The Good, the Bad, and the Unready: The Remarkable Truth Behind History's Strangest Nicknames

by Robert Easton

  By his forties and fifties George had grown immensely overweight, and epithets alluding to his obesity, such as ‘the Fat Adonis at Forty’, later emended to ‘the Fat Adonis at Fifty’, were in abundance. An article appeared in the Morning Post in 1812, possibly in defence of the prince against these nicknames, describing him as ‘An Adonis in Loveliness’. The essayist Leigh Hunt was not impressed by this piece of sycophancy and wrote in the Examiner, ‘This Adonis in loveliness is a corpulent man of fifty.’ Leigh Hunt spent the next two years in jail.

  Charles Lamb learnt from Hunt’s mistakes, and published the following ditty anonymously:

  Not a fatter then fish he

  Flounders round the polar sea

  By his bulk and by his size

  By his oily qualities

  This (or else my eyesight fails)

  This should be the Prince of Whales.

  When he finally became king in 1820, George started to exhibit signs of the insanity that had so plagued his father, and he lost any remains of the charm that had won him so many hearts in his youth. Nothing, for instance, would persuade him to allow his wife Caroline at his coronation, and when she attempted to take her place in Westminster Abbey, the doors were slammed in her face. Amid great public sympathy, Caroline retired to Hammersmith where she died the very next month. A nation that had once championed their prince now despised their king.

  Towards the end of his life, addicted to alcohol and laudanum, George’s bouts of madness grew longer, and he would tell whoever would listen, for instance, that he had fought at the battle of Waterloo. He became more and more of a recluse at Windsor Castle and eventually died, a deeply unpopular king, in 1830.

  Henry Beauclerc see NOBLE PROFESSIONS

  Bell the Cat

  Archibald Douglas, fifth earl of Angus, c.1449–c.1513

  Archibald’s nickname, possibly conferred upon him by the sixteenth-century historian Robert Lindsay, refers to an incident in 1482 when he and a number of other disgruntled Scots noblemen plotted the downfall of certain ‘low-born familiars’ whom they believed had too much influence over the king.

  One day Lord Gray, one of Archibald’s fellow conspirators, told a story in which mice discuss hanging a bell around a cat’s neck so as to be warned of its approach. The problem was whether there was any mouse courageous enough to fasten the bell. On hearing this tale, Archibald is said to have leaped up and cried, ‘I shall bell the cat.’ Later, demonstrating decidedly un-mouselike qualities, Archibald led a posse against King James’s favourites, murdered them, and then hanged them from the bridge in the Berwickshire town of Lauder.

  Fyodor the Bellringer

  Fyodor I, tsar of Russia, 1557–98

  For some societies a young man with learning difficulties, spindly legs and a permanent glazed smile would be an embarrassment. In sixteenth-century Russia, however, such ‘feeble-mindedness’ was considered an especially inspired form of wisdom – a ‘foolishness in Christ’ – and those exhibiting it were regarded with respect, if not reverence. The son of Ivan the TERRIBLE, Fyodor was described by a visiting English diplomat as ‘hawk-nosed, unsteady in his pace by reason of some weakness of his limbs, yet commonly smiling almost to laughter’, and he adored visiting monasteries and churches, taking special delight in ringing the bells that summoned the faithful to Mass.

  Ptolemy the Benefactor see PTOLEMAIC KINGS

  Bertie see Edward the CARESSER

  Charles the Bewitched

  Charles II, king of Spain, 1661–1700

  Charles the Bewitched

  The reign of Charles II of Spain seemed, for anyone unfortunate enough to be around at the time, interminable. When the king’s father, Philip IV, died, he left a four-year-old feebleminded epileptic as his heir and Spain desperately in need of a regent. Some misguided fools determined that Charles’s frequent drooling and convulsive fits indicated that he was possessed by the devil, giving rise to his nickname, ‘the Bewitched’. Confessors, exorcists and visionary nuns were dragooned from all corners of the kingdom to employ weird potions and conduct exorcisms in an attempt to cast out his supposed devil. Unfortunately for Charles, their efforts achieved only a rapid degeneration of his condition, which left him spending much of his time in a blithering frenzy.

  Everyone expected that Charles would die at a young age, but he confounded one and all by ruling, albeit in name only, for thirty-five long years. Given his condition, there was no hope of his wife, Marie Louise, producing an heir, and so his reign was suffused with plots about the succession. At first there were three candidates, an Austrian archduke, a French duke and a Bavarian prince. In February 1699, however, the Bavarian prince suddenly upped and died, leaving a head-to-head contest between Archduke Charles and his rival, Philip of Anjou.

  Pathetically, Charles’s last days were spent participating in the politics of his successor, and during a rare lucid, frenzy-free period, he named Philip of Anjou, the grandson of Louis the SUN KING, as the sole heir to his dominion. Steadfast amid the howls of outrage made by the pro-Austrian factions of his court, Charles displayed a dignity on his deathbed that had eluded the unfortunate man in his lifetime.

  Big Alexander see Alexander the WOLF OF BADENOCH

  Bertha Bigfoot

  Bertrada, queen of the Franks, c.720–83

  Wife of Pepin the SHORT and mother of Charles the GREAT (Charlemagne), Bertrada was also known as ‘Queen Goosefoot’ and, as such, was the possible inspiration for the name ‘Mother Goose’ of nursery-rhyme fame.

  Malcolm Bighead

  Malcolm III, king of Scotland, c.1031–93

  Above all else, Malcolm loved two things: his wife and the clamour of battle. While Macbeth had been in power in Scotland, Malcolm had bided his time in England learning to speak English and to like the English and their ways. Of all the English he met, however, Malcolm became absolutely besotted with a woman named Margaret, sister of Edgar the OUTLAW, the heir to the English throne, and he married her in 1069. He was so fond of her that he made English, rather than Gaelic, the official court language, kissed the books that she read, and agreed to her saintly demands to spend certain mornings every year washing the feet of six beggars and handing out food to nine orphans. Although it has been suggested that the nickname ‘Canmore’, stemming from the Gaelic words ceann meaning ‘head’ or ‘chief, and mor meaning ‘great’ or ‘big’, was ascribed to Malcolm because he was a swaggering bully, this was clearly not so when his wife was around.

  Malcolm’s second love, as with most kings of the time, was fighting, and during his reign he led no fewer than five invasions into the northern part of England. In one of these expeditions it was said that ‘old men and women were slaughtered like swine for a banquet.’ After comparatively timid military responses from the English monarchs Edward the CONFESSOR and Harold the LAST OF THE SAXONS, Malcolm faced much tougher opponents in William the CONQUEROR and William RUFUS, to whom he eventually ceded Cumberland and by whose forces he was ultimately ambushed and killed. It has been suggested that Malcolm was nicknamed ‘Canmore’ because he was a ‘great chief. This appears not to have been the case all the time.

  Little if any research has been conducted on whether the nickname actually refers to a physical attribute rather than a character trait – it could be that Malcolm simply had a really big head.

  Fulk the Black see COLOURFUL CHARACTES

  Halfdan the Black see COLOURFUL CHARACTES

  Black Agnes

  Agnes, countess of Dunbar and March, c.1312–69

  In 1338 Edward the BANKRUPT sent William Montague, the earl of Salisbury, to capture Dunbar Castle in East Lothian. It looked to be a comparatively simple task since the earl of Dunbar was away, fighting an English army in the north. But Edward and Salisbury had not anticipated the heroic spirit of the countess, whom the English later dubbed ‘Black Agnes’ for her complexion, hair colour and defiance.

  For nineteen weeks Salisbury attacked, and for nineteen demoralizing weeks he w
as repulsed. In her stout defence of the castle Agnes employed the tactic of mockery. She had her kitchen staff, for example, visibly ‘dust’ the ramparts with handkerchiefs after every bombardment, and on one occasion she sent Salisbury a fresh loaf of bread and a bottle of wine as a commentary on his attempts to starve her into submission.

  A particularly low point for the English must have been when Salisbury menacingly wheeled an arch-roofed war-engine called a ‘testudo’ towards the walls. The testudo, itself nicknamed ‘the Sow’, was the pride and joy of Salisbury’s men and had seen much success in earlier sieges. But in Agnes the Sow found its match. The countess quickly ordered her colleagues to heave a massive rock from the ramparts on to the battering ram below, and smashed it into kindling. As those manning the war-engine ran for their lives, she is recorded as shouting gleefully, ‘Behold the litter of English pigs.’

  Salisbury eventually slunk away admitting defeat, cursing the countess’s constant vigilance and complaining that:

  She kept a stir in tower and trench,

  That brawling, boisterous Scottish wench,

  Came I early, came I late

  I found Agnes at the gate.

  Charles the Black Boy see Charles the MERRY MONARCH

  James the Black Douglas

  James Douglas, Scottish nobleman, 1286–1330

  James Douglas, who was also known as ‘the Good Sir James’, supported and served Robert the BRUCE, both before and after Robert gained the Scottish throne. James’s exploits, particularly in cross-border warfare, earned him considerable territory in the Border region as well as the nickname ‘the Black Douglas’, attributed to him both for his dark colouring and for his ruthlessness in battle. Such was his reputation for mercilessness that women in the northern counties would discipline their children by warning that ‘the Black Douglas’ would come and get them if they did not behave. There are suggestions – sadly groundless – that his epithet actually stems from a military trick he employed to capture Roxburgh Castle in 1314, when he disguised his troops as black cows.

  Edward the Black Prince

  Edward, prince of Wales, 1330–76

  Edward’s contemporaries knew him as either ‘Edward IV, anticipating incorrectly his succession to the throne, or ‘Edward of Woodstock’ after his place of birth. The title ‘the Black Prince’, by which he is universally known today, did not gain any currency until the late sixteenth century.

  The origins of the soubriquet are unclear. Some suggest that at the battle of Crécy in 1346 King Edward the BANKRUPT put his sixteen-year-old son at the vanguard of his troops in order that he might win his spurs. The teenage prince fought heroically, and for his bravery his fellow soldiers hailed him as ‘the Black Prince’ after the black cuirass (body armour) he was wearing. Others, however, such as the historian Jean Froissart, write that his designation derives instead from his ‘terror at arms’ and ‘martial deeds’.

  In 1361 Edward married his cousin and childhood playmate Joan the FAIR MAID OF KENT and was sent to rule the province of Aquitaine in south-west France. Ten years later he returned to England as bankrupt as his father, having fought against, and lost everything to ‘Peter the Cruel’ of Castile. After several years of bad health Edward finally died in 1386, passing over the kingdom to his only surviving son, Richard the COXCOMB.

  Charles the Blackbird see Charles the MERRY MONARCH

  Elizabeth the Blood Countess

  Elizabeth, countess of Transylvania, c.1560–1614

  While her boorish husband, ‘Ferencz the Black Hero of Hungary’, was away at war, Elizabeth became fascinated by the occult. Believing that bathing in the blood of virgins was the only way to maintain her creamy complexion, she enticed some 600 local young women to her castle in the Carpathian mountains, where they were ritually slaughtered and employed for cosmetic purposes. When the local peasant population ran out, she lured more upmarket women to her lair, until her dastardly beauty treatment was finally discovered. Elizabeth was tried and found guilty and, as punishment, was walled up in a tiny room of her castle.

  Otto the Bloody

  Otto II, king of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, 955–83

  Otto, sometimes dubbed ‘the Red’ and ‘Rufus’, in all likelihood on account of the colour of his hair, was a small, brave man, known for his generosity to the Church, knightly virtuosity and occasional acts of impulsive hot-headedness. One such act, in 981, may explain his third nickname, ‘the Bloody’.

  Otto travelled to Rome that year in order to thwart a plot to overthrow him. Upon his arrival, he invited all the chief conspirators, who were blissfully unaware that they had been rumbled, to a banquet. While they were all tucking in, Otto suddenly jumped up and stamped his foot. Armed men rushed into the hall and the emperor unrolled a scroll. Otto read aloud the names of the indicted nobles and, one by one, they were dragged from the table and strangled.

  Bloody Abdul see Abdul the DAMNED

  Bloody Mary

  Mary I, queen of England, 1516–58

  From an early age Mary demonstrated a devotion to the Catholic faith. Sebastian Giustinian, the Venetian ambassador, reports that when she was only two years old she saw Friar Dionosio Memo, the organist of St Mark’s Church in Venice, in the court of her father, BLUFF KING HAL, and she apparently cried out the word ‘priest’ until Memo played for her.

  Later in life, when queen, she considered it her Christian duty to turn the tide of Protestantism which had been flowing through England since the reign of her brother Edward the JOSIAH OF ENGLAND (see ENGLISH EPITHETS). To this end she married Philip the PRUDENT of Spain (also a devout Catholic) and, having quashed a Protestant rebellion led by Sir Thomas Wyatt, restored papal supremacy in England and revived the laws against heresy. Over the following three years nearly 300 ‘heretics’ were hanged or burned at the stake, among them Archbishop Cranmer and Bishops Ridley and Latimer. For permitting these executions, Mary was despised in certain quarters and rumours circulated that she had slept with the devil and given birth to a snake.

  It appears that her nickname is largely due to the virulently anti-Catholic writings of contemporary historian John Foxe. In his massive work Acts and Monuments Foxe gives colourful descriptions of the lives and deaths of the ‘English Martyrs’ – those who were executed for their Protestant beliefs. The book, which never specifically uses the name ‘Bloody Mary’ but refers instead to the queen’s ‘bloody persecution’ and to her successor, GOOD QUEEN BESS, as ‘sparing the blood’ of religious opponents, was published on the continent during Mary’s lifetime and in England a few years after her death. It rapidly became a best-seller in an England that had quickly reverted to Protestantism, and a copy was to be found in nearly every church in the country.

  Harald Bluetooth

  Harald, king of the Danes, c.910–c.985

  The name ‘Bluetooth’ or ‘Blåtand’ has nothing to do with King Harald’s dental discoloration, but refers to his dark complexion and hair – something of a rarity among Vikings. Similarly, this son of Gorm the OLD did not fit the traditional Viking image of a raping and pillaging pagan warrior either. Instead, he was a Christian who after his baptism in 960 strove to convert the Danes to his new faith.

  Inscriptions on the famous runic stone at Jelling, carved around 980, claim that he ‘won for himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian’. This may have an element of truth in it, since for the next fifty years Danish kings were so powerful that they turned their attention away from any domestic strife and towards their English counterparts.

  Bluff King Hal

  Henry VIII, king of England, 1491–1547

  For a short period of time Henry enjoyed the title of ‘Fidei Defensor’ or ‘Defender of the Faith’. It was an accolade conferred upon him by Pope Leo X but later revoked by Pope Paul III when the king divorced the first of his six wives, denounced papal supremacy and became the greatest ‘lapsed Catholic’ of them all. In 1544 Parliament conferred the title upon Edward VI,
and it is a designation still enjoyed by the British monarchy today.

  Somewhat more colloquially, and presumably not to his face, Henry was known as ‘Old Copper Nose’. This had nothing to do with his ruddy and robust complexion but was rather the result of his command that the mint should produce coins with twice as much copper as silver. With use, the silver would wear away on the most raised part of the coin, namely the nose of the king, which gave rise to the nickname. The more famous moniker ‘Bluff King Hal’, alluding to the monarch’s hearty, barrel-chested charm and no-nonsense personality, was bestowed upon him by later generations.

  Philip the Bold

  Philip II, duke of Burgundy, 1342–1404

  As in the case of ‘Justinian the Great’ and his partner Theodora (seeGREAT… BUT NOT THAT GREAT), Philip’s fame as one of the most remarkable men of his century would be considerably more modest were it not for his wife. His creation of a powerful, independent Burgundian state simply would not have been so successful had he not married Margaret of Male, daughter of the count of Flanders.

  At first glance, Margaret might not have seemed a real catch for the handsome, tall, broad-shouldered Philip. Some may have gone so far as to suggest that the plain, shabbily dressed noblewoman who was fond of whistling and sitting on the grass was simply too vulgar for the bold soldier and brilliant statesman. But Margaret possessed a quality that made many a suitor blind to any imperfections: as daughter of the count of Flanders, she was by far the richest heiress in all of Europe, and in 1384 the couple owned not only Flanders, the most highly industrialized part of Europe, but also Artois, Nevers, Rethel and several other regions of the Holy Roman Empire.

  Philip the Bold see GALLIC PRACTICE

  Philip II, king of France, 1245–85

  Henry Bolingbroke

  Henry IV, king of England, 1366–1413

  Three miles west of Spilsby in eastern Lincolnshire nestle the remains of a Norman castle dismantled after capture by parliamentary troops in 1643. This is Bolingbroke Castle, birthplace of Henry and origin of his rather unimaginative epithet. The castle was the chief seat of the duchy of Lancaster, and it was said to be haunted by a ghost that looked a bit like a hare or a rabbit, which would race between the legs of whomever it came across, sometimes knocking them over as it made its escape.