The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

My last blog post spoke of the history of Gloucester in the Roman and Saxon periods.  Gloucester, another ancient city in England, is the West Country setting in 1392 for my third novel, Memento Mori, in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  I would like today to describe some surviving medieval buildings that appear in this novel, either in their full splendor or as ruins.  The Abbey of Saint Peter will be my starting point.

This medieval abbey survived the 16^th century dissolution of the monasteries by becoming Gloucester Cathedral in the newly formed Diocese of Gloucester, carved out of the Diocese of Worcester, more than a century after Memento Mori is set.  The church building, both inside and out, is much the same as it was in 1392.  The nave, as shown in the first picture above, is a good example of Norman architecture while the Quire was remodeled in the 14^th century to have a Gothic façade covering its Norman base, with a Gothic vault raised above the original Norman roof.  This Gothic quire is shown above on the left.

Lady Apollonia visited the the nave and quire of the abbey church in my story, to pay her respects to the tomb of King Edward II located between the ambulatory in the north quire aisle and the quire itself.  Edward II had been killed earlier in the 14^th century in Gloucestershire, but his tomb only found a home at the Abbey of Saint Peter after being rejected by Kingswood Abbey, an event mentioned in my first book, Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.  King Edward III, the son of Edward II, bestowed generous gifts upon the Abbey of Saint Mary in Gloucester, not only to set up a regal memorial for his father but also to upgrade the entire quire area to its present Gothic splendor.

The great church where Apollonia visited King Edward II’s tomb was not the only building of the Abbey of Saint Peter to play a role in my story, however.  Another was the abbot’s lodging which still stands next to the present cathedral church.  It is shown just beyond the cloisters in the picture to the lower right, taken from atop the central tower.  Near the top of the picture is Saint Mary’s Gate which was an important entry to the abbey in the 14^th century.

Stedmund Falford, one of the villains in my previous novel, Plague of a Green Man, appears again operating under a false identity in this story.  Still he presents himself as a member of the noblility and seeks to be received as a guest of the abbot in these lodgings.  Another surviving building of the abbey which was important was its infirmary.  This is the site where Stedmund Falford, seeking sanctuary, comes to his worldly end after escaping his captors.  Some of its ruins remain today and are shown in the picture at the end of this post.

In my next posting, we will return to medieval Gloucester to show more ancient buildings that appear in the story of Memento Mori.

The city of Gloucester was my choice for the setting of Memento Mori, the third novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  Gloucester has a compelling history, going back to Roman times and the occupation of England under Emperor Claudius.

Cirencester in Gloucestershire became the site of a Roman fort shortly after the Roman invasion in AD 43.  Concern about Welsh threats to the west meant that Gloucester soon became a site of defensive interest.  The River Severn, flowing between Wales and England, is the longest in Great Britain.  I have already written about the Severn because the village of Aust, site of my first novel, was the best location for a ferry to cross the Severn Estuary from England to Wales.  Gloucester, to the north, became important to the Romans as the southernmost location where the Severn could be forded at low tide or bridged.  The Romans built a fort there around AD 50 at Kingsholm, just north of the present city center of Gloucester.

In AD 68, the Romans moved their legion south to the present center of Gloucester which was known to them by the name Glevum.  A model in the city museum pictured above, shows a rectangular Roman Glevum next to a branch of the River Severn that has since silted up.

Around AD 96-98, the legion moved west to try to conquer Wales, but the Emperor Nerva promoted the fort to become the Nervan Colony of Glevum.  A statue of the emperor along Southgate Street in Gloucester is pictured on the left.  The status of being resident in a colonia conferred Roman citizenship on the local residents and second century Glevum contained many of the features we associate with Roman towns: baths, a forum, houses and villas with mosaic floors and piped water, and a basilica or town hall.  The Roman street pattern was rectangular with streets leading directly to the gates.  The location of the main gates and the streets connecting them to a central crossing changed little by medieval times.  This leads to names like Westgate and Southgate Streets being referred to in my story of Memento Mori.  The picture at the end of this post shows a sign in an excavation by Boots the Chemist, showing remnants of the Roman East Gate to the city.

By the fourth century, Roman troops were being moved elsewhere, trade was disrupted, and eventually the Romans left Britain in AD 410.  This void was initially filled by the local Celtic peoples who had been in Britain before the Roman occupation.  Saxons invaded and came into the area a couple of centuries later and during this period, monasteries were founded, two of which are important in the story of Memento Mori, set in 1392.  One of these was the Abbey of Saint Peter, the church of which became Gloucester Cathedral after the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII in the sixteenth century.  This abbey was founded around AD 679.  The other monastery important to my novel is Saint Oswald’s Priory, not far to the west of Saint Peter’s.  It was founded in AD 890.

In my next posting, I will discuss these and other medieval buildings which either survive or have ruins still visible in the present day.

After setting my first two Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries in the village of Aust and the city of Exeter, I chose the ancient city of Gloucester for my third novel, Memento Mori.  As with Aust and Exeter, Gloucester also fascinated me because of its great antiquity, many medieval churches, monastic remnants, and Roman origins.

It was necessary for me to learn more about medieval Gloucester before I could begin writing my story, and I was able to accomplish this in several ways.  My husband and I took a research trip to the city in 2012 during which I was fortunate to meet a well-known local historian, Philip Moss, whose personal studies and insight were invaluable and whose friendship I cherish to this day.  Staff at the tourist information centre, the museums and the library in Gloucester were also extremely helpful, and being on site, I could explore surviving medieval buildings and ancient ruins still in place.

Those medieval survivors, along with the city’s ancient street patterns, allowed me to visualize how the city might have looked in 1392, the year I chose for the setting of Memento Mori.  The photo above shows St. Kyneburgh’s tower and wall to its left.  The tower is a contemporary construction which marks the location of the medieval wall near the medieval south gate as well as the Chapel of St. Kyneburgh.  The tower in the photo shows where St. Kyneburgh’s Well was situated just outside the medieval wall.  These locations had a role in my book.

My husband took many pictures of medieval survivors to help support my memory and my notes.  Today’s cathedral in the city was a significant abbey church in the late fourteenth century and still appears, inside and out, much as it would have looked back then.  Its great east window, shown on the left, existed in the year of my story, 1392, and still looks as it did when my heroine visited the abbey in my story.  There are other medieval churches and monastic ruins referred to in the story which I will mentioned in future postings and will include some pictures as well.

Online sources in Exeter had helped me gain information about that ancient city for my second book, Plague of a Green Man, but I couldn’t find anything online which was good for Gloucester until Ian Mortimer, one of my favorite English historians of the medieval period, responded to an email inquiry by suggesting that I try the British History Online.  This is the ongoing digitization of a century-long Victorian history project that still is not completed.  To help me study Gloucester, this website was a great suggestion and extremely helpful.

Gloucester is located upstream on the River Severn from the village of Aust where my first novel, Effigy of the Cloven Hoof, is set.  The Severn River is tidal, and Gloucester is the first city, going upstream from Aust, where the Severn could be forded at low tide or bridged in those days; important for access to Wales in the west. In the 14^th Century, Gloucester was an important medieval port city, second only to Bristol in the West Country.  Like Aust, it was part of the Diocese of Worchester at that time.

In the next postings, I will focus on the city of Gloucester: its history, ancient churches, and some of its monasteries which play a role in my story; the building which inspired Lady Apollonia’s home in the city, Windemere House; and various important trades in the city, especially wool.  Later, my postings will address other topics that arise in Memento Mori such as the plague, Lollardy, and anchorites.

While I am speaking of topics in my second book, Plague of a Green Man, shown on the left, I also seek to describe a medieval Christmas and how differently it would have been celebrated in the 14^th century.  The Lady Apollonia’s household, Christmas is celebrated near the end of my story.  Much of this posti ng is repeated from my posting of December 23, 2016.

Some aspects of the celebration of Christmas when Plague of a Green Man was set in 1380, have come down to us today but much has been added to the celebration that was not part of Christmas in Lady Apollonia’s day.  The name of the holiday “Christmas” comes from the Middle English usage “Christ’s Mass” when on the 24th and 25th of December, there were three masses celebrated:  the Angel’s Mass at midnight, the Shepherd’s Mass at dawn, and the Mass of the Divine Word during the day.  In my story, Plague of a Green Man, Lady Apollonia and her husband are able, with her chaplain and household, to observe each of the masses in their family chapel newly built in Exeter House.

A holiday banquet was an important part of the celebration of Christmas in medieval times.  We often have turkey for our Christmas dinner, but turkeys came from the New World long after the time of my story.  Any medieval family that could afford it in 14^th century England would prepare a yule boar for the feast.  More humble tables might substitute a meat pie shaped like a boar.  Churches, chapels, and homes were colorfully decorated for the holiday with ivy, mistletoe, holly, and anything green in the midst of winter.

In my story, the Lady Apollonia’s Exeter House also included a life-sized crèche, created outdoors in the back garden by Friar Francis, the Lady’s chaplain.  The first Christmas crèche was a Franciscan holiday tradition begun in the early 13^th century by Saint Francis of Assisi that became popular throughout Europe.  The image to the right shows a modern Christmas crèche that my husband and I found in Lichfield Cathedral in England.  The medieval version put the emphasis on the Christ child and the animals while the more contemporary crèche has added Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and wise men.

Medieval Christmas in England was not a single day in the year.  All of Advent was a part of its celebration and involved fasting before the major feast on Christmas day.  It continued until Epiphany, 12 days later.  Some folk even prolonged their festivities for forty days after Christmas until February 2.  That part of the holiday had begun as an ancient pagan festival but became Candlemas in the Christian calendar or alternatively celebrated the Presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple.

There were special religious days immediately after Christmas Day as well.  The first was an important saint’s day honoring Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, rather than the Boxing Day holiday on modern English calendars for December 26.  The day after that was dedicated to Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, while December 28 was Holy Innocents’ Day commemorating the male children killed by King Herod.  We should also be aware that gifts were not exchanged on a medieval Christmas Day but on New Year’s Day.

Please join us next month, to discuss topics from my third Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery, Memento Mori, set in Gloucester in 1392.

My novels are set in the West Country of medieval England, so it is necessary that I use some terms and expressions that are peculiar to that period.  Many are familiar to us in the 21^st century but had medieval meanings which we no longer use.  I would like to comment on several of these terms that appear in my second book in the Lady Apollonia Mystery Series, Plague of a Green Man, the cover of which appears on the left.

My heroine and her second husband were in the woolen trade, a vastly important part of the medieval economy, and this required the use of specific terms relevant to the trade.  My story is set in Exeter, Devon, where an official of the woolen trade called the “aulnage” had his residence.  The aulnage was a royal official whose duty was to examine all cloth offered for sale and see that it conformed to the requirements of English law.  Not surprisingly, that official becomes one of the characters in my story.  I also use the phrase: “the cloth of assize”.  That was cloth measuring 24 twenty-four yards by two yards which was used as a standard.

Another important character in this story and my other novels is Bandon Landow, a Pardoner, or an ecclesiastical official charged with the granting of Indulgences.  An Indulgence is a document containing a partial remission of punishment in purgatory, still due for sin after one’s absolution.  The medieval church saw itself able to offer Indulgences because of its control of something called the Treasury of Merit, defined in the medieval church as a treasury of the goodness and merits of Christ and all the saints, left in the keeping of the Church.  In the later Middle Ages, the sale of indulgences became a significant means of raising funds.

Brandon Landow is based somewhat on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Pardoner in The Canterbury Tales.  Brandon is a devious person who is more interested in enriching himself than in serving the church in which he holds clerical status.  He did this by selling fake relics and reliquaries in addition to the indulgences mentioned above.  Relics in the medieval church were an ecclesiastical term referring to the body, a part of the body or a personal memorial of a saint or members of the Holy Family regarded as worthy of veneration.  Ancient churches always offered a series of important relics where believers could come and pray.  These relics were often a bodypart of a saint, an item which had belonged to a saint, or even the blood of Christ.  It was believed that such relics were the physic remains of a holy person through whom a sinner could seek God’s help.  Many churches included a “reliquary”, a beautifully crafted receptacle for a relic where the believer could kneel and pray for such intervention.  The jeweled reliquary of Saint Foy, which is over a thousand years old, can be found in Conques, France.  It is shown on the right.

A minor character in the story of this book is a “doctor of physic” where physic, in the 14^th century, is any medicine or drug, especially one that purges.  The term “doctor of physic” in the medieval period, referred to a highly regarded and successful medical practitioner.

Another important disease term which appears in this and in several of my other novels is leprosy.  This word was not well defined in the medieval period and was applied to many diseases of the skin.  In Plague of a Green Man, I also refer to the “mass of separation”.  This was a mass, spoken by a priest, performed at a leper’s hut, forbidding him or her to have any human contact in religious or human society, to drink at any stream or fountain, or to touch anything belonging to another human being.  Medieval society ostracized anyone who was deemed to be a leper.

Finally, I want to comment on the term “sanctuary” which plays an important role in my story.  We think of the word as designating a special place for worship, but it had another important meaning in the medieval period.  Sanctuary was a holy place where fugitives could seek refuge and were entitled to find immunity from arrest.  Two of my villains seek such refuge in Exeter Cathedral.

I include such period definitions and terms in the glossary at the end of each novel so that my readers may understand and feel themselves returned to a time centuries ago.

The title of my second book in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series is Plague of a Green Man and the cover picture, shown above, is a “green man” roof boss in the south quire aisle of the cathedral in Exeter, Devon, where the book is set.  There is a bit of a stretch in my use of “Green Man” in the title of a medieval mystery because this phrase was not used to describe these foliate faces until 1939.

Besides the green man shown above, I was aware, when living in Exeter, of over fifty instances of these foliate faces in Exeter Cathedral.  That number is now known to be over sixty, as I learned in my most recent visit to Exeter in 2018.  Also, we have learned through our travels that one will find stone and wood carvings of them in many medieval churches throughout western Europe and England.  My inspiration for the idea of “Green Man” developed from my time as a steward and guide at Exeter Cathedral, which also plays an important role in the plot of Plague of a Green Man.

The presence of “green men” in Christian churches is very mysterious.  We do not really know their symbolic meaning in a Christian church.  Did they have something to do with a good harvest or with fertility?  People have suggested many things. but perhaps the medieval carvers simply added them to the decoration of the church without instruction from clergy?  After all, it is thought that a master mason of Exeter Cathedral added carvings of his dog in at least four important locations scattered around the building.  One example is the corbel in the Lady Chapel which is shown on the left.  Even though it is prominent and easy to see, no one wastes time worrying about whether the dog has hidden symbolic meaning.  The beloved puppy is a beautiful representation of human love for a faithful pet.

There are variations in how “green men” are depicted throughout Exeter Cathedral.  It is usually a bearded male face, whose hair, beard, and mustache are shown as leafy foliage.  Sometimes the leaves may be growing out of its mouth or nostrils or even its eyes.  A double green man in the retroquire of Exeter Cathedral with foliage growing from the two mouths is shown on the right.

It is known that the ancient Celtic people of the British Isles, served by the Druids of their tribes, believed in the “cult of the head”.  They believed that the human soul resides in the head.  The Celts also worshiped nature.  Therefore, a foliate face might have represented to a medieval carver his presentation of the human head as residence of the human soul, adorned by nature.  We will never know the precise meaning of such symbolism in a great church for there are no records of such things.  Further, the Druids, as the priestly class of the Celts committed everything to memory, never wrote anything down.

It was an extraordinary opportunity for me, as an American, to live in Exeter several different years and have daily access to the city’s 14^th century Cathedral of St. Peter.  Being able to experience the ancient church firsthand and be able to study its history is a high point of my life and the most important source of my desire to place my series in the late 14^th century in the West Country of England.

My posts in June featured the City of Exeter, the setting of my second Lady Apollonia Medieval Mystery, Plague of a Green Man.  First, I described how living in Exeter had inspired me to write this story and set it in that city in the year 1380.  My last post dealt with the history of Exeter and some of its surviving medieval buildings which played a role in the book.  Now, I will speak to the ancient city of Exeter and its location in the County of Devon on the River Exe as shown on the map above.

The River Exe has it source in North Devon in what is now the Exmoor National Park.  It flows south through Exeter and widens into the Exe Estuary before it reaches Lyme Bay in the English Channel by the present town of Exmouth.  Dartmoor, the first national park in England, lies to the West of the Exe Estuary, and it is there that that Plague of a Green Man begins.

Brandon Landow, the Pardoner in my stories, finds himself lost in one of the infamous fogs of Dartmoor while riding his faithful mare, “Absolution”.  The Pardoner has been told that he is to meet someone at Grimspound which is at the far left of the map shown above.  Unknown to him, however, Grimspound is a barren sight, the ruin of a Bronze Age settlement, as shown in the image on the right.  Before Brandon can get near Grimspound, he is enveloped by the blinding Dartmoor fog, made famous in Victorian times as the setting for the Sherlock Holmes novel Hound of the Baskervilles.  In desperation, Landow follows a stream flowing eventually to the village Lustleigh where he gains refuge in the village church from the disorientating fog.

Several villages to the south and east of Exeter also play a role in my story.  On the map above, two places are important, Exmouth and Beer, both facing Lyme Bay and the English Channel.  Exmouth in medieval times had two ecclesiastical parishes, Withycombe Raleigh to the west and Littleham to the east as shown on the map.

The villains in my story are members of the Falford Family whose manor is in the parish of Withycombe Raleigh, and some of the action in the story takes place at their manor.  Other characters, Adam Braund and his friend Eric Aunk, spend some time at Adam’s home in Littleham parish and also on the River Exe where Adam has a boat used for shipping stone to Exeter to put the finishing touches on Exeter’s 14th century cathedral church.

Beer is a village to the east of Exmouth on the coast of Devon.  It is surrounded by picturesque white cliffs as shown in the picture on the left and is important for two reasons in Plague of a Green Man.  Its quarry caves have supplied stone since Roman times and were an important source of stone for Exeter Cathedral, largely completed by the time of my story, 1380.  Some Beer stone was still being shipped by water for the Cathedral Image Screen on the west front of the cathedral. 

The other notable thing about Beer was its smugglers’ cove and caves which were once used to store contraband goods.  Smuggling by medieval gangs was common, particularly in Devon and Cornwall, so I had to weave that bit of history into my story.

The city of Exeter in Devon, England was my choice for the setting Plague of a Green Man, which I envisioned as a prequel to my first novel, Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.  In my last post, I tried to explain how my experience of living in Exeter stimulated the choice.  Come along with me as we discuss some of the history of Exeter in this posting of the blog.

Exeter is an ancient city; its history goes back to the first century Roman occupation of Brittainia.  A Roman fort was constructed there about 55 CE called Isca Dumnoniorum, often abbreviated to Isca by the Romans.  The Second Augustan Legion served there for two decades before relocating to Wales.  Dumnoniorum was the Latin name for the capital of the Dumnonian tribe of Celts resident during and after the Roman occupation which ended 380 CE.

At the beginning of the seventh century, Saxons moved in and called the city Escanceaster.  Danes began raiding the town in the ninth century.  In 1048, Exeter replaced Crediton as the seat of the Bishop of Devon and Cornwall with Leofric installed as bishop in 1050.  A picture of his effigy is shown on the left.  Two years after the Norman Conquest in 1066, Exeter rebelled against William the Conqueror but was subdued after an 18-day siege.

Despite significant bombing during the Second World War, there are many medieval ruins and buildings which survive.  William built Rougemont Castle, the gatehouse of which survives and is pictured on the right.  A new Norman-style cathedral was started in 1133.  Its side towers were incorporated into the Fourteenth Century decorated Gothic-style building which still stands.  It was completed largely before 1380, the time when I set Plague of as Green Man in Exeter. It plays a role in my story, as does the medieval bridge over the River Exe.  Half of that bridge survives as a ruin.  Another medieval survivor which I use in my story is the series of underground passages which brought water to the center of medieval Exeter. The underground passages also play a role in my story.

An important aspect of Exeter’s economy in the medieval period which continued to develop for centuries, was the wool trade.  A ban on the export of wool by King Edward III caused weaving and cloth-making to become important in England.  Exeter on the River Exe was well situated both for the location of fulling mills as well as the export of wool products. Large flocks of Devonshire sheep provided an excellent supply of wool for the manufacture of those products.

In Plague of a Green Man set in 1380, my heroine, Lady Apollonia, and her second husband, Edward, are in the wool business and have gradually expanded from their home base in Aust to other locations in the West Country such as Exeter.  The part of the city known as Exeter Island in the River Exe just outside the medieval wall, was rich in fulling mills and still houses a pub known as the Bishop Blaize which was built in 1327.  It was a center for the wool trade until 1471, well after my story, when the later-built Tucker’s Hall replaced it.  The Bishop Blaize Pub continues in operation today and is shown below.

Please join us in our next post when I shall tell you more about the area in Devon surrounding Exeter and how that plays into my story.

The second novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries is a prequel, Plague of a Green Man, set in Exeter, Devon, in 1380, twenty years earlier than my first novel.  I selected Exeter because it is the city which enabled me to experience firsthand a living survivor of medieval England.

In four different years between 1988 and 1998, I lived in Exeter with my husband, Lou, who was a Visiting Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Exeter.  Each time we lived in a different part of the city but always close enough to its center that I could walk to the 14^th century medieval cathedral built in the English Decorated Gothic style.

Although I had no direct connection with the University of Exeter, I was intensely interested in the ancient city’s history going all the way back to Roman times.  The modern city center is enclosed by remains of a medieval wall that has the same footprint as its Roman wall and displays its Roman origins in places.  Though badly bombed during World War II, there are still many buildings and ruins in Exeter from the medieval period, and I wanted to explore these, frequently with my husband in his spare time.

As a history major in college, Exeter Cathedral was of particular interest to me, so I went there one day shortly after our arrival, when Lou was at work; I was greeted by one of the Cathedral Stewards, volunteers who welcome visitors.  I asked if there was anything that I could do as a volunteer and was told that I could serve as one of them, and that is how I became a regular Monday Steward.  A picture of a younger me with the Monday Stewards is shown above.

In addition to becoming a regular Steward, I read extensively about the cathedral’s history and designed an hour-long tour to use as a volunteer guide who leads visitors around the cathedral, helping them to connect with various aspects of the ancient building.  My husband, Lou, tells me that the beginning of the tour of Exeter Cathedral which my heroine, Lady Apollonia, is given in my medieval novel reminds him of how I always started my guided tours when I was given the opportunity some 600 years later.

The Englishman Ken Maun, who led the Monday stewards and became my good friend, took me under his wing and tutelage and shared his insights with me; it was a wonderful chance to learn more about this magnificent building.  I was given hands-on experience of a 14th century building that would never have been possible in my home country of America.  Even more than the building itself, the cathedral held monuments from the medieval period that revealed much about important people of the period, including how they dressed.  The Courtenay tomb in the south transept is shown on the left.  It displays two carved stone effigies of an earl and his duchess: husband and wife.  They were historic Devon aristocrats and are shown wearing clothes, head to toe, which were fashionable in 14^th century Exeter.

My extraordinary experiences as a steward and tour guide at Exeter Cathedral inspired me to set Plague of a Green Man in 14^th century Exeter.  The cathedral plays a role in my story, as will other medieval features of Exeter, which I look forward to discussing in my next post.

The posts on this blog starting in February have featured various medieval topics that arise in my first Lady Apollonia novel, Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.  In future months, I plan to do the same kind of posts for my other novels, starting with Plague of a Green Man in June.  This posting will comment on some important medieval topics not addressed earlier.

Before speaking to them, I would like to mention my inspiration for the role which the crown of Anne of Bohemia plays in the conclusion of my story.  Pictured above is The Crown of Margaret of York which I observed in 2002 in the Treasury of Aachen Cathedral in Germany.  It dates to the 15^th century but gave me a good idea of what kind of crown might have been worn by King Richard II’s wife, Anne of Bohemia.

The first general topic is the role which social class played in England at the end of the 14^th century.  Here, I should explain that until the 14^th century, medieval Europe was based on just three classes: the aristocrats, the clergy, and the peasants.  The first two groups owned or controlled the land and included almost all the literate population.  The last of the groupings included 90% of the population who owned little, and almost all were illiterate.

A new group of the lower class emerged in 14^th century England, the merchants.  These people were not aristocrats, but the successful ones were able to achieve two things which had been characteristic of the nobility: the acquisition of wealth and property.

Lady Apollonia was born a noblewoman, being the daughter of the Earl of Marshfield.  Her brother, Ferdinand, inherited the title and the property that came with it when their father died.  Two members of the Lady’s household or personal affinity were clergymen: Brother William and Friar Francis.  Many others in her affinity came from peasant stock or from merchant’s families.  The Lady’s first husband was noble—Sir Geoffrey Montacute of Colerne Leat.  Then, she married down into the merchant class for her subsequent marriages to Edward Aust and Robert Windemere.  As a widow she inherited lands and fortunes from all three husbands.

Another historic fact that arises in my first book is the usurpation by Henry Bolingbroke of the English throne of King Richard II.  Though Bolingbroke was a member of the royal family, he was not in line to inherit the throne.  His usurpation occurred in 1399 and contributed significantly to the uncertain times in England of 1400 when my book is set.  The death of Richard II, whose official portrait is shown at the left, occurred while he was imprisoned.  This encouraged people to question Henry IV’s motive to have him dead while still in his thirties and contributed significantly to those troublesome times.  I also deal with this subject in my most recent book number seven, Usurper’s Curse, set in 1406 during the rule of the usurper, King Henry IV.

The last topic I want to discuss briefly in this post is leprosy.  In the Middle Ages, leprosy was truly feared by everyone at that time but not understood very well.  It is thought that many types of skin disease may have been called leprosy.  People were afraid to have contact with lepers, and they were ostracized from society.  Effigy of the Cloven Hoof begins with a great storm and a tidal bore on the River Severn which kills a number of unsheltered lepers traveling through Lady Apollonia’s lands on their way to a leper hospital upstream in Shrewsbury where they could find sanctuary and care.

Leprosy was so badly feared and avoided in the Middle Ages that I speak to it in this story and also in some of my later books.  Therefore, I will write about the disease in some future posts, dealing with it in those books.