by Albert Jack
The Scots were furious at the ousting of a Scottish royal family and consequently supported several rebellions against England led by various remaining members of the Stuart family. Unfortunately for them, both the Old Pretender and Bonnie Prince Charlie (see THE THREE LORDS) proved as unreliable a bet as their predecessors and the English army won a series of decisive victories. The Hanoverians were furious at what they saw as Scottish insubordination and went on a violent campaign of retribution, slaughtering those who still upheld the cause of the Stuarts and passing a series of laws deliberately designed to exterminate the Scottish way of life and culture. For instance, the wearing of kilts and tartans was punishable by seven years’ imprisonment. Many pubs in Scotland were renamed the Lion and the Unicorn, ostensibly to show that the two countries were now united and were equals. Squashed and suppressed, the Scots were well aware, however, that the English were rather more equal than they were. It was still the lion that wore the crown.
The Lord Howard
THE MAN WHO SAVED ENGLAND FROM THE SPANISH
Cousin to Queen Elizabeth and all-round Renaissance man, Charles Howard (1536–1624), 1st Earl of Nottingham, was involved in every aspect of England’s Golden Age, from sponsoring his own troupe of actors, the Admiral’s Men, to suppressing the Earl of Essex’s revolt and recommending the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. But he is best known for his role in masterminding the trouncing of the Spanish Armada in 1587 (see also THE GOLDEN HIND).
His marriage proposals having been fobbed off by Elizabeth I for over twenty years, Philip II of Spain had finally decided to invade England. And he was doing it with the blessing of the Pope and the rest of Catholic Europe. Things did not look good for the English. The Spanish fleet was much larger (so large it took two full days for all the ships to leave Lisbon) and much better equipped than that of their English rivals. And the Armada was just one half of the invasion force: there was also an army of 30,000 in the Spanish Netherlands awaiting its arrival, the plan being to send the barges across the sea to England under cover of the warships. Were it not for a conveniently timed storm in the Channel that levelled the odds, history might have turned out very differently.
Once the Spanish ships had been sighted off the Cornish shore, a series of beacons were lighted along the south coast to carry the news to Howard and Sir Francis Drake at Plymouth, who set off with fifty-five ships to take on their larger and more powerful foe.
Drake carried out Howard’s orders and is remembered as the man who defeated the Armada, but it was Howard who, as Lord High Admiral, was in overall command of naval operations at the time. Howard’s strategy of hit-and-run attacks in the early stages, by ordering a policy of harassment rather than direct engagement with the Spanish, was initially unpopular until it proved successful.
Luckily for the English, the Spanish admiral, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, was too cautious, missing several opportunities to take the advantage while Howard and Drake whittled away at the Spanish fleet. At midnight on 28 July, the English set alight eight warships, filled with pitch, brimstone and gunpowder, and sent them towards the Armada, lying at anchor off the coast of Calais. Two fireships were intercepted by the Spanish and towed away, but the remainder continued towards the fleet, causing the ships to scatter in alarm. No Spanish vessels caught fire, but the defensive crescent formation that the Armada had been maintaining was now broken, and, with the wind in the wrong direction, the fleet could not recover its position. The English saw their moment, closed in for battle and won a glorious victory. For this, his name is commemorated on pub signs throughout Britain.
The Lord Kitchener
YOUR PUBLIC HOUSE NEEDS YOU!
You may not know who Lord Kitchener was but you’d certainly recognize him. He was the heavily moustachioed general pointing out of First World War recruitment posters, declaring: ‘YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU’. The picture was an accurate one: it had been his lifelong mission to be exactly what his country needed, but as a career soldier, that had entailed various changes along the way.
Horatio Kitchener was born in County Kerry, Ireland, on 24 June 1850, and his burgeoning military career was to take him to every corner of the British Empire. To the Middle East, where, appointed commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army after Britain had accidently gained control over the country, Kitchener led his forces into Khartoum to avenge the death of General Gordon (Queen Victoria’s favourite soldier) and managed to re-occupy the Sudanese capital, becoming both the Governor of Sudan and a national idol back home in the process. To South Africa, where in 1900 he famously set about dealing with Boer resistance to British rule with characteristic ruthlessness, introducing the ‘scorched earth’ policy of burning Boer farms and establishing the use of concentration camps to house unruly South African citizens. (Yes, they were a British invention.) And then to India, where he was made commander-in-chief in 1902 and charged with improving the army out there (which he did).
For the following ten years, Kitchener continued to prove an outstanding military leader and politician and, on the outbreak of the First World War, he was reluctantly appointed to the post of secretary of state for war. With his long experience of military matters, his was the only voice of gloom in the cabinet. He predicted it would be a long war, warning that there would be huge casualties and that the conflict would be decided by Britain’s last million men. Nonetheless, he rapidly set about his famous recruitment campaign, enlisting and training over three million new recruits, who soon became known as ‘Kitchener’s Army’.
In his recruitment of soldiers, planning of strategy and mobilization of industry, Kitchener was handicapped by bureaucracy and his own dislike of teamwork and delegation. Known to display more care and concern for his soldiers than any other British officer, he must have been horrified that so many of them were ordered from their trenches on pointless attacks, only to be cut to pieces by German machine-gun fire. Such was the wastefulness of these ‘over the top’ operations, many German machine-gunners began to refuse to shoot at the defenceless Tommies running across no man’s land towards them. The German commanders resolved this problem of compassion among their troops by shooting any who refused to fire at the British, and so millions more soldiers continued to have their body parts scattered over a wide area by shells or landmines. Kitchener’s public concern for the British soldiers on the front line ensured his popularity with the public but began to earn him enemies within the cabinet, some of whom hoped he would take charge of Gallipoli and the Near East following a tour of inspection there in 1915, relocating to the region and out of the public eye.
On 5 June 1916 Kitchener was on a diplomatic mission to Russia aboard HMS Hampshire when the ship hit a mine, close to the Orkneys, and sank with the loss of 643 lives, Lord Kitchener among them. His great fame and popularity, coupled with his sudden death, immediately bred a host of conspiracy theories claiming either murder or assassination by the British government, German spies or angry Boers. The fact his body has never been recovered leaves such questions for ever unanswered. But Lord Kitchener will always be remembered as, following the war, the British public immediately began renaming streets, parks, schools, pubs and hotels in his honour.
The Lord Palmerston
THE POPULAR GUNBOAT DIPLOMAT WHO FAILED TO AMUSE QUEEN VICTORIA
Henry John Temple (1784–1865) was born just five years before the revolution that, in France, led to noble families like his own being locked up and taken to the guillotine. Henry, aged just eighteen, became 3rd Viscount Palmerston in April 1802, the year before Napoleon Bonaparte led his newly formed French republic into war against his European neighbours. War-hungry Palmerston became an MP in 1807 and was then given the post of Junior Lord of the Admiralty, thanks to a little smoothing of the way for him by friends of his late father, such was the way politics worked in the good old days. Brought up in such uncertain times, he was to remain obsessed with pre-emptively attacking Britain’s enemies for the rest of his long career
A
s war in Europe raged on, despite great British victories like the one at Trafalgar (see THE ADMIRAL COLLINGWOOD and THE NELSON), Palmerston delivered his debut speech to the House of Commons, in which he defended the expedition to Copenhagen by the Royal Navy, pointing out that Napoleon sought to control the Danish port as it was vital to his overall campaign.
Having impressed all who heard him, Palmerston was offered the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1809 by the new prime minister, Spencer Perceval (1762–1812), who was to find lasting fame by becoming the only British prime minister ever to be assassinated when he was gunned down in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham, a man who blamed the government for his personal financial crisis. (Don’t all rush at once, ladies and gentlemen; form an orderly queue!)
Palmerston instead took the post of secretary of war, with specific responsibilities for the finances of the military forces, a position he held, on and off, for twenty years. From 1830 he became foreign secretary, his abrasive style and uncompromising method of dealing with foreign powers leading to the nickname ‘Lord Pumice Stone’ and to the phrase ‘gunboat diplomacy’. The latter expression arose as a result of what was referred to as the Don Pacifico Incident. In 1850, when British subject David Pacifico was injured in Athens, and the Greeks had refused to compensate him, Palmerston responded by sending a fleet of Royal Navy gunboats to blockade the Greek port of Piraeus until they did.
Defending his actions in a five-hour speech at the House of Commons, Palmerston insisted that any British subject anywhere in the world had a right to be protected by his government against injustice. Unsurprisingly, the speech made him the most popular politician in the country – popular with the people, that is, not the other politicians, who were horrified by his trigger-happy approach to foreign policy. And after much manoeuvring by his rivals, in 1852 he was made home secretary, and thus was powerless to prevent the Crimean War (see THE ALMA) breaking out, which some historians believe he might have been able to stop. Despite arguing for action against the Russians at various key points, he was overruled.
But it was not a successful war and after the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade led to public outrage, Palmerston was finally summoned to Buckingham Palace by Queen Victoria, on 4 February 1855, and invited to form a government, despite her obvious personal dislike for the man. The queen later wrote in her private diary: ‘We had, God knows, terrible trouble with him about Foreign Affairs. Still, as prime minister he managed affairs at home very well and behaved very well to me. But I never liked him.’
The problem was that Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, were closely related to many of the ruling royal families of Europe and they found Palmerston’s uncompromising approach embarrassing, to say the least. Imagine the scene at one of her famous family get-togethers at Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight: ‘Nice lunch, cousin Victoria, but could you ask your ghastly prime minister to get his gunboats out of my harbour?’ But the more he irritated the ruling classes, the more wildly popular he became with the British people, suspicious as ever about all activities of Johnny Foreigner.
Palmerston may have been popular with the working classes, but he cared little about them, even resigning when a bill was proposed to give them the vote. He later wrote to William Gladstone: ‘if we open the door to the working class, the number who may come in may be excessive, and swamp the classes above them. The result would arise not merely from the number let in, but also from the fact that the influx discourages the classes above them from voting at all.’
Pubs named after him sprang up all over Britain, unimpeded by the fact that, in a time of strong moral values, Palmerston was also notorious for his womanizing. When he was caught trying to seduce one of her ladies-in-waiting at Windsor Castle, a furious Victoria wanted him fired, but Lord Melbourne persuaded her to change her mind. This narrow escape didn’t change the behaviour of the man The Times called Lord Cupid. He was even cited as the co-respondent in a divorce case at the age of seventy-nine.
Within a year of being appointed prime minister, Palmerston had signed a peace treaty ending the Crimean War and allowing British soldiers to return home. His efforts earned him the Order of the Garter (see THE STAR AND GARTER), and although his term of office ended on 19 February 1858, he was re-elected for a second term on 12 June 1859, a position he held for over six years, steering Britain through a period in which it had the most powerful empire on earth.
When he won another general election in July 1865, many confidently expected that he would continue in his role for several more years, so there was huge shock when he died suddenly, in a cabinet meeting, two days before his eighty-first birthday, on 18 October 1865. He died in harness, his final words being: ‘Right that’s Article 98; now go on to the rest.’ And he was rewarded by being only the fourth Briton in history outside the royal family to be honoured with a state funeral, the others being Sir Isaac Newton, the Duke of Wellington (see THE IRON DUKE) and Lord Horatio nelson. His name lives on in the many pubs and bars called the Palmerston or the Lord Palmerston.
Lord’s Tavern
(St John’s Wood, London)
THE COMMONER WHO CHANGED THE FACE OF THE ULTIMATE GENTLEMAN’S SPORT
Lord’s Tavern (or Lord’s Tavern Bar & Brasserie, as it’s called these days), the famous bar on St John’s Wood Road, London, has a long association with English cricket. It is often assumed that both the ground and tavern were inspired by the elitism of the game, either by a single lord or a collection of lords who may have grouped together many years past to form a cricket club. But the name provides the clue: Lord’s Tavern and Lord’s Cricket-Ground, not the Lord’s. They aren’t named after a generic nobleman but after a specific, untitled and highly unusual man.
Thomas Lord was born in 1755, the son of a Jacobite rebel (see THE THREE LORDS). Impoverished after the government had seized his land in punishment, his father had to work as a labourer. So from an early age Thomas learned the lesson that you should follow your dream only as long as you’re not out of pocket. Luckily Lord’s dream was a simpler one than his father’s: to play cricket.
As an adult he moved to London and found work at the White Conduit Club in Islington. The WCC was formed in London in about 1780, primarily as a gentlemen’s club whose activities centred chiefly upon the game of cricket, a sport that had become well established in London and the south-east of England. Large sums of money were wagered on the outcome of matches and thus winning was hugely important. While the WCC initially only allowed members of a certain status in society, they also employed professional players with a talent for cricket. Thomas Lord, a well-respected bowler, albeit a commoner from a working-class family, was one of the professionals the nobility took on to raise the quality of their game.
In addition to Lord’s ability on the field, he was also soon recognized for his business acumen and within a few years was effectively running the club. But while the club was exclusive, White Conduit Fields was an open area allowing members of the public, including the rowdier elements, to watch the matches and to voice their opinions on the play and the players, which did not amuse the gentlemen cricketers at all. In 1785 two of the WCC’s leading figures, the Earl of Winchilsea and Colonel Charles Lennox (later the Duke of Richmond), approached Lord with the idea of forming a brand-new cricket club where the gentry did not have to share their facilities with riff-raff. Offering Lord a financial indemnity against any losses he might incur with the new venture, the two men encouraged the bowler to move fast and in 1787 Lord’s Cricket Ground was opened on land leased from the Portland estate in Marylebone.
So the Marylebone Cricket Club was formed, staging its first match on 31 May 1787. A year later, it laid down a set of laws, requiring the wickets to be pitched twenty-two yards apart and detailing how players should be placed. Its laws were adopted throughout the game, and MCC today remains the custodian and arbiter of laws relating to the playing of cricket around the world.
After a short sta
y at Marylebone Bank, Regent’s Park, between 1811 and 1813, Lord’s moved to a new rural ground – previously the site of a duck pond – in St John’s Wood in 1814 but kept the name Marylebone. The ground was soon a major success and attracted hordes of players and spectators, forcing Lord to build a pavilion and refreshment stalls (in those days refreshments were almost always alcoholic). It remains the MCC’s home to this day and it also houses the oldest sporting museum on the planet. The original urn holding the Ashes trophy played for biennually in a series of test matches between England and Australia has been housed at Lord’s since 1882 and never leaves the museum. (The winner of the matches is presented with a replica.)
Despite his noble clients’ promises to underwrite expenses, cricket alone was not enough to keep Lord’s ground afloat and he had to hold all kinds of extra events there, from football matches to balloon ascents, to make ends meet. At the age of seventy, an exhausted Thomas Lord retired from cricket, business and London life, selling his cricket ground to a Bank of England director and respected batsman, William Ward, for £5,000. He died two years later at West Meon in Hampshire and is buried there, in the graveyard of St John’s Church. The church itself is just along the lane from another public house called after the man who gave his name to the most famous cricketing ground, and tavern, in the world.
In 1868, to cater for the growing number of cricket lovers attending matches at Lord’s, the architect Edward Paraire, who specialized in designing pubs and churches, replaced the refreshments stand with a proper building. Called Lord’s Tavern, it was originally located within the ground and had an elegant wrought-iron balcony overlooking the pitch. It was later moved just outside the main gates, along the St John’s Wood Road, but remains one of the most famous pubs in the world, visited by cricketing fans of all nationalities come to London to see their team play.
