Foxhunting Season

 

After the fall of the leave to the last frost—that is the traditional foxhunting season, when the fields lie fallow. What we otherwise think of as November to March. However, cub hunting (when young hounds were trained with drag hunts, might begin as early as October, depending on the weather and the keeness of the hunter.

           

In England, the record of the oldest foxhunt dates back to mid 1600's and the second Duke of Buckingham, who hunted the Bilsdale pack in Yorkshire dales.

Each hunt is composed of a Master—usually the man who owns the hounds. The Master may employ "whipper-ins" to help keep the hounds together. Hunting is informal in the 1700s—anyone can join in to follow the hounds (as in that wonderful scene from the movie, Tom Jones, when the Squire cannot resist the call of the huntsmen's horns). Those horns are actually signals to the other huntsmen and the pack as to where the fox is headed.

The Duke of Bedford's hounds hunted actually stags until 1770's. But by 1780's fox hunting took over in popularity. Enclosure Acts and reduction of forests mean less stag hunting. And hare hunting was generally regarded as more a necessity of country life.

Hunt territories varied widely. The fifth Earl of Berkely hunted an area from Berkley Castle to Berkley Square, stretching 120 miles. Most hounds were kept by rich individuals, and they often invited local farmers to hunt with them, for very often you depended on the locals allowing your hunt access over their farms—there's still no way to predict which way a fox will run.

By 1810, there were only 24 subscription packs—or packs that you could pay to belong to and hunt, as opposed to requiring an invitation from the Master. But this would double, so that by the mid 1800's hunting became a more a matter of 'subscribing' in exchange for the right to hunt with the pack.

The golden age for hunting in Leichesterchire is 1810 - 1830. This starts off with Hugo Meynell, who hunted his foxhounds from Quorn Hall in Leicstershire from 1753 to 1800. His record run was 28 miles in 2 hours 15 minutes.

During this time, there's as many as 300 hunters stabled in Melton Mowbray--with some gentlemen keeping up to 12 hunters. You could hunt 6 days a week with the still famous packs—the Quorn, the Cottesmore, the Belvoir, the Pytchley. Lord Sefton, Master of the Quorn from 1800-02, went through 3 horses a day—which is why you might need a dozen horses.

Ptychey's record run was in 1802, when the pack covered 35 - 40 miles in 4 ¼ hours. With horse medicine being about the same as for people—horses were bled after a long, tiring day. So the life of a hunter could be a short, hard one. In Warwickshire, a hunter might fetch 200 - 500 guineas. But in Leichestershire, a hunter could cost up to 800 guineas.

Wellington's officers took to hunting in their regimental scarlet coats. These started to be called hunting pink (the story goes that this was after the tailor Mr. Pink, but there's no evidence this is true). Each hunt, however, has its own colors—a color of leather boot tops, coat color and collar color and even button design. It's said that Brummell never hunted past the first field, for he hated to get his white-leather boot tops muddied.

Ladies were also found in the field. Mrs. Tuner Farley hunted for 50 years. Lady Salisbury was master of the Hatfield Hunt from 1775 - 1819. She hunted old and blind, in her sky blue habit, with a groom leading her horse and yelling at her to, "Jump, damn you, my lady." From 1788 to 1840, Lord Darlington hunted his own hounds 4 days a week in Yorkshire and Durham, with his 3 daughters and his second wife, all in their scarlet habits.

But between late 1700's to about mid 1800's, when the jumping pommel was invented for the side saddle, ladies were more the exception than the rule, and they were more likely to be advised to "ride to the meet and home again to work up an appetite."

Traditionally, each hunt always has a designated meeting place—a gate, or an inn, or even a house. You meet, the hunt cup is taken—folks drink to stave off the cold. You might meet around 11 and hunt all day—or until it's dark. Bad weather does not stop hunting--wet weather means the scent will be high (so long as it's not pouring). Ice can be dangerous—that's when you get broken necks and legs.

A hunt really is lots of standing around. Galloping to and fro. Trotting from cover to cover, hoping to draw a fox. Some hunts kept tame foxes they could let go if the day's sport proved too slow. Some areas had to curtail their hunting to allow the fox population to come back.

Hunting was always viewed as a sport for everyone, but the reality was that it cost money to keep a pack of hounds and hunt them. However, anyone could take a horse and follow, if the master allowed it, and some followed the hunt in their carriages.

Britain's Top 10 Stately Homes

Do you think you can guess what British Heritage has named as the top 10 Stately Homes in Great Britain?

British Heritage listed them in its booklet of "90 Places You Must See in Britain." How many of them have you been to? How many are on your bucket list? I'm fortunate to have been to six of the ten—including the top two stately homes.

                                                     Blenheim Palace

Let's see if you agree with the list.

1. Blenheim Palace. Home of the Churchill family and Dukes of Marlborough, Blenheim is located in Oxfordshire and was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh between 1705 and 1722. The sweeping parkland surrounding it was designed by Capability Brown. It's the only non-royal, non-ecclesiastical palace in Britain.

2. Chatsworth House. Home of the Cavendish family and the Dukes of Devonshire is situated on hundreds of acres in the lovely Peaks District. The house boasts more than 300 rooms, and it's easy to spend an entire day wandering the beautiful grounds.

                                                    Chatsworth House

 

3. Broadlands. Home of the Mountbattens and located in Hampshire. During my past several trips to England, Broadlands has been closed to the public, principally owing to restoration. It was high on my list because it had been home of the Georgian Lords Palmerston, the third Viscount later serving as a Victorian prime minister. (He died without issue, and the home passed to his widow's son from her first marriage to Lord Cowper. Many believe that son had been sired by Palmerston.) This sylvan estate is where Queen Elizabeth spent her honeymoon.

4. Tatton Park. Located on 2,000 acres in Cheshire, Tatton Park and Tatton Hall is owned by the National Trust and the Cheshire East Council and host more than 100 events annually.

5. St. Michael's Mount. This may be my favorite site in all of England. Located in Cornwall, the small island can be reached by foot during low tide but is accessible only by boat at high tide. The cone-shaped tidal island dates to prehistoric times, and the St. Aubyn family has owned it since 1659. Views from its windows are truly breathtaking.

                                                    St. Michael's Mount

 

6. Burghley House. The largest Elizabethan mansion has been home to the Cecil family (the Marquess of Exeter) and is now owned by their family trust. The massive residence is one of England's designated Treasure Houses and also features another Capability Brown landscape. Near Peterborough. Lots of movies have been filmed here, and I highly recommend it.

7. Petworth House. Located in Sussex and featuring grounds designed by Capability Brown, Petworth is most noted for having one of the finest art collections in all of England. It was one of the first stately homes I insisted on visiting because of its association with Georgian playboy, Lord Egremont, who was said to have sired 63 illegitimate children.

8. Plas Newydd. Alas, this is one I've not visited, owing to its location in Wales. (I'm particularly interested in stately homes that can be accessed with the aid of my BritRail passes since I don't drive in the UK.) This has been the family seat of the Marquess of Angelsey and has beautiful views over the Menai Straits to Snowdonia.

9. Castle Howard. Yorkshire home of the Howard family and the Earls of Carlisle. Ahhhh. . . Castle Howard! It's worth watching BBC's most popular miniseries (before Downton Abbey), Brideshead Revisited, just to glimpse what this magnificent baroque mansion might have been like before it became the tourist destination it is today. Some magical scenes in that drama filmed at Castle Howard are as indelibly impressed upon my mind as the faces of my children. Castle Howard really should be higher than number nine.

                                                     Castle Howard

10. Goodwood House. Located in West Sussex, Goodwood has been home to the Dukes of Richmond for 300 years. I shouldn't judge this one since I've not been here, but the fact it has a speedway, racecourse, airport, hotel, and golf course just does not entice. (Though I will admit there is much to admire in the distinctive stately home.) – Cheryl Bolen, whose latest Regent Mysteries, a novella titled The Theft Before Christmas, is now available wherever eBooks are sold.

Pumpkins and Jack O'-Lanterns

What's Halloween without pumpkins?

Ah, pumpkins, those usually orange squash piled high in grocery stores and farm stands this time of year. Large, small, rounded, not-so-round, orange, yellow, white and striped. There are all kinds of pumpkins. Some you can eat, some are for show, but they're all pumpkins, and they all say fall. In the form of jack o'-lanterns, they also say Halloween.

Although pumpkins are native to the Americas, their usage in Halloween traditions originated in Great Britain. Lighted vegetable lanterns have long been part of Britain's harvest festivals. The vegetables most often used were turnips and mangelwurzels, which are relatively small, solid and hard to cut. Columbus introduced to Europe many of the Americas' plants and animals, pumpkins among them. Called pompions in Tudor England, pumpkins made their way to Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Since pumpkins are hollow and easy to carve, they replaced the turnips and mangelwurzels as the vegetable of choice for harvest lanterns.

"Jack o'-lantern" itself is an English term originating in East Anglia in the 1660's, and meant a night watchman or a man who carried a lantern. Later the phrase attached itself to the ignis fatuus, or will-o'-the-wisp, a bobbing sphere of marsh gas ignited by spontaneous combustion. Not until 1837 did its modern usage of "vegetable lantern" arise.

The Irish legend of Shifty Jack adds a layer of Halloween evil to the various meanings of jack o'-lantern. Shifty, or Stingy, Jack was an Irish blacksmith who used a cross to trap the Devil up a tree. Jack refused to let him down until the Devil promised not to take him to Hell. Secure in the knowledge he would never burn in Hell, Jack wasted his life in evil. But when he died, God denied him entrance to Heaven. With nowhere else to go, Jack implored the Devil to take him in. The Devil, abiding by his promise, refused, condemning Jack forever to walk the earth. But the Devil gave him a hell-coal to light his way, which Jack secured in a vegetable lantern. Jack's bobbing light as he wanders is a Halloween reminder of the wages of sin.

Pumpkinnapper, my Regency Halloween comedy, incorporates pumpkins, bobbing lights and geese (yes, geese) that go bump in the night into the story. 


BLURB:
Let me tell you a tale of a love triangle: man, woman and goose. Join the fowl frolic as Henry the man and Henry the goose spar over heroine Emily's affections while they try to capture the foul (or is it fowl?) pumpkin thieves.

Pumpkin thieves, a youthful love rekindled and a jealous goose. Oh my!

Last night someone tried to steal the widowed Mrs. Emily Metcalfe's pumpkins. She's certain the culprit is her old childhood nemesis and the secret love of her youth, Henry, nicknamed Hank, whom she hasn't seen in ten years.

Henry, Baron Grey, who's never forgotten the girl he loved but couldn't pursue so long ago, decides to catch Emily's would-be thief. Even after she reveals his childhood nickname--the one he would rather forget. And even after her jealous pet goose bites him in an embarrassing place.

Oh, the things a man does for love.

EXCERPT:
"Emily, even with Henry, formidable as he is--" Hank glared at the goose. The goose glared back "--you need protection. I will send over some footmen to guard the place."

"No. Turnip Cottage belongs to Charlotte's husband. What will the townspeople think, with Lord Grey's servants about my house?"

Her refusal increased his fury. The sight of her hand on that damned goose's head didn't improve his mood, either. He balled his fists as his patience thinned and something else thickened. "I'll find you a guard dog. You must have some protection out here all alone."

"But I have Henry." She patted the goose's head and the bird snuggled into her hand. Again.

Heat flooded Hank, part desire for Emily's touch, and part desire to murder that damned goose, who was where he wanted to be. His insides groaned. "Very well, then, you leave me no choice. I will help you catch the culprits."

"But--"

He changed his voice to the voice that either melted a woman or earned him a slap in the face. "Who knows, mayhap we would enjoy ourselves as I lie in wait with you." I would love to lie with you.

Her eyes widened. Had she understood the innuendo?

"I cannot stay alone with you, and you know it," she said, her voice severe.

"You are a widow in your own home and no one will see. I will make sure of it."

"No." She marched back into her cottage and slammed the door. Henry smirked and waddled away.

Hank grinned. He would be back, whether she liked it or not.
 
All reviews are here.

Pumpkinnapper is available at The Wild Rose Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, All Romance Ebooks and other places where ebooks are sold.

Thank you all and Happy Halloween.
Linda

Silver and gold in the Middle Ages

By guest blogger Joyce DiPastena

When I wrote my first published novel, Loyalty’s Web, I had few resources to help me understand the monetary system of Western Europe in the 12th Century. The internet wasn’t widely available when I wrote my first draft. I thought it made perfect sense that the upper classes, like royalty, would have coffers and coffers filled with gold coins, so I put gold coins into my draft and didn’t look back. Loyalty’s Web was first published in 2007 (years after that draft was actually written) and no one ever called me on the gold coins in the story. 

This year, I have been focused on a rewrite of an even older story of mine called The Lady and the Minstrel. In a new scene that I wrote for the book, I wanted to contrast an English gold coin with a French gold coin in the early 13th Century. This time I had easy access to internet research, so onto the internet I hopped. And what, to my dismay, did I discover? Gold production took a nose dive along with the fall of the Roman Empire! While gold continued to be used in small amounts like jewelry, illuminated manuscripts, and even embroidery thread for the rich, when it came to money, silver ruled the day during the Early and High Middle Ages. (Roughly the 8th-13th Centuries.)

To the right is a gold coin I thought they would have used. Oops! No! Very, very rare! And a later century.

The first significant gold mine in medieval Western Europe wasn’t established until around 1320 in Slovakia. And it took the discovery of additional gold deposits to begin mining enough gold to mint coins in any kind of sizeable numbers.

The first thing I did upon learning this was to go through The Lady and the Minstrel and change all my gold coins to silver ones. I also received the publishing rights back to Loyalty’s Web this summer and am planning to republish it soon. But not before I do a find/replace search to change all the gold coins in that story to silver ones, too!

Shown to the left is an atuthentic silver coin. Yes! This is more like it!

So when you write your medieval novel, don’t make my mistake. Give your characters silver coins from the beginning and keep the gold for fripperies like jewelry and embroidery threads!

Joyce DiPastena is a multi-published, multi-award winning author who specializes in sweet medieval romances spiced with mystery and adventure. Her most recent medieval novella, A Candlelight Courting: A Short Christmas Romance, won a first honorable mention RONE Award by InD’Tale Magazine. Visit her website at www.joyce-dipastena.com and follow more of her medieval research on Medieval Research with Joyce at http://medievalresearch.blogspot.com.

Casting Judgment from White's Bow Window

White's famed bow window is on the ground floor.

 

The following poem takes a tongue-in-cheek peek at the arbitrators of fashion who sat in the infamous bow window of White's on St. James. The author is Henry Luttrell (1765-1851) who Byron referred to as "the best sayer of good things, and the most epigrammatic conversationalist I ever met."

Indeed, all the diaries and letters I've read from the era refer to Luttrell as the great wit. The most recent edition of the Englilsh Dictionary of National Biography says that, unfortunately, most of Luttrell's wit does not translate well two centuries later. It's one of those cases where ya had to be there.

Luttrell was the illegitimate son of the 2^nd Lord Carhampton.

The Bow Window at White's

By Henry Luttrell

 Shot from yon Heavenly Bow, at White's,

No critic-arrow now alights

On some unconscious passer-by

Whose cape's an inch too low or high;

Whose doctrines are unsound in hat,

In boots, in trousers, or cravat;

On him who braves the shame and guilt

of gig or Tilbury ill-built;

Sports a barouche with panels darker

Than the last shade turned out by Barker;

Or canters, with an awkward seat

And badly mounted, up the street.

Silenced awhile that dreadful battery

Whence never issued sound of flattery;

That whole artillery of jokes,

Levelled point-blank at hum-drum folks;

Who now, no longer kept in awe

By Fashion's judges, or her law,

Strut by the window, at their ease,

With just what looks and clothes they please!

 Since George "Beau" Brummell was known to occupy a seat in that most well-known of bow windows, I suspect Luttrell is poking fun at him in this poem which first appeared in Luttrell's Advice to Julia, published in 1820, four years after Brummell fled to France to keep from debtor's prison. I found it in my little 1909 gem, The Lure of London.—By Cheryl Bolen, who's delighted to announce the release of a Christmas novella (The Theft Before Christmas) in the Regent Mysteries series on Oct. 7. Preorders are on all sites except Barnes & Noble.

 

                                                     Beau Brummell

 

 

An English Autumn

It's fall to Americans, but Autumn has come again, and in Regency England this was the time of year for country events.

Actually, most anyone who could leave London in the heat of summer would do so. July and August were not great months in a city that still used the Thames for its sewer and refuse.

The harvest began in August and September. In fact, September 24 was a day associated with beginning harvest in much of medieval England.

During harvest time, Corn Dollys would be crafted—by tradition the dolly held the spirit of the corn (and do remember that corn in England means any grain). The dolly would be tied in a design specific to the area, so a Yorkshire dolly would be different from one made in Shropshire.

One Corn Dolly, a countryman's favor, was usually a plait (or braid) of three straws that was tied into a loose knot to represent a heart. If a young man gave this to a girl and she wore it next to her heart he knew his love was reciprocated.

The traditional last day of harvest is still September 29, Michaelmas Day, which is the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, who is also the patron saint of the sea and maritime lands, of ships and boatmen, of horses and horsemen. Michaelmas Day is sometimes called Goose Day, and Goose Fairs were held in some English towns, such as Nottingham.

Because it was quarter's end, Michaelmas was the time for Mop Fairs, when servants and laborers would hire themselves out again for the next year’s work. The name comes from maids who, looking for work, would carry a small mop to show her skills (a shepherd had wool, a gardener had flowers, and so on). Gentry folk, or even tenant farmers looking for help, might visit a mop fair (usually the great houses hired their staff through agencies, and from families who had worked for the house for generations).

Autumn was also the time to begin training young hounds for the coming hunt season.

Fox hunting began after the first frost, and after all the harvest had been brought in. Before that, however, the hunt master would take out his young hounds and start to train them with a "drag" (the scent of a fox in a bag, possibly even a dead fox in a bag) so they would learn to hunt properly and obey the master's and the huntsmen's commands. This season of "cub hunting" (the cubs were the young hound, not young foxes) was, and still is, an excellent time to begin training young horses as hunters, and a season to start getting older horse fit for the hunt again. (Most hunters were put out to pasture in the spring and summer so they could have some rest between hunting seasons.)

Shooting season began in mid-August, with grouse. Additional game birds came in season as of September 1, and woodcock and pheasant seasons opened on October 1. Originally, the Forest Laws covered hunting and shooting rights. Put into place by William the Conqueror, these acts carried harsh penalties for poaching or for even using the king's forests. Gradually, the acts relaxed and opened up to allow for nobles, and then for landowners to hunt, shoot, and use the forests--and the forests themselves were reduced over the centuries for building ships, houses, and cities. However, the Black Act of 1723 put into place the death penalty for over 50 crimes, including being found in a forest while disguised (poachers were blackening their faces to hunt for food--a necessity, given the widespread poverty from the bursting of the South Seas Bubble). It was not repealed until the reforms of 1823. 

The Game Act of 1831 further loosened restrictions, and the right was at last given to anyone to kill game on their own land, or on that of another with permission.
 
Autumn months when a time when owners ate pheasant, partridge, duck and grouse. Fish for meals included perch, halibut, carp, gudgeons, and shell fish. Poachers also looked to snared hares for their pot. Beans were still fresh, and the fruits of summer gave way to pears, apples, nuts and the last harvest of grapes.

With the harvest put away, those in the country could settle into winter's hibernation, or look to return to London when Parliament again met in November.

Shannon Donnelly Bio

Shannon Donnelly’s writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the "Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer" contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA's Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: "simply superb"..."wonderfully uplifting"....and "beautifully written."

Her Regency romances can be found in print or as ebooks on all formats, and her Regency Historical, The Cardros Ruby is currently on sale this September at Amazon.com.

Wooing,Regency Style

I admit, I've been out of the dating scene for (ahem) a few years now. Okay, over twenty. But from what my single friends tell me, not much has changed since I was in the dating scene. Basically a man asks out a woman, (or if she's braver than I ever was, she asks him out). They might meet online, or be introduced by a friend, but eventually they end up on that first date. It might be dinner or drinks or just coffee. It might involve a movie or miniature golf or a museum. It might even occasionally include another couple but it never involves parents or chaperons, and no one thinks anything of a man and a woman being alone together in a car or a house.  

Dating in Regency England was very different. For one thing, it was called courting or wooing. But most importantly, a young lady of good breeding who wished to keep her reputation pristine so she would be a candidate for marriage never, ever put herself alone with a man. (The double standard is, of course, that the man could have a very sullied reputation and still be considered a good match if he were wealthy and well-connected enough, but that's a matter for a different post.) Therefore, courting was a very public affair. 

First they'd have to be introduced by a mutual friend before they'd be allowed to converse. They often met at balls which were THE places to meet those of similar social backgrounds, but they might also meet at a dinner party, soiree, musicale, or even the opera or the theater. 

If the man wished to get better acquainted with the lady he'd met, he'd send her flowers the next day, and later pay a visit upon the family during their "at home" hours where her mother or aunt or other chaperon would be present. He might take her for a walk in one of the walking parks, or take her riding, either horseback or in an open carriage--open being the operative word since riding in a closed carriage could ruin her reputation as fast as being alone in a house. During these outings, a chaperon may or may not be close at hand. 

Courting could be short or take place over a long period of time. If she refused to dance with any other man but him, she basically announced to the world that she was unofficially engaged. If she danced with him more than twice in one night, everyone assumed she was either engaged to him or was "fast," a terrible label for a proper young lady. If he spent a lot of time with her to the  point where people began to notice how much they were together, public opinion pretty much placed them as engaged. If he failed to make an offer of marriage for her, people said he had failed to come up to scratch and shook their heads and wondered if she were unsuitable or if he were. Either way, the couple's reputations suffered. 

Such courting practices may sound rigid and even sterile to the modern-day woman, but I think it leaves so much open. For one thing, they relied on witty conversation rather than getting physical to get to know each other. And since the courting practices were pretty predictable, a man had to use creativity to impress the lady. 

Once he felt secure she returned his affections, the gentleman would make an appointment with the girl's father and formally ask for her hand in marriage. His income would be scrutinized and they would draw up a prenuptial agreement called a marriage settlement which included her pin money, dress allowance, jointure, and other ways he'd provide for her, as well as what dowry would go to the man. Once all that was settled, the father would break the news to the girl and the wedding preparations would commence.

My job as Regency romance author is to keep in mind these social customs known as 'manners and mores' and yet find unique ways for my hero and heroine to meet and fall in love. It's fun to create a unique twist on acceptable courting, throwing in lots of obstacles in the way of their happily ever after, and revealing the final, happy, triumphant ending.  That doesn't make me a hopeless romantic, it makes me a hopeful romantic.