[W]
Hereward the Wake
Hereward, Saxon thane, fl. eleventh century
In the third quarter of the eleventh century pockets of resistance to William the CONQUEROR’S new Norman regime remained throughout the north and west of England, and especially in the fenland of East Anglia, where the Saxon thane Hereward stoutly defended the city of Ely. Stories of Hereward’s heroics abound. Some chronicles state, for example, that in 1068 Hereward returned to his family estate only to find the house occupied by a Norman and his brother’s decapitated head impaled above the doorway. That night, armed with what he could carry, he allegedly ambushed and killed fifteen Norman soldiers and substituted their heads for his brother’s.
In 1071 William mustered his crack troops against Hereward’s rebels and launched an offensive upon Ely. The island garrison eventually surrendered, but Hereward managed to escape into the fen country to become a semi-legendary resistance fighter on a par with Robin Hood.
The name ‘the Wake’ was not attached to Hereward until the fourteenth century, when he appears in the Chronicle of Abbot John as ‘le Wake’. The nickname does not mean ‘the Vigilant’ as some profess, but actually refers to the Wake family who, at the time of Abbot John’s work, claimed to have inherited their lands from Hereward following a series of marriages involving his alleged descendants. The Wake family’s claim has not been substantiated.
Henry the Warlike see GALLIC PRACTICE
James the Warming-Pan Baby
James Stuart, pretender to the English throne, 1688–1766
A disaffected Protestant England dismissed all Jacobite claims that James Stuart was the rightful heir to the throne. Instead it counterclaimed that this so-called ‘son’ of James II (see the POPISH AND PROTESTANT DUKES) and Mary the QUEEN OF TEARS was in actuality a substitute for Mary’s stillborn child, smuggled into the royal bedchamber in a warming pan. Catholic France was much more amenable to the claims of‘James III’, and Louis the SUN KING lent his support to ‘the Old Pretender’ as James made a number of half-hearted attempts to gain his crown. After a distinguished career with the French army in the War of the Spanish Succession for which he earned the soubriquet ‘le Chevalier de St George’, James retired to Italy. There his wife Mary gave birth to the ‘Young Pretender’, BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE.
Robert the Weasel see the SONS OF TANCRED
Charles the Well-Beloved see Charles the SILLY
Louis the Well-beloved
Louis XV, king of France, 1710–74
In 1744 Louis set out to join his forces in the second campaign of the War of the Austrian Succession. At the city of Metz he fell violently ill, and for several days lay on what many feared was his deathbed. On the news of his recovery the delighted French people acclaimed their king as ‘Louis le Bien-Aime’. It is a curiously unsuitable nickname for a monarch who received an extremely bad press from his contemporaries, not least because of his scandalous private life.
In 1725 Louis married Marie Leszczynska, a Polish princess, and together they had ten children. But monogamy was not for Louis, and in 1732 the first in a string of mistresses appeared. His affairs with all three of the Nesle sisters and the former high-class prostitute Jeanne Bécu generated howls of outrage from the press of the day. But it was his liaison with Jeanne Poisson, better known as Madame Pompadour, that caused the greatest offence. It was alleged that when she could no longer satisfy the king herself, she furnished him with a succession of young women (and some very young girls) whom she kept in a house known as the ‘Deer Park’.
There were some things that Louis could do as well as anybody. He was noted, for instance, for his skill in cutting off the top of a boiled egg with one blow of his fork, and he made a point of being served boiled eggs whenever he dined in public. In almost everything else, however, he failed to impress. France was insulted by his sexual antics and dismayed at his abysmal foreign policy that saw the country abandon all its territories in the New World. Well-beloved, in sum, he was not.
Donald the White see COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
Athelfleda the White Duck
Athelfleda, queen of England, d.c.964
Athelfleda married her childhood sweetheart Edgar the PEACEABLE and together they had a son, Edward the MARTYR. Histories diverge as to whether she died in childbirth or separated from Edgar after finding out about his affair with a woman called Wulfryth, whom he later banished to a nunnery. No one is exactly sure about the reason for her nickname either, although some propose that ‘the White Duck’ or ‘the Little White Duck’ was simply Edgar’s pet name for his first love.
White Hands see COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
Mary the White Queen see Mary the MERMAID
Victoria the Widow of Windsor
Victoria, queen of the United Kingdom, 1819–1901
Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book and other classics, is somewhat responsible for this nickname. He wrote a poem in 1890 that contained the lines:
’Ave you ’eard o’ the Widow of Windsor
With a hairy gold crown on ’er ’ead?
After her husband Albert the GOOD died of typhoid Victoria spent the rest of her life, much of it at Windsor Castle, wearing the black of mourning. There were some good times in her forty years of widowhood, however, notably her deep affection for her ‘gillie’, or attendant, John Brown, who became her personal aide. Rumours spread that the two had secretly married, and some gave the queen of Great Britain and Ireland and empress of India the additional title ‘Mrs Brown’. Certainly their relationship was close. In her personal diary of 1884 she wrote, ‘I like his strength, his weight, this feeling of security. He calls me Woman; I call him Man… He treats me roughly, he scolds me, he gives me orders and I am happy that he does so.’
Victoria also earned the soubriquet of ‘the Grandmother of Europe’ since on her death her descendants occupied most of the thrones of that continent.
The Winter Monarchs
Frederick V, elector Palatine and king of Bohemia, 1596–1632
Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, 1596–1662
In 1619 the Protestant estates of Bohemia rebelled against the Catholic authorities and offered the crown of Bohemia to Frederick and his wife, Elizabeth. Some of their followers considered this a foolish idea, and suggested that they should heed Catholic taunts that they would be ‘the Snow King’ and ‘the Snow Queen’ –only on the throne while snow was on the ground. Others, citing promised support from the Protestant Union and Frederick’s father-in-law James the WISEST FOOL IN CHRISTENDOM, encouraged the couple to accept. Frederick and Elizabeth chose the latter course.
The expected aid, however, never materialized, and just two months after their coronation their troops lost a crushing defeat at the battle of White Mountain. Jesuit prophecies that the couple would melt away from Bohemia as snow vanished with the first rays of spring sunshine proved accurate. Mocked as ‘the Winter King’ and ‘the Winter Queen’ –monarchs that reigned for just one season – they fled to exile in Holland.
Frederick was distraught. Elizabeth, however, refused to be downhearted, and her constant good-natured disposition while in the Low Countries garnered her a second epithet, ‘the Queen of Hearts’.
Frederick the Winter King see the WINTER MONARCHS
Elizabeth the Winter Queen see the WINTER MONARCHS
Albert the Wise see Albert the LAME
Alfonso the Wise see Alfonso the ASTRONOMER
Frederick the Wise
Frederick III, elector of Saxony, 1463–1525
Frederick was a pious man and owned a collection of holy relics supposedly including scraps from Jesus’s swaddling clothes, a hair of his beard and remains of some of the innocents slaughtered by King Herod. As well as a keen collector, Frederick was also a fierce promoter of scholarship and, despite his own Catholicism, supported and protected the reformer Martin Luther against Catholic charges of heresy. His reputation for deliberation and even-handedness won him the titles ‘the
Wise’ and ‘the Learned’, although his cautious nature earned him the soubriquet ‘the Hesitater’ from (a rather ungrateful) Luther.
James the Wisest Fool in Christendom
James I, king of England, and VI, king of Scotland, 1566–1625
James had a tongue too big for his mouth, legs too weak for his body, and lifeless, buglike eyes that rolled around inside his head. He pranced about in padded green clothing, with a hunting horn rather than a sword dangling at his side. He rode abominably, swore horribly and wrote some of the dullest treatises of all time. Many people, among them the author Charles Dickens, would have us believe that the only son of Mary the MERMAID was a complete and utter buffoon and an impossible pedant. This is an unnecessarily harsh portrait. That said, his character did contain shocking defects:
• He was outstandingly vain, and adored having courtiers grovel before him.
• He was vindictive: he hunted in a repulsive way, slaughtering his prey with a scary, furious glee.
• He was unhygienic: he never washed and as a result itched insufferably. Always sweating, sneezing or blowing his nose, he avoided water like the plague.
• He was cruel to animals: when Philip of Spain gave him five camels and an elephant, he put the camels on display in St James’s Park but hid the elephant away, feeding it with a gallon of wine each day until it refused to drink water.
• He was coarse: when some of his subjects once came to pay their respects and see him face to face, he responded, ‘God’s wounds! I will pull down my breeches and they shall also see my arse.’
And yet James was no fool. As a young man he studied Greek, French and Latin, and he regularly consulted his library of classical and religious writings. Narrow-minded he may have been, yet he was still able to quote Aristotle freely, expound at great length on his favourite topic, witchcraft, and write poetry, political treatises and translations of some thirty psalms. Aware of his learned background, the duke of Sully, French envoy to the English court, dubbed him ‘the Wisest Fool in Europe’, but when the King James Version of the Bible appeared, a translation commissioned at James’s behest, the epithet was broadened to ‘the Wisest Fool in Christendom’.
James the Wisest Fool in Europe see James the WISEST FOOL IN CHRISTENDOM
Eleanor the Witty
Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwyn, mistress of King Charles II of England, 1650–87
Of all the mistresses of Charles the MERRY MONARCH – and there were many – the public took only one to their hearts, namely the petite, brown-eyed and high-spirited Nell Gwyn.
After a childhood serving brandy in a brothel and selling oranges at the Drury Lane Theatre in London, Nell worked as a comedienne until she left the stage for Charles in 1669. Her infectious wit and gleeful lewdness won her a host of nicknames and the acclaim of a public otherwise cool to the monarch’s paramours. Many knew her as ‘Sweet Nell’, others as ‘Pretty Witty Nell’, while the scholar Robert Whitcomb described her as having the beauty of Venus, spirit of Hercules, wisdom of Apollo and wit of Mercury. Such extravagant praise must have softened the pain of her less flattering epithets, ‘Puddle-Nell’ and ‘the Protestant Whore’.
Nell had an extravagant lifestyle – she bought her house on fashionable Pall Mall in cash – and by the time of Charles’s death she was universally in debt. Aware of this, the king, on his deathbed, begged his brother to ‘not let poor Nelly starve’, and so she was given a modest annual income until her own death from a stroke when in her late thirties.
John the Wizard
John III, king of Poland, 1629–96
John III, or John Sobieski, is a Polish hero most famous for his rescue of Vienna from a Turkish invading force in the late summer of 1683. With the Turks heading his way, the pusillani mous emperor ‘Leopold the Great’ (see GREAT… BUT not that Great) skulked off to his Bavarian fortress, leaving the Viennese to their fate. But up stepped John, with his large moustache, diamond-encrusted fur cap and, as always, a scimitar strapped to his side. On 12 September, with his force of some 70,000 men, John routed the ‘infidel’ and wrote a message to the pope: ‘Veni, Vidi, Deus Vicit’ –‘I came, I saw, God conquered.’ The Turks simply could not understand how they had lost, and named John ‘the Wizard’ in the belief that he possessed supernatural powers.
John the Wizard
Sobieski may have relieved Vienna, but he proved unable to extract any tangible benefits for Poland from the victory. Possessing little of the ambition of Louis the SUN KING or the conquering spirit of Peter the GREAT, the wizard simply lacked the magic needed to prevent his homeland from tumbling into vassalage after his death.
Alexander the Wolf of Badenoch
Alexander Stewart, lord of Badenoch, 1343–c.1405
When the bishop of Moray censured the lord of Badenoch for adultery, he cannot possibly have expected Alexander’s reaction. With a posse of Gaelic thugs Alexander ransacked the town of Forres before moving on to Elgin and burning the cathedral to the ground. As a result, the lupine lord, elsewhere known as ‘Big Alexander’, was excommunicated. A fictional account of the unsavoury exploits and amorous adventures of Alexander the Wolf of Badenoch can be found in a novel of the same name by the Victorian author Thomas Lauder. Readers may also wish to peruse some of Lauder’s other works, including ‘Account of a Toad Found in the Trunk of a Beech’ and ‘An Account of the Worm with which the Stickleback is Infested’.
Frederick the Wonder of the World
Frederick II, king of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, 1194–1250
‘Covered with red hair… bald and short-sighted. Had he been a slave, he would not have fetched 200 dirhams at market.’ This first-hand description of Frederick by the Syrian historian Ibn al-Jawz suggests that the emperor, given his appearance, was of little value. But looks can deceive. Frederick was in fact one of the most remarkable of all medieval rulers.
Even his birth and upbringing were remarkable. In order to stop any dispute as to his legitimacy, Constance of Sicily gave birth to him publicly in a market-place. Both Constance and Frederick’s father, Henry the CRUEL, died before Frederick was four years old, and he came under the guardianship of Pope Innocent III. The pontiff, however, neglected him and Frederick spent much of his childhood roaming the streets of Rome like an urchin. At the age of fourteen he was cleaned up and married to the daughter of the king of Aragon.
After his coronation two years later Frederick stayed in Sicily when he wasn’t on crusade. It is here, in his island kingdom, that his reputation as the ‘Stupor Mundi’ –‘ the Wonder’, or more accurately ‘the Astonishment of the World’ –was cultivated. Among his many achievements, Frederick:
• could speak nine languages and was literate in seven;
• wrote poetry of considerable merit;
• compiled a manual on the art of falconry and wrote the first modern book on ornithology;
• introduced the concept of zero to European arithmetic;
• founded the University of Naples;
• issued regulations on the practice of pharmacy throughout Europe; and
• published a collection of laws for his realm. With minor modifications this work, known as the Liber Augustalis, remained the basis of Sicilian law well into the nineteenth century.
But Frederick did have his critics. An Italian contemporary called Salimbene wrote that, while he admired the emperor immensely, there were certain aspects of his character that he found distasteful. Cruelty was one of them. Once, for example, he cut off the thumb of a notary who had spelt his name ‘Fredericus’ instead of ‘Fridericus’. The king was also prone to engage in macabre experiments in which humans were the guinea pigs. Here are just three of these investigations:
• He gave two men supper and then sent one to bed and the other out to hunt. After a few hours he brought them back to his court and had them disembowelled in his presence to see which one had digested the food more rapidly (apparently it was the former).
• He locked convicte
d criminals in an airtight room until they suffocated, and then, as he opened the door, looked for evidence of their souls escaping.
• In his search to see if humans are born with a ‘natural’ language, he abandoned several babies in the wild to grow up without human contact. The children all died.
It was the Church, however, who condemned the emperor with greatest fury. Although a Christian, Frederick denounced Jesus as a fraud, mocked many fundamental doctrines and maintained a harem. Many of his fellow believers denounced him as ‘the Hammer of Christianity’. Pope Gregory IX went further, excommunicating him twice and calling him ‘the Antichrist’.
Elizabeth the World’s Wonder see GOOD QUEEN BESS
Wenceslas the Worthless
Wenceslas, king of Germany and Bohemia, 1361–1419
This Wenceslas was in power some 400 years after the ‘Good King Wenceslas’ of carol fame, who was duke of Bohemia in the tenth century. As periods in European history go, the end of the fourteenth century was downright awful. In Germany the worthless Wenceslas held sway, Charles the SILLY ruled France, Richard the COXCOMB flapped about in England and two popes, one in Rome and the other in Avignon, were discrediting each other. Of all those in supreme authority at the time, however, Wenceslas deserves special mention as the most contemptible. Here, in no particular order, are ten reasons why he deserved his nickname.
• He extracted revenue through arbitrary fines.
• He was constantly enmeshed in bitter family rivalries.
• He angered Church leaders in Bohemia, not least when he orchestrated the drowning of the vicar general of Prague in the River Moldau.
• He promoted totally inexperienced friends to senior governmental positions, thereby infuriating the Bohemian nobility.
• He failed conspicuously to keep the peace in either Germany or Bohemia.
• He failed to heal the Great Schism within the papacy, and even failed to remain constant to one side.
• He failed to achieve imperial coronation.
The Good, the Bad, and the Unready: The Remarkable Truth Behind History's Strangest Nicknames Page 22
