Tag: Portsmouth

Using Personal Sources: Jane Austen’s Letters

Eleanor Doyle, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on one of Jane Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit. Eleanor discusses how we can use personal sources such as this to understand more about an author’s personal relationships as well as wider contemporary experiences. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.

Jane Austen’s reputation as a celebrated English novelist is well established. However, her letters to her sister, Cassandra Austen, provide a rewarding insight into her as an individual. This blog will focus on a letter Jane sent to her sister in September 1813. [1] Studying Jane through her own words seems particularly appropriate when considering Robert Liddell’s view that her novels, such as Pride and Prejudice, were “her true form of expression.” [2] However, this identifies a significant academic debate: Liddell prioritises the value of Jane’s novels, while Elaine Bander and Robert Chapman argue that the letters reveal personal aspects of Jane. [3] This blog favours the latter interpretation and will demonstrate how this letter makes it possible to understand and value Jane’s relationship with Cassandra, as well as helping us to learn significantly about Jane and her close female friends’ attitudes to fashion and clothing. Therefore, while the limitations of this letter will be discussed, this blog maintains that it offers a unique perspective into Jane Austen’s life.

Portrait of Jane Austen (c. 1810) by her sister Cassandra

The value of this letter cannot be understood without recognising the author’s relationship with the intended reader, Cassandra. The first sentence acknowledges it is a reply to Cassandra’s letter and that this letter, written “after dinner” follow’s Jane’s earlier reply. [4] Although a single letter cannot be used to prove a pattern, Elaine Bander recognises that the sisters wrote to each other two or three times a week. [5] Furthermore, the frequency and content of their letters suggests a close bond between the two sisters. Mary August Austen-Leigh notes that they were educated together since time apart from her “beloved sister” would have “broken her [Jane’s] heart.” [6] This close bond is best evidenced in this letter in the thoughtfulness Jane demonstrates in waiting to hear if her sister likes the colour of ‘the Gown’ she sent to her. [7] Furthermore, Carol Houlihan Flynn notes that the ease and informality with which Jane wrote to her sister, using dashes to “casually break up endless paragraphs” confirms their deep bond. For example, Jane’s discussion of the new caps she and Fanny bought is immediately followed by concern for her brother Henry. [8] Since these two matters have no apparent link, the seemingly chaotic structure of this letter should be understood, as Joan Rees notes, as evidence of the relationship “between two close and affectionate sisters.” [9] This demonstrates, therefore, that Jane’s letters offer an insight into her relationship with her sister that could not be understood through reference to her novels alone.

The letter’s content also reveals a greater understanding of contemporary attitudes to fashion and clothing. There are numerous references made to items of clothing throughout the letter such as ‘gowns’, ‘caps’, ‘stockgs’ (stockings), and “a white silk Handkf” (handkerchief). [10] However, this letter provides more than a list of popular items. It also identifies that some items such as the caps were made elsewhere since Jane records their arrival, along with their descriptions: such as “white sarsenet and Lace”. [11] However, because Jane discusses being “tempted” by some ‘Edging” and purchasing “some very nice plaiting Lace”, as well as mentioning Fanny buying “Net for Anna’s gown”, it can be inferred that at least some of their clothes were made by the women. [12] This is confirmed by Sarah Tytler, who praises Jane’s needlework skills as having “exquisite finish”; a view also echoed by Hilary Davison. [13] Therefore, this letter strongly suggests that Jane and her close friends were involved in making their own clothes. As Davison has noted, this is very difficult to evidence by using a material culture approach alone. This, then, demonstrates the value of personal sources to resolve issues in studies of material culture. However, the frequency with which fabric and style are discussed suggests that Jane’s letters could also be used as a means by which to investigate contemporary fashion. Claire Tomalin recognises that Cassandra and Jane often wrote to each other about fashion and fabrics. [14] Therefore, it would be appropriate to conclude that these letters provide a unique insight into the activities of Jane and her close female friends. The insight provided into Jane’s life as a relatively wealthy woman in the early nineteenth century is significant and identifies areas for further investigation.

Finally, it has been demonstrated that this single letter reveals more about the life of Jane Austen than might be expected, and thus deserves further consideration by academics. Fittingly, Roger Sales argues that the collection of Jane’s letters remains “the single most neglected historical source for this period”. [15] However, it must also be recognised that this letter, and the collection it belongs to, has limitations. Firstly, as has been discussed, this letter, along with the majority of other letters compiled by Chapman, were sent to Cassandra, who edited and destroyed parts of Jane’s letters before she passed her collection on. [16] Consequently, it is impossible to know whether valuable letters were lost. However, it is arguable that Cassandra’s editing is further evidence of her close relationship with Jane and perhaps an attempt to censor or to highlight what she considered to be important. [17] Since their letters reflect their personal relationship it is possible that she believed some of the content to be unimportant or too sensitive to be read by others. Sales’ view that the letters allowed Jane and her contemporaries to “lose the ‘countenance’” expected of them in public would support this view. [18] It is unwise to suggest that a true idea of Jane Austen can be understood through her letters. As Marian Dobson has recognised, most academic opinion suggests letters offer a place for the individual to discuss their feelings rather than show their true self. [19] Rees has also acknowledged (in the case of Harold Nicolson) that much academic criticism has focused on the lack of interesting content in such letters. [20] An example of this is perhaps the “Eighteen pence due to my Mother” than Jane encloses. [21] However, the more recent historiographical shift to focusing on the ‘mundane’ and valuable ‘nothingness’ in these letters to help explain wider contemporary experiences is highly important. [22] The findings of this blog about Jane’s letter have indeed shown that the seemingly small or insignificant details, such as the lace she bought, actually offer important insights into her life. [23]

This analysis of Jane Austen’s letter to her sister demonstrates that this personal document allows us a deeper understanding of Jane’s life. This letter offers specific detail on Jane’s relationship with her sister and illuminates aspects of Jane’s experience of fashion and clothing. Although our understanding of Jane Austen would greatly benefit from a comparative analysis studying all of her letters, this work has shown that her life is more richly understood by using her private letters to her sister.

Notes

[1] Jane Austen, “Thursday 16^th September 1813,” R.W. Chapman, Jane Austen’s Letters to her sister Cassandra and others, volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 325-328.

[2] Elaine Bander, “Jane Austen’s World: Jane Austen’s Words,” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 37 (2015): 186; Robert Liddell, The Novels of Jane Austen (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1963), 143.

[3] Bander, “Jane Austen’s World,” 186; R.W. Chapman, Jane Austen Facts and Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 1-2.

[4] Austen, “Thursday 16^th September 1813.”

[5] Bander, “Jane Austen’s World,” 187 -188.

[6] Mary August Austen-Leigh, Personal Aspects of Jane Austen (London: John Murray, 1920), 21.

[7] Austen, “Thursday 16^th September 1813.”

[8] Ibid.

[9] Joan Rees, Jane Austen: Woman and Writer (London: Robert Hale & Company, 1976), 52.

[10] Austen, “Thursday 16^th September 1813.”

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Sarah Tytler, Jane Austen and Her Works (London: Cassell, Petter Galpin & Co, 1880), 11. Quoted in Roger Sales, Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England (London: Routledge, 1994), 4; James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections, ed. by Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 77. Quoted in Hilary Davison, “Reconstructing Jane Austen’s Silk Pelisse, 1812-1814,” Costume 49, no.2 (2015): 211.

[14] Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 112.

[15] Sales, Jane Austen and Representations, xiv.

[16] R.W. Chapman, Jane Austen’s Letters to her sister Cassandra and others, volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932); Carol Houlihan Flynn, “The Letters,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen ed. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 100; Rees, Jane Austen: Woman, 13; Robert Liddell, The Novels of Jane Austen (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1963), 145.

[17] Houlihan Flynn, “The Letters,” 100.

[18] Sales, Jane Austen and Representations, xiv.

[19] Miriam Dobson, “Letters” in Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century History, ed. by Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Zieman (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 60.

[20] Harold Nicholson, Report Jane Austen Society (1948). Quoted in Rees, Jane Austen: Woman, 52.

[21] Austen, Thursday 16^th September 1813.

[22] Dobson, “Letters,” 58-60; Houlihan Flynn, “Letters,”110-113.

[23] Austen, “Thursday 16^th September 1813.”

Source: Austen, Jane. “Thursday 16^th September 1813,” R. W. Chapman, Jane Austen’s Letters to her sister Cassandra and others Volume 3, 325-328. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932.

Eleanor Doyle is President of the University of Portsmouth Students’ Union History Society.

March 16, 2018
‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War

Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in History, has recently published an article in the journal Cultural and Social History on the role of public libraries in the naval town of Portsmouth, UK during the Second World War. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here.

Abstract: In 1942 a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city’s inhabitants to ‘read for victory’, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country’s political and civic elites to encourage the nation’s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified during the Second World War. The public library service was utilized by civic leaders, library officials and publishing trade personnel to aid the country’s war effort. The article argues that negative attitudes regarding mass reading tastes remained largely static, despite recognition that the conflict drew people to the written word for relaxation and escapism. Using the naval city of Portsmouth as a case-study, this article charts the activities of the city’s public library authorities and the borrowing habits of its readers to reveal that while many people borrowed books in order to distract themselves from the conflict, the city’s strategic importance ensured that many citizens also read in order to facilitate their preparedness for war service, whether that be on the home front or overseas. The article argues that while, in common with national trends, many of Portsmouth’s citizens used libraries to obtain books to help distract them from the war, many remained eager to make use of the service for educational purposes, unlike the majority of the nation’s library users, whose interest in this aspect of library provision rapidly waned as the war progressed. The article concludes that the public library service was viewed as a central plank in the war effort and that library officials worked continuously to ensure that it remained so.

February 27, 2018
Don’t believe everything you read…

Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, recently worked with a local community group, Portsdown U3A, on a Heritage Lottery Funded project that sought to find out the impact of the Battle of Jutland on the people of Portsmouth and the local area. With the help of research assistant and PhD student John Bolt, and a team of Online Course Developers at the University, Dr James created an online map using the data collected by members or Portsdown U3A. One of the most interesting findings made by the U3A when conducting their research was that one celebrated V.C. holder – Commander Loftus William Jones – was born in Portsmouth, not Petersfield, as had been originally claimed.

Historical ‘facts’ are always open to question. This has never been more evident than in the research uncovered by Portsdown U3A, a local community group based just off Portsea Island. Members of Portsdown U3A, keen historians of the Battle of Jutland – the most famous sea battle to take place during the First World War – had always believed that Commander Loftus William Jones, who served on the destroyer H.M.S. Shark during the battle, had been born in the leafy market town of Petersfield, Hampshire. They had very little reason to doubt this. The town had long-celebrated ‘their’ war hero. Loftus William Jones’ parents, Admiral Loftus Francis Jones and Gertrude (née Gray), called Petersfield ‘home’ and it was long-believed that this was the town where Commander Jones was born. Documentary evidence supported this. The UK’s official public record, The Gazette, recorded that Jones was born in the town on 13 November 1879. The UK Victoria Cross Medals 1857-2007 website similarly documented Petersfield as his place of birth. In 2014, The Telegraph repeated the claim, and as recently as 2016 a biography of the Commander was published carrying the title Commander Loftus William Jones: Petersfield’s Only VC. A brief internet search undertaken while writing this blog still throws up a series of entries claiming Petersfield as the town in which Commander Jones was born.

Commander Loftus William Jones

However, research by members of the Portsdown branch of the U3A has uncovered startling new evidence: that Commander Jones was not born in Petersfield as originally believed, but in Southsea, Portsmouth! While undertaking their research into the casualties of the Battle of Jutland who had been born in Portsmouth, one of the Portsdown U3A researchers decided to look into the life of Commander Jones because he had been awarded a posthumous V.C. It was while doing this research that they went through the census from 1881-1911 and found a record showing that Commander Jones was born in Southsea. Astonished to discover this, the U3A researcher investigated further at the Portsmouth History Centre. Here they discovered that a ‘Loftus William Jones’ had been baptised at St Jude’s Church in Southsea on 7 December 1879, and that his parents were Captain Loftus Francis Jones RN and Gertrude Jones, residing in Southsea. Finally, they managed to uncover a copy of Jones’ Birth Certificate at Portsmouth Register Office, and this demonstrated without doubt that he was born in Portsmouth on 13 November 1879. [1] A long-believed ‘fact’ had been shown to be a falsehood!

It is no surprise that the life (and death) of Commander Jones has garnered such interest. He had an illustrious career in the Royal Navy. He was educated at Eastman’s Royal Naval Academy in Fareham, near Portsmouth, and rapidly rose through the ranks. On 30^th June 1914 he was promoted to Commander, and from October of that year he was appointed as Commander of the destroyer HMS Shark. Later that year HMS Shark led a flotilla of four ships along the east coast of England against a number of German light cruisers and destroyers. This action culminated in the Scarborough Raid in December 1914, for which the work of Commander Jones was commended by the Admiral of the Fleet, David Beatty. [2]

On 31^st May 1916 Commander Jones led HMS Shark at the Battle of Jutland. The ship came under heavy enemy bombardment in the battle, and shells hit the bridge and main engines, causing major damage. Commander Jones was wounded but attempted to carry on despite facing significant enemy fire. After the Shark was struck by a shell Commander Jones lost most of one of his legs but continued to command the vessel by giving orders to his gun’s crew. Finally, a torpedo struck the Shark and the ship rapidly sank. There were only six survivors. Commander Jones was not one of them. Despite being helped onto a raft by two of his crew, his injuries were too severe and he died, along with 7 other officers and 79 men. [3]

Commander Jones was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, the highest award of the honours system in the UK, because of his brave actions. It is no wonder Petersfield wanted to claim him as one of its own. However, thanks to the diligent work of the Portsdown U3A the birthplace of Commander Jones can be settled once and for all, and the community group can rightfully state that ‘Portsmouth has another V.C.’! [4]

Notes

[1] ‘The Battle of Jutland: Don’t believe everything you read’, The Battle of Jutland Exhibition, Exhibition panels produced by the Portsdown U3A Jutland Research Project 2016-2017.

[2] Information Sheet no 090, Loftus Jones VC, Library and Information Services, National Museum of the Royal Navy, http://www.nmrn-portsmouth.org.uk/sites/default/files/Loftus%20Jones%20VC.pdf, last accessed 27 January 2018.

[3] The London Gazette, 6 March 1917, http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Hampshire/Petersfield.html, last accessed 27 January 2018.

[4] ‘Battle of Jutland: Don’t believe everything you read’.

The online map and full details of the project undertaken by Portsdown U3A and Dr James is available to view on the Port Towns and Urban Cultures website http://porttowns.port.ac.uk/.

February 5, 2018
Portsmouth and the English Civil Wars

Dr Fiona McCall teaches a third year special subject on the British Civil Wars. Below she looks at events in Portsmouth which give it a good claim to be considered the place where the Civil War broke out.

Hampshire saw considerable action during the First Civil War (1642-6), being sandwiched between the area of Parliamentary control in the South and East, and the South-West, which was controlled by the Royalists for most of the first war. One of the first major sieges took place here at Portsmouth, and one of the last, further north at Basing. Other notable actions occurred at Winchester, at Alton church, Cheriton, and just over the county borders at Farnham and at Arundel Castle.

In fact, whenever there was a battle for power, Portsmouth was likely to become involved. Portsmouth’s strategic significance had been recognised since the middle ages, due to its convenient location, capacious deep-water harbour, and the protection offered by Portsdown Hill. [1] A great chain placed across the harbour could, when necessary, close it off to outside shipping. [2] The early-Tudor fortifications which had impressed John Leland around 1540 had been further developed under the threat of attack by Spain in the years leading up to the Spanish Armada of 1588. [3] At the end of the sixteenth century the fortifications included the Square and Round towers, and ramparts known as the Great Platform and the Long Curtain, all surrounded by earthworks. The street plan was much like that of Old Portsmouth today.

Map of Old Portsmouth, 1584, http://www.memorialsinportsmouth.co.uk/old-portsmouth/images/1584.gif

However, away from Portsmouth itself, Portsea Island was little inhabited, with three-four miles of open cornfields and woods between Portsmouth and Portsbridge, and only three parishes: Portsmouth, Portsea and Wymering. Southsea castle had been built by Henry VIII in 1544, but between Portsmouth and Southsea there was no settlement; Southsea was a waste of marsh and common, some of it below sea level and subject to inundation. [4] Apart from some repairs to Southsea Castle in the 1630s, Portsmouth’s fortifications did not change significantly between the reign of Elizabeth and the start of the Civil War, although Charles I’s interest in developing naval power can be seen by his controversial efforts to extend payment of Ship Money in the 1630s.

Detail from a map of Hampshire published by Christopher Saxton, c. 1575, http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/webmap/hantsmap/hantsmap/saxton1/sax1smaf.htm.

The English Civil War is usually said to have begun when King Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham on the 22^nd August 1642. But conflict had looked inevitable since the 18^th June, when the King rejected the Nineteen Propositions, an ultimatum sent by parliament. Over the summer of 1642 the opposing sides competed to raise military support in the counties, and several skirmishes took place before the oft-quoted start-date. The siege of Portsmouth, which began with George Goring’s declaration for the King on Portsmouth on the 2nd August 1642, has some claim to be the place where war broke out, due to its strategic significance, and the course of events here nicely demonstrates the qualities associated with each side: reckless cavalier audacity contrasted with the solid military strength, technical competence, ample resources and sense of purpose which led to the ultimate, and some say inevitable, victory for parliament.[5] Several of those destined to play a leading part in the Civil Wars were involved, including the earls of Warwick and Essex, Sir William Waller and naval commander Browne Bushell on the parliamentary side and, against them, the thirty-four year old Colonel George Goring, the commander of the Portsmouth garrison.

George Goring (right) with Mountjoy Blunt by Sir Anthony Van Dyke, 1635, National Portrait Gallery, NPG 762

Goring been described as a ‘complex’ personality: quarrelsome, erratic, immature and treacherous, yet also, as remembered by Clarendon, ‘winning and graceful in all his motions’, courageous, modest, pleasant and witty. He had fought in the low countries during the Thirty Years’ War, and was left permanently lame and in pain from an ankle injury incurred during the Siege of Breda in 1637, a fact which may partly explain his fondness for drink. On a visit to the Isle of Wight in 1639 it is said he and his companions ‘drank and shot, shot and drank, till they were scarce compos mentis’. In late 1641, this ‘consummate actor and superb public speaker’, having convinced parliament of his loyalty, tricked them into sending him £3000 to repair the defects of Portsmouth garrison, whilst at the same time remaining in clandestine contact with the King and accepting an equivalent sum raised from the sale of the Queen Henrietta Maria’s silver plate and jewels.[6] Goring’s deception only became clear when, on the 2 August, he summoned all those in Portsmouth capable of bearing arms to assemble in support of the royalist cause, or leave the town. Most took the oath of allegiance to the king, but several refused. According to a contemporary account there were then about three hundred men in the garrison, and another hundred townsmen able to bear arms. [7] But Parliamentary sources suggest local support for the King was weak; according to Godwin, more than half left within the first ten days; one captain was killed by his men when he attempted to persuade them to support the royalists. [8]

Parliament responded swiftly when news of Goring’s treachery reached them on the 4 August. The earl of Essex was dispatched with a sizeable military force, who soon occupied Portsdown Hill. The size of the parliamentary forces can be gauged from a news-letter report of mid-August which reported about 240 cavalry and 500 foot soldiers ranged against Goring’s ever-dwindling numbers. Under the command of the earl of Warwick, parliament was gathering a naval squadron of ships off the coast to seal off the harbour. The royalists were dismayed to discover around the 9^th of August that their own solitary vessel, the Henrietta Maria, had been seized from under their noses under cover of darkness in a daring raid by a naval officer, Browne Bushell, without any shots being fired.

View of Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, etching by Wenceslas Hollar, 1643, British Museum Print Q, C.100

Sensing that their situation was deteriorating, the royalist garrison immediately requisitioned into Portsmouth all available food resources on the Island, including 2000 acres of standing corn, 1000 cattle and more than 1000 sheep. Bread, cheese, eggs, poultry and bacon were taken from nearby farms, ‘forcing poor and rich to come away and beg for bread to keep them alive’. [9] Luckily for the hapless inhabitants, the blockading parliamentary squadron took pity on them, ferrying them out of harm’s way from Langstone harbour to Hayling island, accompanied by several hundred cattle and sheep attached by ropes to the boats and swum across. On the 12^th August, Goring’s forces at Portsbridge, said to number only eight men, were forced to retreat into Portsmouth. Hundreds of men were then set at work to set up guns taken from the Henrietta Maria to fire down on the town. Royalist morale was sinking: a member of the House of Commons reported that soldiers escaped down the walls on a nightly basis.

Next, the parliamentarians brought in their big guns. On 18^th August the royalist defenders observed ‘much digging of pickaxes and driving of carts’ across the harbour at Gosport. Goring’s gunners fired on them, but caused minimal damage or injury, and soon two gun platforms had been established. A parley took place on 27^th August in an attempt to persuade the royalists to come to terms, during which Goring and Sir William Waller were each entertained in the opposing headquarters, and on the 2 September one of Waller’s trumpeters even presented Goring with a brace of bucks (venison) as a token of friendship. But the same afternoon, when it was clear Goring was not going to surrender, the bombardment from Gosport was stepped up.

St Thomas’s Cathedral tower, rebuilt after the Restoration.

The tower of St Thomas’s church (now the cathedral), was the best lookout for miles around, so was always likely to become a target: during the Civil Wars many churches would be destroyed or damaged in course of the conflict. On the 3^rd September, shots from Gosport hit the church bells and destroyed the church tower and nave, as well as many other houses in Old Portsmouth. The medieval church was ruined, its rebuilding only financed and completed at the end of the century.

Southsea Castle

That same night, parliamentarian forces turned their attention to Southsea castle, a compact building ‘strangely and marvellously praised of all men that have seen it’, with an enceinte of angled walls three-four yards thick, designed to withstand most onslaughts.[10] But by early September there were only a dozen royalists remaining in the castle, and the commander was reportedly drunk. At least four hundred parliamentary soldiers assaulted the fortress using scaling ladders, all the while singing psalms, against increasing harassment from the guns of Portsmouth garrison, once Goring got wind to what was happening. Browne Bushell’s brilliance once again demonstrated, and the castle captured, the drunken royalist commander Captain Challoner was said to have drunk ‘the King and Parliament’s health in sack with our officers’. The mayor of Portsmouth and other officers, knowing the game was up, promptly fled Portsmouth Garrison. The next day, Sunday morning, Goring negotiated generous terms of surrender under threat of firing the large stores of gunpowder and ammunition still held in the Square tower and other magazines. Thus on the 7 September the defenders were allowed a dignity not always accorded to Civil War siege defenders, of riding out with swords, pistols and personal possessions.

Goring became a leading royalist commander, notorious in the West Country for the plundering depredations of his ill-disciplined troops. Browne Bushell returned to his native Yorkshire, but changed sides, becoming renowned for leading royalist privateers in daring raids against parliamentary shipping in the North Sea. He was finally captured and executed for treason on the 28 March 1651, using the same block and axe which had been used on Charles I. [11]

No 1, Lombard Street, Portsmouth

In an age when communication by sea was often superior to inland transport, the capture of Portsmouth and the control of the navy gave parliament a distinct advantage. Besieged ports could be relieved by sea and prisoners transported away from the zone of conflict. Naval successes under Admiral Blake during Commonwealth and Protectorate period became the foundation for Britain’s naval supremacy, and the great period of expansion for Portsmouth continued under the later Stuart Kings. Some late-seventeenth-century buildings survive from this period near the Cathedral at 1,3,& 5 Lombard Street, and in St Thomas’s Street opposite.

The Maner of the Queenes Maties. Landing at Portsmouth by Dirk Stoop, Lisbon, 1662, showing the arrival of Queen Catherine of Braganza and what the fortifications at Portsmouth looked like in 1662.

References

[1] A. Temple Patterson, Portsmouth: A History (Bradford-on-Avon, 1976), 10, 16, 20.

[2] G.H. Williams, The Western Defences of Portsmouth Harbour 1400-1800, Portsmouth Papers No. 30, December 1979 (Portsmouth City Council).

[3] The Itinerary of John Leland , in about the .years 1535-1543, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (London, 1907).

[4] Williams, Western Defences, 30, 36.

[5] See Clive Holmes, Why Was Charles I Executed? (London, 2006), chapter 4, 71-92.

[6] John Webb, The Siege of Portsmouth in the Civil War, Portsmouth Papers No. 7, July 1969 (Portsmouth City Council), 4, 7.

[7] A Declaration of the Passages of the Taking of Portsmouth, (London, 15 September 1642).

[8] G.N. Godwin, The Civil War in Hampshire (Alresford, 1973), 11.

[9] Webb, Siege of Portsmouth, 15.

[10] Ibid., 18-19.

[11] Jack Binns, ‘Bushell, Browne’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2008.

Sources

I am indebted for this account to different issues of the Portsmouth Papers including:

John Webb, The Siege of Portsmouth in the Civil War, Portsmouth Papers No. 7, July 1969 (Portsmouth City Council).

Margaret J. Hoad, Portsmouth – as others have seen it: Part I 1540-1790, Portsmouth Papers No. 15, March 1972 (Portsmouth City Council), 6.

G.H. Williams, The Western Defences of Portsmouth Harbour 1400-1800, Portsmouth Papers No. 30, December 1979 (Portsmouth City Council).

December 14, 2017
The Excommunication of Portsmouth, 1450-1508

Dr Fiona McCall teaches on a first year module, Early Modern World, where we discuss the practice of the medieval Catholic church before the reformation, and a second year module, Crime, Sin and Punishment in Britain, 1500-1850, which looks at the extensive jurisdiction of the church courts in the early modern period, as well as the role of religious ideas in punishment. Below she relates how the town of Portsmouth was excommunicated in 1450, and what it had to do, fifty-eight years later, to end this predicament. This year, Patrick Johnson, one of the students who studied the above module last year, will be researching a dissertation on the social meaning of excommunication for individuals, using records from the published church court records for the diocese of Oxford, which Fiona will be supervising.

In the medieval and early modern period, the church had an extensive jurisdiction over everyday life and behaviour as well as religious practice. Individuals who transgressed the boundaries of acceptable moral or religious behaviour or belief might find themselves before the church courts, and if they remained contumacious, be censured via excommunication. This meant they could no longer take part in church services, receive communion, or be buried in consecrated ground. Other members of the community were supposed to shun them.

Sometimes whole communities were excommunicated: famously the whole of England was placed under a papal interdict between 1208 and 1214, after King John quarrelled with the pope. In 1450, the island of Portsmouth was excommunicated as punishment for the murder of Adam Moleyns, bishop of Chichester, an event recorded in an English chronicle of the time:

And this yeer, the Friday the ix. Day of January, maister Adam Moleyns, bisshoppe of Chichestre and keeper of the kyngis prive seel, whom the kyng sent to Portesmouth, forto make paiement of money to certayne souldiers and shipmenne for their wages; and so it happid that with boistez language, and also for abriggyng of their wages, he fil in variaunce with thaym, and thay fil on him, and cruelly there kilde him [1]

1450 was a bad year for England. Under the weak (and later mad) King Henry VI, England was losing the Hundred Years’ War, and there was extensive unrest. Moleyns’s association with the unpopular faction of Queen Margaret of Anjou, led by the Duke of Suffolk, may have provoked the anger against him. On the 3 May Suffolk was himself captured and beheaded on shipboard off the coast of Suffolk, while on the 29 June Bishop Ascough of Salisbury was killed while saying mass. In May, June and July rebels from Kent, Surrey and Sussex, led by Jack Cade, terrorised London until Cade was killed and the rebellion suppressed.

You that love the commons, follow me / Now show yourselves men; ’tis for liberty / We will not leave one lord, one gentleman / Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon

Jack Cade, in Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part II

Sentence of excommunication was intended to correct the culprit or culprits and was removed by absolution, after performing a suitable penance. Portsmouth, however, remained excommunicate for fifty-eight years, well after the Wars of the Roses had been and gone and with a new Tudor dynasty firmly-established on the throne. The exacting penance required is detailed in the records of the Diocese of Winchester. This took place in the hospital known as the Domus Dei, on the site of what is now the Garrison Church, and at the parish church, now St Thomas’s cathedral. As for other church records of the time, this was recorded in Latin, but Archdeacon Henry Wright, provides a translation, from which the following is an extract, where what drove them to seek penance is revealed. [2] Also observe the lengthy and theatrical nature of the ritual performed, the coming together of different religious orders to perform it, the importance of specific prayers, the Catholic idea of communication between the living and the dead, and the mix of communal and personal mechanisms towards the town’s absolution.

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October 5, 2017
History Research Seminars Autumn 2017

Every year, the History team at Portsmouth organise a series of research seminars that take place across the autumn and spring terms. Historians are invited from a range of institutions, both in Britain and abroad, to talk about their latest research projects. The subjects presented cover a broad historical timespan and offer insight into a diverse range of topics. This autumn features talks on society’s visions of future warfare, the representation of the 1549 Western Rebellion, and the role of clothing consumption in seventeenth century Sussex. All are welcome to attend.

Autumn 2017

Wednesday 18^th October, 3:30-5:00pm. Room: Burnaby Building 1.25

Sleepwalking to the Precipice: The failure to predict the nature of future war, 1870-1914

David Bangert (University of Portsmouth)

Wednesday 15^th November, 3:30-5:00pm. Room: Burnaby Building 1.25

Kill all the Gentlemen!: (Mis)representing the Western Rebels of 1549

Mark Stoyle (University of Southampton)

Tuesday 5^th December, 5:00-6:30pm (CEISR seminar). Room: Denis Sciama 1.12

Metropolitan clothing consumption in seventeenth-century Sussex

Danae Tankard (University of Chichester)

September 25, 2017