The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

The Romans had completely evacuated Britain by the early 5^th century.  The void that they left behind was filled in the next two centuries by several invading tribes from northern Europe, of whom some are known as Anglo-Saxons.  They may have raided Roman Britain in the 4^th century, but were probably invited to Britain after the Roman departure to help defend the native Romano-British population against other threats.  In any event, the tribes who settled in Britain also included Jutes and Frisians.

The valley of the River Thames was largely settled by the Saxons and this area included Cirencester and on eastward into the Cotswold hills.  The Saxons brought with them a different culture, language, ways of building, and styles of dress.  Place names in the Cotswolds and the area around Cirencester today are largely Saxon in origin rather than Roman or Celtic.  The Saxons left few written records, so much of what we know about their culture is based on excavations of their graves, some of which have contained extravagant jewels and gilt-bronze brooches.

Cirencester, the site of Templar’s Prophecy, the 4^th novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, ceased to be a town when the Romans abandoned Britain in the early 4^th century.  It is likely that a few native people continued to live within the Roman city walls and farmed in the surrounding region.  But after the Saxons invaded England, they won a great battle in 577, capturing Cirencester, Gloucester, and Bath, resulting in a Saxon village of wooden huts established within the old Roman walls of Corinium/Cirencester.  It was a far cry from the Roman town that had gone before but it represented the new tribal rulers of Britain.

The street pattern that developed in Saxon Cirencester deviated from the rectangular grid of the Romans.  It was Saxon lanes which set the pattern for the medieval streets in my story.  In 1395, Lady Apollonia resided on one of these, Dyer Street, which ran on the kind of angle which the Romans did not use.  As she would have walked north westward on Dyer Street from her house, it widened out to become the Marketplace, a medieval market area so wide that it is used as a car park in contemporary Cirencester.  This area, shown above in a picture taken from the parish church, also appears in my story.

The Saxon village grew slowly to 350 people by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086.  A minster church, founded around 807, became the Augustinian abbey which grew to dominate the town by the end of the 12^th century.  I will speak of the abbey’s history in later postings.

The fourth book, Templar’s Prophecy, in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, is set in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in the year, 1395.  As with most of my books, I have set this one in a town that traces its history back to Roman times.  This Roman town was more important than most people might realise today.

The Celts occupied Britain when the Romans invaded, but Celtic society was not organised into towns.  As the Romans colonised Britain, they began with military installations on the frontier, and so it was at Corinium, the town we now call Cirencester.  A Roman fort was established within a year of the Roman invasion of the island.  As the Roman Legions marched westward and northward, they first moved their military forward and later began to establish more permanent settlements.

By the mid-70’s a.d., they began to build on a rectangular grid for streets that formed the town of Corinium, then known as Corinium Dobunorum for several centuries.  It grew by the 2^nd century to become the second largest town in Britain after Londinium.  The population is estimated to have been between 10,000 and 20,000, compared to 18,000 in modern day Cirencester.  The centre of the town was where the Roman Fosse Way, connecting Lincoln with Exeter, crossed Ermin Street and the roads connecting Londinium with Glevum or modern Gloucester.

Corinium was a major market town for the woollen trade in the surrounding area and was probably the administrative capital of Britannia Prima or much of what today is central England.  Its basilica and forum were built on the site of the Roman fort and were second in size only to those buildings in Londinium.  The amphitheatre, just outside the town and one of the largest in Britain, can still be seen today in the form of a grass-covered remnant as seen in the picture above.  It plays an important role in my story.  In the 14^th century, it was covered with more vegetation than we see today.

The Romans abandoned Britain in the early 5^th century, leading to a decline of Corinium’s fortunes which I will discuss in my next posting.

Beyond the amphitheatre, not much remains above ground from Roman Corinium.  Some sections of the Roman wall still exist, especially on the northeast quadrant of the ancient city.  Otherwise, the Corinium Museum in Cirencester is the best source of Roman remains.  Many galleries are devoted to display of objects from the ruins and their explanation.  For example, the museum has a fine collection of mosaics acquired from many archaeological digs in Cirencester.

For more on Corinium, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinium_Dobunnorum 
https://coriniummuseum.org/collections/the-roman-town-of-corinium/

The title of the fourth book, Templar’s Prophecy, in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, is based on a mid-14^th century encounter in the prologue between an Englishman from Cirencester and a survivor of the Knights Templars.  Templars had ceased to exist as an organisation after 1312.  The meeting of the two men occurred in Nubia in Africa at a famous Christian pilgrimage site for healing, the Church of Saint Raphael, in Banganarti, Nubia.

You well might ask, “Where was Nubia?”  It was an ancient civilization that stretched along the Nile River from southern Egypt into Sudan on a modern map.  At one time, it was made up of three kingdoms as shown in the map above to the left.  Nobatia in the north stretched from just south of Aswan and the 1^st cataract of the Nile to just south of the 3^rd cataract.  Mukaria was next with its capital at Dongola, and just beyond that city was Banganarti.  Finally, the Kingdom of Alodia began between the 5^th and 6^th cataracts.

Unknown to many in the west, this area was Christian from the late fourth century until the mid-14^th century when it was conquered by Islam.  Makuria had become largely Christian by the end of the 6^th century.  Egypt was conquered by Islam in the 7^th century, cutting Nubia off from other Christian lands, but in 651 AD, efforts to extend Islam into Nubia were defeated.  Thereafter, a kind of peace between Christianity and Islam existed until the 13^th century.  In the medieval period, things began to change dramatically in Nubia, and Christianity collapsed completely in favour of Islam before the end of the 14^th century.

Yet, in the 14^th century, a man named Benesec travelled from southern France or northern Spain across the Mediterranean to Egypt and up the Nile to the Church of Saint Raphael in Banganarti.  How do we know that?  It is because he scratched a memento in Latin onto a wall of the church which reads, “When Benesec came to pay homage to Raphael.”  This was revealed in the 21^st century when Polish archaeologists began excavating a huge artificial mound covering a church.  The archaeologists exposed a series of churches in which the walls were decorated with many representations of Nubian kings under the protection of the Archangel Raphael, a guardian of human health.  There were also inscriptions similar to Benesecs, testifying to its being a site where pilgrims came from great distances for healing.  This marvellous human story inspired me to use Banganarti in the prologue of my book and in the main part of my story to name a grandson of the Templar survivor “Benesec Raphael de Farleigh.”

For more on Nubia, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubia or on
https://oi.uchicago.edu/museum-exhibits/history-ancient-nubia

NOTE: The blog which follows was posted yesterday, May 23, 2017.  Today I was notified that the a typographical error was discovered in an ISBN number inside the book.  This has stopped the distribution of the paperback version of Memento Mori through either Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  It is still available through Lulu Press.

When the paperback version of Memento Mori is again available through Amazon or Barnes and Noble, I will re-post the information given below.

Meanwhile, the ebook distribution is not affected.

For the last two months, I have been posting articles on this blog related to Memento Mori, the third novel written in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  This story is set in Gloucester, England, in 1392.  If you have enjoyed reading the posts about medieval Gloucester and have not yet read my story, this might be a good time to order it.

The paperback can be ordered online
from Amazon by clicking
https://www.amazon.com/Memento-Mori-Ellen-Foster/dp/1300241594/

or from Barnes and Noble by clicking
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/memento-mori-ellen-foster/1113742062

or from Lulu Press on sale by clicking
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The ebook can be ordered online
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or from Barnes and Noble for the Nook by clicking
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or from itunes for Apple devices by clicking
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Happy reading!

Memento Mori, the third of my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, begins with a journey by Laston, the squire of Lady Apollonia’s fourth son, Sir Alban.  Laston has returned to England bringing with him the heart of Alban who died of the plague while fighting with the Teutonic Knights against the Slavs.  Laston must continue his search for the Lady Apollonia because in Aust he learns that she is not there but is currently living in Gloucester.  The young squire wants to tell her what has happened to her son and to bring her the only part of Alban’s remains that he could return from the continent.

The most common form of the plague is the bubonic plague.  This disease apparently came out of Asia and swept across Europe in several waves in the 14^th century beginning in 1347 as shown in the map.  It killed an estimated 50 million people in Asia, Europe, and Africa.  Death often resulted in just a matter of days or even hours.  Although Alban died on the continent, England was not exempt from the pandemic which wiped out a third to a half of its population.  It is also possible that bubonic plague in the 14^th century was supplemented by some other form of infection which caused death even more quickly than bubonic plague.

It took most of Europe until the 18th century just to return to former levels of population and caused great economic consequences.  Common labourers became more valuable because of the shortage created by the pandemic.  The plague pandemic was so important to life in 14^th century England that I could not ignore a description of it in my series of mystery stories.

The plague was not well understood in medieval times.  The pandemic later came to be called the Black Death.  Sometimes victims developed gangrene, leading to skin dying and becoming black.  The disease seemed to hit towns and cities a little harder than rural areas, especially those furthest from trade routes.  Many victims exhibited buboes which were swollen lymph nodes in the armpits or groin.  There were varied theories, mostly wrong, about how the disease was transmitted and how it should be treated.

We now know that the disease is caused by Versinus Pestis, a bacterium carried by fleas often found on small animals such as rats.  There are medications today which can reduce the death rate to 10% of the population.

For more information on the plague, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague or on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

My husband and I travelled to Gloucester in 2012 with the goal of getting better insight into what the city was like in medieval times.  I wanted to use it as the setting for Memento Mori, the third of my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  Our preparations for that visit included study of British Online History as recommended by an English historian, Ian Mortimer.  I had previously purchased the book, Historic Gloucester, by local historian, Philip Moss whom we were privileged to meet in person in 2012.  Our preparation was helpful but being in Gloucester itself was invaluable.  Walking the streets allowed us to begin to picture Gloucester in 1392 when my book, Memento Mori, was set.

The present street pattern in the city centre, except for some of the street names, is much the same as it was in 1392 and goes back to Saxon times.  The Saxons were influenced by the Roman layout of the city but did modify their street pattern somewhat.  Many medieval buildings still exist in Gloucester, some in use and some in ruins.  I have written in the last two months about monastic buildings and medieval churches, some of which we were able to see and visit on our walks.

At the same time, we tried to be aware of medieval buildings that no longer remain: churches, castles, and hospitals.  One by one, these were torn down through the centuries.  For example, Westgate Street is very impressive, but in medieval times, the upper part of that wide street was lined by buildings that no longer exist.  This included several of the medieval churches that would have been active in the time of my novel.  Note the width of modern Westgate Street in the picture above.  It would have been much more crowded in 1392.  The medieval Cross at the centre of the city where Westgate, Northgate, Eastgate, and Southgate Streets met was modified over the years and taken down in 1751 to provide more room for carriages.  The East Gate was demolished in 1778 for the same reason.  The North and South Gates soon followed.

Other ancient buildings which no longer survive are the Norman motte and bailey and the medieval castle, both of which were in the southwest part of the city.  The Norman motte or hill was in the southwest corner of what had been the Roman city.  Archaeology at that site has discovered a game of tables, the forerunner of backgammon, and is the oldest known surviving example of the game in the world.  This Norman motte fortification was torn down when the medieval castle was constructed between the Norman site and the River Severn.

Gloucester’s medieval castle was a stone fortification with a keep in its centre.  Interestingly, King Henry III, who had been crowned in Gloucester in 1216 was imprisoned in Gloucester Castle during the Baron’s War in 1263.  By the time of my novel, the castle was in decline but was still used by the Sheriff of Gloucestershire as a gaol. I have referred to it in my story.  It continued being used as a gaol until the 18^th century when it was torn down.

There were nearly a dozen parish churches in medieval Gloucester, and although they did not play a big role in Memento Mori, a novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries set in that city in 1392, they were an important component of daily life in the era.  Some of them were truly ancient, founded before the Norman Conquest in 1066.  There are records for most of them from at least the 13^th century onward.  Five of them are still active, serving the community today.

The one which does appear in my story is Saint Mary de Crypt, one of three churches dedicated to the Holy Virgin in the medieval town.  It was first recorded in 1140 with the name of the Church of the Blessed Mary within Southgate and was also known as just Saint Mary in the south, because of its location.  It is the site of a wedding in the story of Memento Mori.  Its doorway is Norman in style with a lamb and flag in the tympanum.  In Victorian times, one of the members of this parish, Robert Raikes, became known as the founder of the Sunday School movement.  He was buried in the church in the early 19^th century.  For more details on this church, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_de_Crypt_Church,_Gloucester .

Saint Nicholas Church is on Westgate Street a little west of where I envisioned Lady Apollonia living in Windemere House.  In 1229 Henry III gave the church to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to support the poor there.  It was largely rebuilt in the 13^th century and there were some alterations to the building after the time of my novel.  The church became redundant in 1971 but has been used in the last half year by a church called Clearspring for weekly services.  For more details on this church, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nicholas’_Church,_Gloucester

Saint Mary de Lode, shown above, is another medieval church dedicated to the Virgin which survives.  In 1392 it was known as Saint Mary Before the Gate of Saint Peter because it sat opposite Saint Mary’s Gate to the Abbey of Saint Peter.  It is built over two ancient Roman buildings, and some believe it to be the oldest church in Britain.  Lady Apollonia entered the abbey grounds through Saint Mary’s Gate in the story, so she would have walked past this church.  For more details on this church, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_de_Lode_Church,_Gloucester

Most of the other medieval churches in Gloucester are demolished or transformed.  For a more detailed description of all of Gloucester’s medieval parish churches, click on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol4/pp292-311

The third novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, Memento Mori, is set in medieval Gloucester of 1392.  In this posting, I would like to discuss the monastic situation in the city at that time which included a Benedictine abbey, two Augustinian priories, and three orders of friars.

Last month my postings concerned the Abbey of Saint Peter which was Benedictine in 1392 and evolved later into Gloucester Cathedral.  This monastery was important in my story, and you can read more about it in my March postings.

Another Benedictine foundation was Saint Oswald’s Priory which also played a role in my story.  Saint Oswald’s had been founded by Queen Aethelflaeda, daughter of Alfred the Great.  It was located on the northwest side of the city and was named for a Northumbrian king and martyr, killed at the Battle of Maserfield in 641 AD, whose body parts were eventually brought in 909 AD to be buried at the new priory.  A few years later Aethelfraeda, as well as her husband, Aethelred, were also probably buried at Saint Oswald’s.

After the Norman Conquest, the fortunes of Saint Oswald’s began to wane despite its becoming Augustinian.  This was partly because it fell into the hands of the Archbishop of York who was in an acrimonious relationship with the Bishop of Worcester in whose jurisdiction the city of Gloucester resided.  One of the villains in my story is a dissolute monk in this priory which had seen better days.  At the time of the Dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII, the priory was made up of only seven monks.  Part of the priory church building was preserved as a parish church but was heavily damaged in the English Civil War.  Today, English Heritage maintains what is left of the ruins, little more than a few arches, as shown above.  Note the cathedral tower in the background.

Another Augustinian priory has only an indirect relation to my story.  It was founded around 1150 southwest of the city as Llanthony Secunda after Llanthony Priory in Wales which had been overrun by rebels.  This new Gloucester priory survived and thrived even after the Welsh version was reopened four years later.  By the Dissolution in 1538, Llanthony Priory in Gloucester was among the richest Augustinian houses in England.  Its holdings included 97 churches, including some in Gloucester.  Among them was the Chapel of Saint Kyneburgh which I featured in my last posting.

Three friaries came to Gloucester in the 13^th century: the Greyfriars or Franciscans, the Blackfriars or Dominicans, and Whitefriars or Carmelites.  Nothing remains of the Whitefriars, but there are ruins of the Greyfriars from their rebuilding in the early 16^th century.  The remains of the Blackfriars in Gloucester date from 1239, and it is the most complete Surviving Dominican Friary in England.

Saint Kyneburgh was a local Anglo-Saxon saint in Gloucester.  Two of the characters in Memento Mori, a novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, have a relationship to this Anglo-Saxon saint.  At the time of my novel in 1392, the bones of Saint Kyneburgh were buried in the chapel bearing her name that stood near the South Gate of the city.  One of the characters in the story is Father Arnold, the priest of the Chapel of Saint Kyneburgh.  The other is a hermit or anchorite whose cell was located between the city wall and the chapel.  He devoted his life to the worship of the saint and especially to the protection of Saint Kyneburgh’s Well just a few steps outside the former place of the chapel and medieval wall.

There is no remnant today of the chapel.  Instead, there are modern sculptures which mark its location and that of the well.  One, near the well, is a steel tower named Kyneburgh which is 16 metres high.  It was designed by an artist, Tom Price, who also designed a 30-metre wall sculpture along the line of the medieval wall where the chapel once stood.  The city commissioned these art works in 2011 to commemorate the site and were the first things we saw on our research trip to Gloucester in 2012 as we approached this part of Gloucester from the south.

Who was Saint Kyneburgh, pictured in a stained-glass window in the drawing, shown above, by our friend, Philip Moss?  She may have been the sister of Osric, the man I wrote about on March 6, who founded the Abbey of Saint Peter as a community of monks and nuns who worshipped together under the rule of the first abbess, Kyneburgh.  Not much is known of her, but one later story about her sainthood seems to differ from her being that abbess.  It says that she refused her parents desires for her arraigned marriage, ran away, and went to work for a baker in Gloucester.  He so admired her saintly character that he adopted her as his daughter, but his wife became jealous, killed Kyneburgh, and threw her body into a well just outside the South Gate of the city.

Miracles are said to have begun happening at this well leading to the formation of the cult of Kyneburgh.  A chapel was built by the remains of the Roman south gate, and we know it was remodelled in 1147.  By the time of my novel, the city had rebuilt the medieval south gate a little further to the east.  The chapel by then had become the site where Kyneburgh’s bones are alleged to have been buried.  In 1389, miracles mysteriously stopped when the bones were transported to nearby Llanthony Priory.  The next year they were returned to the chapel, and the hermit’s cell was constructed and occupied.  My story takes place two years later.

Today, there is a 13^th century effigy of a woman in a chapel, the only remaining building of the medieval Saint Mary Magdalene Leper Hospital which was just outside Gloucester.  The effigy was saved when the Chapel of Saint Kyneburgh was demolished, and tradition says it contains the remains of Saint Kyneburgh herself.

For more on Saint Kyneburgh, click on
http://www.britannia.com/bios/saints/cyneburgaglos.html

My third novel in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, Memento Mori, is set in Gloucester in 1392.  In this posting, I would like to discuss the history of Gloucester from the departure of the Roman army in the 5^th century until the time of Lady Apollonia’s adventure there.  Although the Romans had occupied the part of Britain where the Dobunni, a Celtic tribe, had been located, there were few Celts left after the Roman departure to stop the Saxons from taking over the area.

A decisive battle at Dyrham in 577 resulted in the capture of Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath by the Hwicce, a subordinate tribe of the Mercian dynasty.  A century later, King Osric of the Hwicce founded the abbey which appears in Memento Mori as the Abbey of Saint Peter.  This foundation by Osric is mentioned in my blog post of March 1, 2017.  The town was re-fortified and re-planned in the 10^th century as part of the Kingdom of Mercia by Queen Aethelflaeda, daughter of Alfred the Great and the street plan of modern Gloucester was largely determined at that time.  The last major king of the Saxon period, Edward the Confessor, used the great hall of the Royal Manor at Kingsholm to meet with his council putting Gloucester on a level with Winchester and London.

The Norman period brought change after 1066, but William the Conqueror continued the practice of sometimes meeting his Council in Gloucester.  At such a gathering in 1085, he ordered the survey of the kingdom that came to be known as the Domesday Book.  He also appointed Serlo of Bayeux as the abbot who was to restore the flagging fortunes of Saint Peter’s abbey.  The picture above shows the Norman pillars in the nave of Gloucester Cathedral, a remnant of Serlo’s building program for the abbey.

King Henry I in 1155 granted a city charter to Gloucester which gave it a status like Westminster and London.  The only English monarch since the Conquest to be crowned outside of Westminster was Henry III, crowned in Gloucester’s Abbey of Saint Peter in 1216.  He was only nine when he became king but throughout his life, he was very supportive of friaries that were founded in Gloucester

The big event of the14^th century was the burial of King Edward II at the Abbey of Saint Peter as I have discussed in my posting of March 9, 2017.  His tomb brought pilgrim’s gifts, and royal funds to the abbey from his son, King Edward III, enabling the grand refurbishing of the abbey church it had become at the time of my novel and as it can be seen today.

By the time of my story, Gloucester was a port on the Severn River which had major trading connections with Bristol, with smaller market towns in the region and with South Wales.  Ironworking and clothmaking were important to its economic base.  My story mentions Gloucester’s Gild Hall which was a meeting place for guildsmen at the time.

For more on the medieval history of Gloucester, click on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol4/pp13-18