knew all about Drake’s cleverness and ability to think quickly and decisively, but he took no steps to counteract the threat. When given the opportunity to blockade Drake’s fleet at Plymouth, Medina Sidonia did not take it because Philip’s orders had been to race up the Channel as quickly as possible, thus ensuring that Drake would be hard on his heels. Why did Philip not have a Plan B to deal with such an eventuality? With part of the Spanish fleet preventing Drake from leaving Plymouth, the rest of the Armada might have had a chance of reaching their objective.

So, what the Spanish had was a poor plan, poorly executed by inadequate leaders, with their orders coming from a king in Spain who had no idea of what was happening at the “sharp end”. 

© John Welford

Pocket boroughs in British politics

The term “pocket borough” was used by 19^th-century reformers in Great Britain to describe the situation whereby democracy was held to ransom by the rich and powerful, such that the election of some Members of Parliament was “in the pocket” of certain people. Perhaps the concept still applies today.

 

The development of Britain’s Parliamentary system

The House of Commons was instituted in 1265 when Simon de Montfort, the rebellious Earl of Leicester, called for an assembly to be elected that constituted “two knights from every (English) shire and two burgesses from every borough”. The procedure for electing the shire members was clear enough, and consistent across the country, but the boroughs were given much more freedom to decide for themselves how their representatives should be chosen.

Over time, the number of boroughs entitled to send members to Parliament grew, but the expense of so doing fell upon local councils, and many declined to do so. Others set such severe restrictions on who could vote, based mainly on property qualifications, that the number of voters was reduced to a handful. When this happened, the possibility of manipulating the election, so that the result fell into someone’s pocket, was greatly increased.

Among the more extreme cases of limited franchise were those boroughs that limited the vote to members of the borough council, and others where it was only the owners or tenants of certain pieces of land within the borough who could vote.

Pocket and rotten boroughs

A distinction needs to be made between “pocket” and “rotten” boroughs, because although they were often one and the same, this was not necessarily the case. A rotten borough was one in which the original population had all but disappeared, leaving very few voters behind. For example, when the city of Sarum in Wiltshire abandoned its windswept hilltop site and moved to the valley below to build the new Salisbury, the old city retained the right to send members to Parliament even though there was no-one there (see photo).

Even more bizarre was the borough of Dunwich in Suffolk, which had fallen victim to coastal erosion and was mostly under the waters of the North Sea by the time of the 1832 Reform Act.

However, a borough did not need to be rotten to be in a pocket. Even some quite large and thriving boroughs could be pocket boroughs, depending on local circumstances.

One factor that helped to create pocket boroughs was the lack of a secret ballot, which did not enter British politics until the Ballot Act of 1872. Under the previous system, electors had to declare their voting choice to a clerk who sat in a public place, such as a temporary stand in a market place, in full view and hearing of anyone who wished to witness the voting. What this meant was that voters could be intimidated or bribed into voting one way or the other, and the candidate with the deepest pockets could easily buy his seat in the Commons.

The owners of the pockets were often rich and wealthy landowners who, if peers of the realm, had a permanent seat in Parliament’s House of Lords and wished to ensure that their tenants were represented by their “placemen” in the House of Commons. It was an excellent way of maintaining the status quo.

In effect, what often happened was that elections at a local level were uncontested, because there was little point in standing for a seat which one had absolutely no hope of winning because all the votes had been bought in advance.

The 1832 Reform Act ended some of the abuses but by no means all. It is true that the rotten boroughs were removed from the system, and the more bizarre franchise qualifications disappeared, but many pocket boroughs remained for various reasons, including the lack of secret ballots noted above.

 

Are there still pocket boroughs today?

Indeed, a strong argument could be made to the effect that pocket boroughs (or their equivalent) are still part of the British political system.

It is still the case that many constituencies in the United Kingdom never change hands at election time because the majorities for a particular political party are so large that they can never be overturned. For example, the seat of Hemsworth in West Yorkshire was such a safe one for Labour throughout the 20^th century that the joke ran that the votes were weighed rather than counted. Likewise, there are Conservative seats in south-east England and elsewhere where it is impossible to imagine anyone other than a Conservative having any chance of winning.

Under these circumstances, the choice of who becomes the MP depends not on the electors but the party machine that selects the candidate. Traditionally this is the local party committee, which can easily be swayed by a few powerful people, but increasingly the central offices of the main parties influence who the local party will choose. Candidates are known to have been “parachuted” into safe seats, often against local wishes but with it being made very clear that the constituency committee has to do what it is told. In other words, these seats are in the pockets of the political parties.

Sometimes a local party can resist the central diktat because of the sponsorship it gets from an outside organisation such as a trade union or large business. Many Labour MPs are union sponsored, and many Conservative MPs have the backing of powerful businessmen who have put large sums of money into local party coffers. It would be difficult to imagine the respective parties, either locally or nationally, turning down these contributions, even though they must appreciate that the interests in question hope to gain some political advantage from their efforts.

One must therefore wonder whether pocket boroughs ever went away, or if they are still alive and well in the British political system in the 21^st century.

© John Welford

The Quintinshill rail crash, 1915

The worst rail crash ever to occur in Great Britain, in terms of loss of life, took place early on the morning of 22^nd May 1915, nearly a year after the outbreak of World War I. The site of the crash was Quintinshill signal box, a mile and a half north of Gretna Green, on the border between England and Scotland and on the main west coast line that connects London to Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Events leading to the crash

Express trains travelling the whole length of the line could easily suffer delays, and that was the case with the train that had left London Euston shortly before midnight. It was half an hour late when it reached Carlisle and so the decision was made to allow a local train to run ahead of it, rather than behind, and to stop in the loop at Quintinshill to allow the express to pass. Quintinshill had two such loops, on the up and down lines, which were in full view of the signal box.

This procedure was quite common, and it presented an opportunity for the signalman who should have started work at Quintinshill at 6.00am to delay his start until 6.30am. Instead of walking from his home at Gretna he could wait for the local train which he knew was going to stop right outside the signal box as opposed to running on to the next station.

This was an unofficial and unauthorised arrangement and it meant that the outgoing signalman (George Meakin) had to write down all the train movements that took place after 6.00am on a slip of paper so that the incoming signalman (James Tinsley) could write them into the train register when he arrived. The register would therefore have entries for the relevant times in the expected handwriting.

One movement that had taken place during that half hour was that a down (i.e. northbound) goods train had been shunted into the down loop, which meant that the passenger train on which Tinsley had travelled had to reverse across on to the up (southbound) main line to clear the down main  for the express.

Shortly after this, and at the time when Tinsley was climbing the steps to the signal box, a train of empty coal wagons arrived on the up line. This could not be sent on to Carlisle, so Meakin turned it into the up loop.

At the time of the changeover between signalmen there were therefore three trains standing outside the signal box, with only the down main being clear.

Mistakes that led to disaster

George Meakin (the signalman who was about to end his shift) made a mistake by not protecting the up main line by placing a collar on the relevant signal lever. This would have made it impossible for the lever to be pulled and the line therefore cleared. 

The signal box was now occupied by the two signalmen and the brakemen from the two goods trains that were waiting in the loops. Meakin read the newspaper that Tinsley had brought with him and Tinsley started to copy the entries from Meakin’s piece of paper into the train register. Clearly, nobody was giving proper attention to the job in hand as they chatted about this and that.

Next to arrive was George Hutchinson, the fireman of the local train that was waiting on the up main line. Under “Rule 55” it was his task to remind the signalman in person that his train was stopped and thus to ensure that it was duly protected. Meakin handed him a pencil so that he could sign the book that registered his compliance with the rule, but Hutchinson left the box without noticing that the relevant signal lever did not have a collar on it.

James Tinsley meanwhile got on with business by accepting the delayed down express, and he also, inexplicably, accepted an up troop train and set the signals for it. This was only possible because one of the signalmen (and it was disputed who this was) must have indicated to the Kirkpatrick box (the next one up the line) that the line was clear after the coal wagons train had been parked in the up loop. The Kirkpatrick signalman would not have offered the troop train if he had been aware that the line was not clear.

The crash

As it was, the troop train duly arrived at speed and crashed into the stationary local train. The force of the impact was such that a train of 15 carriages that was more than 200 yards long was instantly reduced to one of less than 70 yards in length.

The down express, which weighed more than 600 tons, then arrived and crashed into the wreckage that had spread across all the tracks. Fire broke out and raged furiously, fuelled by the high pressure gas used to provide light and heat on the troop train. The fire burned for more than 24 hours, leaving very little behind.

The troop train had been taking 500 soldiers belonging to the 7^th Battalion of the Royal Scots to Liverpool, where they were due to embark for the Gallipoli campaign. It is not known exactly how many were killed because the battalion roll was lost in the crash, but it is estimated that at least 215 officers and men died and at least as many were injured. None of the survivors were deemed fit to carry on to their destination.

Casualties on the other trains were much lower, with eight deaths on the express and two on the local train. One reason for the huge toll on the troop train was that wartime conditions meant that old railway stock was pressed into service, this being constructed mainly from wood and with old-fashioned gas lighting.

The aftermath

 As this was wartime, news of the disaster was hushed up as much as possible and it was not until after the war was over that the general public got to hear about it. Knowledge of a disaster of this kind on the home front would hardly have helped to boost morale.

The blame for the crash clearly belonged to the two signalmen, both of whom served jail sentences after a criminal trial. George Hutchinson was also charged with negligence for leaving the signal box without ensuring the safety of his train, but he was acquitted.

There have been many serious accidents on Britain’s railways in the years since Quintinshill, but fortunately none that have had such devastating consequences. The technology to prevent such an accident occurring (i.e. the electric block system) already existed in 1915 but the war had prevented it from being adopted universally across the network. Needless to say, that is not the case today.

© John Welford