The Stuarts in 100 Facts

by Andrea Zuvich

  4. THE BILLS OF MORTALITY INCLUDED SOME TRULY HORRIFIC CAUSES OF DEATH

  Death by intestinal worms, anyone? While most people, according to the figures listed in the Bills of Mortality, died from such common ailments as ‘childbed’, ‘ague’ and ‘fever’, there were some that can only be described as horrific. So what were the Bills of Mortality? These papers were statistics published weekly about the causes of death (mortality) for that week, and as such are a great resource. That being said, diagnosis during the Stuart age was not very specific, so those listed under one disease probably had another. We have to keep in mind that life for most people was quite insalubrious. There was little notion of infection control, germs or basic hygiene.

  Those who died suffering from mental disorders were under ‘Lunatick and frenzy’. Suicides are also mentioned, for they ‘hanged and made away ‘emselves’. A look at the week of 20–27 September 1670 indicates the usual suspects: ‘Aged’ – or elderly – with twenty-four deaths, ‘Consumption’ or tuberculosis with sixty-four deaths, but the cause of the most deaths that week was ‘Griping in the guts’, with a whopping 150 deaths. ‘Egad! What is that?’ you may well ask. Think about the worst upset stomach you’ve ever had, plus violent diarrhoea, and you get an idea of what this was like.

  Parasites were an unfortunate aspect of daily life in Stuart Britain, and many people suffered and died from typhus and plague – and then there were the worms. Intestinal worms were parasites that would lay eggs in the intestines and eat the nutrients from the food a person ate, but then they’d also begin eating away the intestines too. This was awful, and physicians later gave patients potentially dangerous remedies, which contained toxic substances, to combat it. Intestinal worms are still a problem, but they can now be killed with a dose of the drug mebendazole. The ‘Bloody flux’ was another intestinal affliction most commonly believed to be a form of dysentery, which involved frequent and bloody diarrhoea.

  Malaria, which is usually contracted from a mosquito bite, crops up in the Bills of Mortality as well. In the European Malaria Epidemic of 1678–82, thousands of people became infected with the disease; it made its victims feverish, fatigued, and sweaty, but it could also kill. Over a thousand people died of this malarial fever in the autumn of 1680 alone. Even royals were not immune: Charles II contracted it and his niece, Mary, Princess of Orange, often suffered from malarial ‘agues’.

  Lifestyles and their accompanying diseases have changed rather considerably since the Stuart period. On the one hand, people in wealthier nations are living a good deal longer than their Stuart-era ancestors and aren’t dying from worms, plague, dysentery or griping in the guts. On the other, most of the Bills of Mortality indicate very low numbers of deaths for cancer and diabetes compared to our time now. According to the WHO, cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes account for the most of the deaths today among those who live in higher-income societies.

  5. THE COFFEEHOUSE WAS THE PLACE TO BE

  Coffee is unquestionably one of the most popular beverages in the world. During the Stuart era, coffee was one of a bevy of exotic foods and beverages that came into Britain – and it certainly caused a stir. Alcoholic beverages imbibed in taverns and alehouses were still extremely popular, but the new coffee drink could be enjoyed without a hangover and so it became popular with the intellectuals of the day. That being said, some people mixed liquor into their coffee. Coffee wasn’t the only hot beverage consumed in a coffeehouse, for coffee’s equally exotic cousins, hot chocolate and tea, were also served.

  These establishments were also places in which men could smoke (this custom famously being brought over from the New World by Sir Walter Raleigh during Elizabeth’s reign), and so the interiors of coffeehouses would be smoky as men smoked the tobacco from their long clay pipes. Stuart-era scientist Robert Hooke enjoyed partaking of a coffee and a smoke in his favourite coffee house, Jonathan’s, in Exchange Alley. Coffeehouses popped up all over town, including Will’s, Lloyd’s, Garaway’s, Man’s (Wren’s favourite) and The Grecian, among others.

  Coffeehouses were not just places in which one could relax or discuss intellectual matters; they were also the perfect locations for business. Auctions took place in these establishments as well. The aforementioned Lloyd’s Coffee House on Tower Street in the City of London was owned by Edward Lloyd and became important in the world of finance and insurance, for it was here that Lloyd’s of London – one of the major specialist markets – was founded. The latest newspapers would be on the tables and men could discuss politics and even exchange gossip.

  Political discussions could lead into political dissent and so coffeehouses began to be seen as dangerous establishments – nests of sedition and intrigue. This can clearly be seen when Charles II decided to close coffeehouses. On 29 December 1675, the king issued a Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee-Houses, stating that they ‘have produced very evil and dangerous effects’. Unsurprisingly, the backlash was huge. The Eighteenth-century historian and philosopher David Hume wrote, ‘The king, therefore, observing the people to be much dissatisfied, yielded to a petition of the coffee-men, who promised for the future to restrain all seditious discourse in their houses.’ As a result, Charles had the proclamation recalled.

  That being said, the king was not the only one annoyed by the allure of the coffeehouses. In 1674, wives joined up and published The Women’s Petition Against Coffee! In this, they claimed that coffee – an ‘abominable, heathenish liquor’ – made their husbands impotent, among other things. Why didn’t these ladies simply join their husbands for a cup or two? Women generally were not allowed in coffeehouses unless they worked there, and in sketches and drawings from the time, there is usually a woman behind the counter – the customers are all men. Women were more likely to go into the various eating-rooms that could be found. Eventually, coffeehouses evolved into gentlemen’s clubs.

  6. JOHN AUBREY WASN’T VERY GOOD AT COMPLETING HIS PROJECTS

  We all know someone who starts a project with great enthusiasm only to end up never completing it. Whether due to procrastination, an interminable drive for perfection, or merely a loss of interest, John Aubrey (born in 1625/6) was not very good at completing his projects. Take for example his most famous work, Brief Lives, which is a series of mini biographies of important people that lived in his lifetime or before. It makes for a fascinating and slightly gossipy read, but for the fact it was never truly completed – and the Brief Lives we can read today has been meticulously edited and compiled by other people over the three centuries since his death.

  Aubrey’s other works were also unfinished and needed helping hands to sort them out for publication. Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects was begun by Aubrey in 1652 and he kept working on it, off and on, until the 1690s. At that point he sent it to James, Earl of Abingdon, and wrote, ‘It was my intention to have finished my Description of Wiltshire (half finished already) … but my age is now far too spent for such undertakings.’ Accordingly, he gave the task of completing it to a certain Thomas Tanner. Aubrey died in 1697. Whatever the reasons were for his seeming inability to complete his projects, his passion and devotion to keeping a record of historical people are commendable – and the bits of his work that is available are certainly enjoyable and enlightening.

  7. GEORGE VILLIERS ENJOYED A METEORIC RISE TO POWER, BUT A VILE END

  George Villiers had it all: incredibly good looks, intelligence, charisma, and the most powerful benefactor in the country – the king. James I (VI of Scotland) was a rather odd fellow, whose court was considered debauched in comparison with that of his predecessor. While very learned, the king had a proclivity for being quite coarse and vulgar at times. He had several male favourites (who were rumoured to have been his lovers) including Robert Carr (or Kerr), Earl of Somerset, and George Villiers. It was the latter, Villiers, who has become considered as the most important of James’s favourites.

  King James and George Villiers had a very affectionate correspondence,
in which the latter was referred to as ‘Steenie’ (after the beautiful St Stephen) and also referred to as his ‘sweet child and wife’. Villiers, in turn, called James ‘Dad’. James heaped honours and titles onto his handsome young favourite – including making him the 1st Duke of Buckingham. Villiers’ meteoric rise to fame and fortune made him both fiercely hated and loved. Buckingham and James referred to Prince Charles, who would later become the ill-fated Charles I, as ‘Baby Charles’. After initially disliking Buckingham, Charles ended up with a strong admiration for him. Buckingham seduced and married the very wealthy heiress, Katherine Manners, which made for a great scandal at the time. George had several lovers, including Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, and there were even rumours that he was romantically involved with Queen Anne of France.

  When James died and Charles became king on the 27 March 1625, George’s position was stronger than ever because the new king depended upon him greatly. When Charles married the French princess Henrietta Maria later that year, she detested her husband’s favourite. One can only be on the top for so long, and in 1628 George Villiers soon came to a sticky end when he stayed in the Greyhound Inn in Portsmouth. There, John Felton, a disgruntled seaman who had come to blame Buckingham for his troubles, stabbed the thirty-five-year-old to death. Buckingham’s assassination was met with widespread approval, as he had been almost universally despised for some time. Many had come to see him not only as completely incompetent in both the political and military arenas, but also plain wicked.

  Charles gave his dear friend a splendid state funeral, but the route was lined with hostile persons who spat towards the coffin as it went by. Felton paid for his (rather popular) crime by hanging from the Tyburn tree two months later, in late November 1628. Even Henrietta Maria, who for much of her early marriage was in Buckingham’s shadow, was pleased with one notable outcome of his demise: husband and wife grew closer and they embarked upon a much happier relationship.

  George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham’s legacy has been assured, thanks to the historical fiction literature of the nineteenth century – he is best known now as a key figure in Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers.

  8. CHARLES II COULDN’T KEEP IT IN HIS PANTS

  One of the tawdriest facts about the Stuarts is that several of them were highly sexed, and perhaps none more so than Charles II – who didn’t seem able to keep it in his pants. His many romantic, and later adulterous, liaisons are the most popular subject about him and unfortunately tend to overshadow the various political events of his reign. Unlike his father, Charles I, the second Charles proved to be a blatant, serial womaniser who had thirteen illegitimate children (that we know of!) and more mistresses than we could say. Charles II is not known as ‘the Merry Monarch’ for nothing …

  Lucy Walter, the attractive Welsh Royalist exile, was Charles’s first major mistress. In April 1649, she bore him his eldest and most beloved son, ‘Jemmy’, James Crofts, later James Scott, Duke of Monmouth. After Charles’s ardour had cooled, Jemmy was taken from his mother and Lucy eventually died in poverty.

  Next came the volatile Barbara Palmer, née Villiers, who was as calculating and domineering as she was beautiful and fecund (she gave birth to five children with Charles). Barbara was capable of some major scenes of histrionics when she didn’t get her way and Charles eventually got fed up with her behaviour.

  ‘Pretty, witty Nell’, as described by Samuel Pepys, is by far the most popular of all of Charles II’s many mistresses. Her rise from impoverished orange-seller to popular actress to king’s mistress was no mean feat. Nell gave her lover more children, sought and obtained the freehold on her London property and also owned Burford House in Windsor.

  Nell’s contemporary rival was Louise de Kerouaille, whom Charles referred to affectionately as ‘Fubbs’ because she was a little chubby. As popular as Nell was, Louise was reviled, because she was French and Catholic – two things that were quite unpopular in Stuart England at the time. Charles bestowed upon his French mistress the title of Duchess of Portsmouth.

  Both Nell and Louise were sidelined when Italian beauty Hortense Mancini arrived on the scene. Hortense was one of the gaggle of Cardinal Mazarin’s nieces who were popularly referred to as The Mazarinettes. Hortense was a promiscuous, pleasure-loving, whirlwind of a woman, and liked to push the envelope. Unfortunately, she pushed things way too far when she began an affair with one of Charles’s daughters, Anne. She may have also had a relationship with the female Restoration playwright Aphra Behn.

  Charles also bedded the actress Moll Davis, who unfortunately fell foul of one of Nell’s jokes. Nell gave her food laced with a strong laxative and when Charles came for his assignation with her she was rather under the weather! Despite his obvious inability (or refusal) to be faithful, Charles seemed to be fond of his wife, Catherine of Braganza. Although he had been under great pressure to divorce her from his ministers in order to have legitimate children with another, he never did. He must have (dare we say it?) loved Catherine, in his own way.

  9. MATHEMATICAL GENIUS ISAAC NEWTON THWARTED A COUNTERFEITER

  Isaac Newton, Fellow of the Royal Society, is remembered in history as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. Newton, the genius behind the theory of gravity and the author of scientific works Principia Mathematica and The Opticks, was a Cambridge professor who thrived on intellectual discussion and alchemical experimentation. Although he had an inauspicious birth in Lincolnshire in 1642, he did very well in his studies and became a major early figure in the Enlightenment due to his many scientific achievements. He was known for being exacting and was often getting into arguments with fellow scientists such as Robert Hooke and John Flamsteed, among others.

  It may come as a surprise that this great man of mathematics and science was called upon to put a stop to counterfeit money, but that’s precisely what happened in the 1690s. Counterfeiting was a major problem during this time, and Charles Montague, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, believed that Newton was the best person to sort it all out. The currency was devalued and many coins were clipped, meaning people cut slivers off coins from around the sides, and these clippings were melted down and mixed with inferior metals; the whole circumstance was severely devaluing the nation’s currency.

  And so in 1696, Newton became a Warden at the Royal Mint (which was then based in the Tower of London), and this is where he oversaw the production of new, state-of-the-art coins. On 2 May 1696, Newton had to take an oath before three Lords of the Treasury that he would not ‘reveal or discover to any person or persons whatsoever, the new invention of rounding the money and making the edges of them with letters or grainings’. In other words, he had to keep everything a secret. In 1698, Newton oversaw the Great Recoinage, wherein coin money was created in such a way as to prevent currency clipping. This is why we have ridges and designs on the sides of coins.

  According to Newton and the Counterfeiter author Thomas Levenson, William Chaloner was a very successful counterfeiter who produced £30,000 of counterfeit money. Chaloner was a tricky devil because he was intelligent and ruthless. His nasty streak included going around to printers and trying to see which ones would print his phony Jacobite pamphlets. He informed on those who agreed to print them and these printers were sentenced to death. Once Newton was on Chaloner’s trail, however, the counterfeiter’s days were numbered. After some cat-and-mouse chasing, Newton finally caught Chaloner. On 3 March 1699, Chaloner was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on 22 March 1699. Newton, now a hero, was given the position of the Master of the Royal Mint – one he would keep until his death in 1727.

  Next time you think about Isaac Newton, remember that he was not only a mathematical genius … he was a crime fighter!

  10. GUY FAWKES WAS NEITHER AN ANARCHIST NOR THE RINGLEADER OF THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

  5 November, commonly known as Guy Fawkes Day, celebrates the thwarting of the plot to blow up Parliament, which would hav
e assassinated James I and leading politicians in attendance. Modern popular culture has turned Guy Fawkes into a major figurehead for anarchy and left-wing politics. The real Guy couldn’t have been more different. Fawkes, like the rest of the plotters, was in fact a very conservative Catholic, who was deeply unhappy with how Catholics were being persecuted. Before the massive upheaval of the English Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, begun during the reign of Henry VIII, England had been a predominantly Catholic country. Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church and established himself as the Head of the Church of England. The plotters didn’t want anarchy, but to bring the country back to what it had been – Catholic – or at least to be able to worship freely.

  When everyone gets caught up in talking about Guy Fawkes, they tend to forget about one very important detail: he was just a minor figure. The leader of the Gunpowder Plot was actually Sir Robert Catesby, whose family, like many others, had become disenfranchised under the harsh anti-Catholic laws. Catesby had several other co-conspirators: Thomas Percy, Francis Tresham, John Wright, Christopher Wright, Thomas Winter, Robert Winter, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby, Robert Keyes, John Grant, and Guido Fawkes. They didn’t even want to abolish the monarchy, but instead to install James’s daughter Elizabeth as a Catholic queen (her elder brother Henry would probably be killed in the blast). The vaults which lay beneath the chamber were available to rent and the conspirators rented the space and began filling it with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder (hence the ‘Gunpowder Plot’).