Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors

by English Historical Fiction Authors

  by Jenny Barden

  In April 1573 Francis Drake attacked the Spanish “Silver Train” near Nombre de Dios in Panama—this was the mule train loaded with bullion from Peru en route to King Philip II’s treasury in Spain. The attack was a success, a triumph after almost a year of failed attempts in an enterprise that had been beset by disease and misfortune, including the loss of Drake’s two younger brothers and over a third of his crew.

  With the exception of the fatal wounding of Drake’s ally, the Huguenot Captain Le Testu, Drake suffered very few casualties and the Spanish put up little resistance. Effectively they ran away, leaving Drake and his motley band of pirates, black runaway slaves (the Cimaroons), and French privateers in possession of the equivalent in gold and silver of about a fifth of Elizabeth I’s annual revenue.

  But what to do with so much bullion? This is where the story of Drake’s first great enterprise becomes particularly fascinating because he was left with so great a weight in treasure that he and his men could not carry it all away.

  Historians continue to debate over exactly how much was involved. In Sir Francis Drake Revived, the best English account of the raid (one which Drake presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1593), the weight of silver seized is stated to have been “near thirty tons”. There were 190 mules in total, each carrying the standard load of 300 pounds. But the mules were also carrying much more valuable gold which the Spanish, smarting from the humiliation of the raid and no doubt wishing to play down the loss, put at “more than 100,000 pesos” including 18,363 pesos of fine gold from Popayan “consigned to your majesty.”

  This weight in gold alone would have been close to half a ton, and most of it would have been in the form of unminted gold discs or “quoits”.

  Drake had fifteen men with him on the raid, as well as twenty French corsairs and maybe forty Cimaroons. They had attacked the Silver Train about two miles from Nombre de Dios along the Camino Real—the “Royal Road” by which Spanish bullion was carried from the Pacific to the Caribbean—and their boats had been left “seven leagues” away at the Rio Francisco (probably the modern-day Rio Cuango twelve miles to the east).

  Michael Turner of the Drake Exploration Society has done some excellent research in retracing the route they would probably have taken and calculates that the most they could have carried was sixty pounds each. So, of the thirty tons of treasure, Drake’s men could only have taken away just over two tons—and they had to march through a storm that night.

  Imagine what those men must have gone through, burdened with as much as they could possibly carry, sure that the Spanish soldiers from Nombre de Dios would be in hot pursuit, scrambling along a difficult trail through thick rainforest known only to the Cimaroons, in the dark, lashed by a tropical storm and without any sleep. Then, when they arrived back at the Rio Francisco, they discovered that the boats which should have been waiting to take them to safety were nowhere to be seen.

  With typical undaunted panache, Drake improvised a raft out of driftwood left by the storm, with a biscuit sack for a sail, and set off by sea for his ships moored at a hideout in the Cativas (the modern-day San Blas islands), only to come across the pinnaces intended for the getaway at the mainland point (Punta San Blas). The boats had been driven back by the storm, but that night they returned for the rest of Drake’s men and the bulk of the booty.

  What happened to most of the silver which they had been unable to carry? In desperate haste, in the immediate aftermath of the raid, all the treasure that could not be carried had been buried under fallen trees, in the sand and gravel of the shallow islands of the Rio Nombre de Dios, and in the burrows of giant land crabs. A vast number of silver bars, each weighing between 35 and 40 pounds, were simply popped into crab holes.

  A few days later, a small party of Drake’s men returned to the scene of the ambush intent on retrieving this treasure, but they only recovered thirteen bars of silver and a few quoits of gold. The Spanish had found and decapitated Captain Le Testu and then tortured one of the two Frenchmen left with him into revealing where the bullion had been hidden. According to the Spanish, all the buried treasure was recovered, but plainly Drake’s men were able to find some that they had missed. Perhaps there is still more waiting to be unearthed....

  Sources

  “Report of the Royal Officials of Panama to the Crown.” 9 May 1573.

  Sugden, John. Sir Francis Drake. Pimlico, 2006.

  Turner, Michael. In Drake’s Wake. Boston, England: Paul Mould Publishing, 2005.

  “El Camino Real”: A Path Worn through Time

  by Jenny Barden

  What is left of el Camino Real? Stones disappearing into the undergrowth, lost in darkness, veiled by forest mist. Very little remains, but what does conjures up the shadows of the pack trains that used to traverse this vital road across Panama, bringing bullion from the mines of South America from the Pacific side of the isthmus to the Caribbean by the quickest overland route.

  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, el Camino Real, “the Royal Road”, bore the riches that helped sustain the might of the Spanish Empire and its domination in Europe. It stretched from the city of Panama in the south, across mountains and through rainforest, to Nombre de Dios in the north. Over the stones once laid by some 4000 native slaves under the command of Gaspar de Espinosa in 1517-9, pack trains in convoys, often of two or three together totalling some 200 mules or more, would walk, plod, climb, and struggle over this path until their hooves wore hollows that can still be seen in places today.

  The road was never easy. It was only just over sixty miles in length, yet it passed through thick forest and vegetation that proliferated so rapidly the road was in constant need of repair. In the rainy season it became impassable because of the many rivers that had to be forded which turned into torrents once swollen by tropical storms, and even without rain (as I know only too well from experience) the high humidity would soon leave the clothes of any traveller completely saturated.

  Those who took the Royal Road had to contend with mosquitoes that carried malaria and yellow fever, and up in the mountains, where drops were precipitous, when a mule lost its footing it would be gone forever. There were other dangers too: the risk of ambush by Cimaroons—bands of runaway African slaves—and towards the end of the sixteenth century there was the very real threat of pirate attack.

  Chris Haslam noted some of the hazards in his article “The World’s Wildest Walk” for the Sunday Times (3/9/2006):

  Some 300 ft below, the Nombre de Dios river roars through unseen cataracts, a constant reminder of where you end up if you fall. And falling is a constant possibility. The problem is that if you slip, you need to grab something to stop you falling, and if you grab something it will either bite you, spike you or try to tear your hand off. Scorpions, tarantulas and lethal bullet ants lurk in the leaf litter. Deadly eyelash vipers and enormous fer-de-lances lie disguised as branches and roots, and even the flora threatens armed response. Thorns, hooks and barbs shred clothes and skin, causing wounds that go septic in hours, and peaceful looking leaves cause cruel and unusual burns. It’s hard enough hauling a rucksack around here: imagine driving a stolen mule train.

  Francis Drake was the first Englishman to realise the vulnerability of the Spanish bullion supply while it was in transit over the Royal Road, and after several raids along the coast and attacks on shipping for little gain, many setbacks, and a thwarted attempt to ambush the “Silver Train” (as the bullion pack trains were called), he finally achieved a remarkable victory in April 1573 by capturing a convoy carrying almost 30 tons in silver and over half a ton in gold.

  This was Drake’s first great enterprise—the triumph that began his meteoric rise to fame, fortune, and a place in English history books.

  After that attack, the Spanish began to store their treasure at Puerto Bello to the west of Nombre de Dios. (Drake later died o
f dysentery near Puerto Bello after a failed expedition to raid the City of Panama; he is buried at sea in the bay.)

  The Camino Real and its offshoot connecting the Chagres river with the City of Panama—el Camino a Cruces (part of which still survives as Las Cruces Trail)—continued to be used to carry bullion north and merchandise south for another two hundred years.

  In 1671, the buccaneer Henry Morgan used Las Cruces trail to reach the old city of Panama which he then looted and burned to the ground, and in the nineteenth century prospectors used the trail to cross the isthmus on their way to join the gold rush in California. The trail finally came to an end with the construction of the Panama Railroad in 1855. The railway reduced the time needed to cross the isthmus from a minimum of three days, and sometimes several weeks, to only an hour.

  With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 most of the old road was lost forever, flooded by the damming of the Chagres to form Lake Gatun and by the Madden Dam behind which Lake Alajuela now covers a large part of the old trail. The development of Panama City as a metropolis has obliterated much more, and the forest and rivers have swallowed up the rest.

  There are only a few traces left of the highway that once played such an important part in the history of world affairs, traces like the Puente del Matadero in Panama la Vieja, the bridge over which Camino a Cruces began.

  English Ladies-in-Waiting

  by Sandra Byrd

  Having close friends is an important part of most women’s lives from girlhood through womanhood. These friends might be especially valuable when the woman’s position is exalted, public, and potentially treacherous—such friendships take on an even more important role.

  When Oprah Winfrey started her empire she brought along Gayle King. When Kate Middleton was preparing to become Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, her sister Pippa was her constant companion. And when Anne Boleyn went to court to stay, she took her friends too. Among them was her longtime friend, Meg Wyatt, who would ultimately become her Chief Lady and Mistress of Robes.

  Ladies-in-waiting were companions at church, at cards, at dance, and at hunt. They tended to their mistress when she was ill or anxious and also shared in her joys and pleasures. They did not do menial tasks—there were servants for that—but they did remain in charge of important elements of the Queen’s household, for example, her jewelry and wardrobe.

  They were gatekeepers; during the reign of Elizabeth I small bribes were offered for access to Her Majesty. The Queen was expected to assist her maids of honor in becoming polished and finding a good match; they in turn were loyal, obedient, and ornaments of the court. Married women had more freedom, better rooms, and usually more contact with the Queen.

  In her excellent book, Ladies in Waiting, Anne Somerset quotes a lady-in-waiting to Queen Caroline as saying, “Courts are mysterious places.... Intrigues, jealousies, heart-burnings, lies, dissimulations thrive in (court) as mushrooms in a hot-bed.” This is exactly the kind of place where one wants to know whom one can trust. Somerset goes on to tell us that,

  At a time when virtually every profession was an exclusively masculine preserve, the position of lady-in-waiting to the Queen was almost the only occupation that an upperclass Englishwoman could with propriety pursue.

  Although direct control was out of their hands, the power of influence, of knowledge, of gossip, and of relationship networks was within the firm grasp of these ladies.

  Appointment was not only by personal choice of the King or Queen, but was a political decision as well. Queen Victoria’s first stand took place when her new Prime Minister, Robert Peel, meant to replace some of the ladies in her household to reflect the bipartisan English government and keep an equal political balance. According to Maureen Waller in, Sovereign Ladies, Victoria was adamant.

  “I cannot give up any of my ladies,” she told him at their second meeting.

  “What ma’am!” Peel queried, “Does Your Majesty mean to retain them all?”

  “All,” she replied.

  Keeping a political balance was a concern during the Tudor years too. Ladies from all of the important households were appointed to be among the Queen’s ladies, though she held her personal friends in closest confidence. Queen Katherine of Aragon understandably preferred the ladies who had served her for most of her life right up till her death. Queen Anne Boleyn numbered both Wyatt sisters among her closest ladies as well as Nan Zouche.

  Henry told his sixth wife, Queen Kateryn Parr, that she might, “choose whichever women she liked to pass the time with her in amusing manners or otherwise accompany her for her leisure.”

  Many Queens, like Elizabeth I, regularly surrounded themselves with family members, in her case, often those through her mother’s side, hoping that they could trust in their loyalty and perhaps, like all of us, because they most enjoyed the company of those they loved best.

  Childbirth in Early Modern England

  by Sam Thomas

  When we think about the difference between the past and present, our minds often turn to medicine, and with good reason. Who in their right minds would want to return to a world of leeches and blood-letting, of pregnancy without doctors and high death-rates for both mothers and children? But as so many of the writers on this blog have made clear, there is far more behind the history than modern stereotypes, and childbirth is no exception.

  If you were to peek in on a woman in labor (or “in travail” as she might have said), the first thing you might notice is the people in the room. There would be a midwife rather than a doctor, of course, and you’d not find her husband—until the eighteenth century at the very earliest, childbirth was the business of women.

  Rather than doctors, nurses, and bright lights, the mother would be surrounded by her female friends and neighbors—her god-sibs or gossips—who came to help, socialize, to see and be seen, and at a more general level, just to make sure that everything went right.

  (Before we join hands and start to sing Kumbaya, it’s worth noting that sometimes gossips argued with each other, with the midwife, and even with the mother. Imagine if your own mother were present—and giving you advice—when you were in labor.)

  Unlike today, when most women deliver while lying on their backs (good for the doctor, not so good for the mother), early modern women gave birth in a more upright position, either held by two of her gossips or sitting on a birthing stool, or both. While other women could participate in the delivery of the child, only the midwife had the right to touch the mother’s “privities.”

  Once the child was born, the midwife would cut the umbilical cord (for boys, the longer the cord, the longer his, um, equipment; for girls, the shorter the cord, the tighter her privities), swaddle the child, and hand her over to the mother.

  The question of maternal mortality has been much discussed, and our best guess is that 5-7% of births ended in the death of the mother. In some cases, death might be caused by an obstructed birth, but more often mothers died some weeks after delivery, usually of puerperal fever, a bacterial infection contracted during childbirth. Thus, while individual incidents of maternal death were not terribly common, most women would know a woman who had died in labor.

  After giving birth, the mother would enjoy a period of lying-in. During these forty days, she would be confined to her room, free from the demands of household labor. During this time, her neighbors would visit, but she would not go out into public. At the end of her lying-in, the mother would go to her parish church and give thanks to God for her survival, and resume the heavy work of a wife and mother.

  Mother Mourning: Childbed Fever in Tudor Times

  by Sandra Byrd

  Black death. The Great Pestilence. Plague. Sweating Sickness. The very words themselves cause us to shudder, and they certainly caused those in centuries past to quake because they and their loved ones were often afflicted by those diseases. But when we s
urvey the physical ailments that afflicted sixteenth century women, there is one death that caused the deepest fear among women: Childbed Fever, also known as Puerperal Fever and later called The Doctors’ Plague.

  Medieval and Tudor medicine centered around both astrology and the common belief that all health and illness was contained in balance or imbalance of the four “humours” of bodily fluids: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Therefore, the letting of blood or sniffing of urine were common practices to address or diagnose illness.

  Although it seems ludicrous to us today, this understanding of medicine had reigned supreme for nearly 2000 years, coming down from Greek and Roman philosophical systems. It’s been said that perhaps only 10-15% of those living in the Tudor era made it past their fortieth birthday. Common causes of illness leading to death? Lack of hygiene and sanitation.

  Decades before the germ theory was validated in the late nineteenth century, Hungarian physician Ignac Semmelweis noticed that women who gave birth at home had a lower incidence of Childbed Fever than those who gave birth in hospitals. Statistics showed that, “Between 1831 and 1843 only 10 mothers per 10,000 died of Puerperal Fever when delivered at home...while 600 per 10,000 died on the wards of the city’s General Lying In Hospital.”

  Higher born women, those with access to expensive doctors, suffered from Childbed Fever more frequently than those attended by midwives who saw fewer patients and not usually one after another.

  In 1795, Dr. Alexander Gordon wrote, “It is a disagreeable declaration for me to mention, that I myself was the means of carrying the infection to a great number of women.” Although they did not realize it at the time, it was, in fact, the sixteenth century doctors themselves who were transmitting death and disease to delivering mothers because the doctors did not disinfect their hands or tools in between patients.