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 QUEENSHIP AND POWER

History, Fiction,
and The Tudors
Sex, Politics, Power, and Artistic License
in the Showtime Television Series

Edited by
William B. Robison
 Queenship and Power

Series Editors

Charles Beem
University of North Carolina, Pembroke
Pembroke, NC, USA

Carole Levin
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE, USA
This series focuses on works specializing in gender analysis, women’s stud-
ies, literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitutional, and diplo-
matic history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the strategies that
queens—both consorts and regnants, as well as female regents—pursued
in order to wield political power within the structures of male–dominant
societies. The works describe queenship in Europe as well as many other
parts of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Islamic
civilization.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14523
 William B. Robison
Editor

History, Fiction, and

The Tudors
Sex, Politics, Power, and Artistic License
in the Showtime Television Series
Editor
William B. Robison
Southeastern Louisiana University
Hammond, Louisiana, USA

Queenship and Power

ISBN 978-1-137-43881-2    ISBN 978-1-137-43883-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43883-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946224

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover image © Photos 12 / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Nature America Inc.
The registered company address is 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.
 Acknowledgments

An editor incurs a lot of debts. Mine begin with Sue Parrill, with whom
I coauthored The Tudors on Film and Television and whose knowledge
and insight have been a positive influence on my work with this new
project. I certainly must acknowledge the kind encouragement I have
received from Susan Doran and Thomas Freeman, editors of the exem-
plary collection, Tudors and Stuarts on Film: Historical Perspectives, and
the numerous opportunities Tom has given me to participate with a bril-
liant array of scholars in roundtable discussions of the Tudors on film at
meetings of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. I am grateful
for the opportunity to participate in a 2010 Folger Shakespeare Library
workshop, “Reassessing Henry VIII,” where The Tudors was a frequent
topic of fruitful discussion. Kristin Purdy and Michelle Smith at Palgrave
Macmillan have been extraordinarily helpful and patient. I have ben-
efited hugely from the friendship and support of Karen Fontenot, Dean
of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Southeastern
Louisiana University. I have enjoyed hours of discussion about Tudor
films with my colleagues and friends, Charles Elliott, Barbara Forrest, and
Harry Laver. I have learned a great deal from the students in my spe-
cial topics classes on history and film. I am especially proud that three of
my former students—Keith Altazin, Caroline Armbruster, and Samantha
Perez—have chapters in this volume. They and the other contributors—
Tom Betteridge, Susan Bordo, Elizabeth Furdell, Maria Hayward, Robin
Hermann, Megan Hickerson, Krista Kesselring, Carole Levin, Estelle

v
vi Acknowledgments

Paranque, Carlie Pendleton, Glenn Richardson, Victor Stater, Tania

String, Anne Throckmorton, Retha Warnicke, and Kristen Walton—have
done such outstanding work that my job as editor has been an easy one.
My greatest thanks, as always, go to my wife Bibbet, my son Matt and his
wife Sara, and my daughters Zoë and Molly.
 Contents

1 Introduction1
William B. Robison

2 Henry VIII in The Tudors: Romantic Renaissance

Warrior or Soap Opera Playboy?27
William B. Robison

3 Catherine of Aragon in The Tudors: Dark Hair, Devotion,

and Dignity in Despair59
William B. Robison

4 The Tudors, Natalie Dormer, and Our “Default”

Anne Boleyn77
Susan Bordo

5 The Last Four Queens of Henry VIII in The Tudors 97

Retha M. Wanicke

6 The Significance of the King’s Children in The Tudors 115

Carole Levin and Estelle Paranque

vii
viii Contents

7 The King’s Sister(s), Mistresses, Bastard(s),

and “Uncle” in The Tudors 127
Kristen P. Walton

8 The King’s In-Laws in The Tudors139

Anne Throckmorton

9 The King’s Friends in The Tudors153

Victor L. Stater

10 Postmodern and Conservative: The King’s Ministers

in The Tudors167
Robin Hermann

11 A Cardboard Crown: Kingship in The Tudors 179

Glenn Richardson

12 The Tudors and the Tudor Court: Know Your Symptom195

Thomas Betteridge

13 “The Dyer’s Hands Are Always Stained”: Religion

and the Clergy in The Tudors 209
Caroline Armbruster

14 Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy: Conspiracy and Rebellion

in The Tudors 223
Keith Altazin

15 Crime, Punishment, and Violence in The Tudors 235

Krista J. Kesselring

16 Humanism and Humanitarianism in The Tudors 249

Samantha Perez
 Contents  ix

17 All That Glitters is (Fool’s) Gold: Depictions

of Court Entertainment in The Tudors 265
Carlie Pendleton

18 Holbein and the Artistic Mise-en-Scène of The Tudors 281

Tatiana C. String

19 Fashionable Fiction: The Significance of Costumes

in The Tudors293
Maria Hayward

20 Putting Women in Their Place: Gender, Sex, and Rape

in The Tudors 307
Megan L. Hickerson

21 Incomplete Prescription: Maladies and Medicine

in The Tudors 329
Elizabeth Lane Furdell

Index 343
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 Additional Praise for History, Fiction,
and The Tudors

“History, Fiction, and The Tudors: Sex, Politics, Power, and Artistic License
in the Showtime Television Series is an insightful, remarkably balanced, and
highly readable contribution to the scholarly conversation about how his-
tory is repurposed and repackaged for popular entertainment, specifically
television.”
– Carolyn Colbert, Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Memorial
University of Newfoundland, and contributor to Henry VIII and History
“As a guide to the historical errors and distortions of the popular televi-
sion series The Tudors, this book is unequalled in the breadth and depth
of its coverage. Twenty expert contributors in twenty chapters examine in
detail both what The Tudors got right and the many places where the real
history was distorted or ignored. C. L. R. James, the great Caribbean his-
torian, wrote, ‘There is no drama like the drama of history.’ It is a dictum
that the contributors appreciate and the makers of The Tudors are shown
to have clearly neglected.”
– Ronald H. Fritze, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and
Professor of History, Athens State University, and editor of Historical
Dictionary of Tudor England
“With a Henrician appetite for accuracy, these twenty essays examine all
aspects of The Tudors: the persons who ruled; the places they romped; and
their political, theological, and intellectual beliefs. Ideal for classroom use,
these scholarly, accessible analyses of writing history and making fiction

xi
xii ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR HISTORY, FICTION, AND THE TUDORS

offer a clear, careful, and wide-ranging blend of fact and theory to guide
students, scholars, theater and television professionals, and series fans to a
more informed view of the Tudors.”
– Catherine Loomis, Professor of English and Women’s Studies,
University of New Orleans, President of the Queen Elizabeth I Society, and
author of The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the
Virgin Queen
“For better or worse, Showtime’s The Tudors will define the way a genera-
tion of global television viewers visualizes and thinks about Henry VIII
and his court. But what should we think about The Tudors? In this admi-
rably wide-ranging volume William Robison and an international team
of scholars of Tudor history carefully evaluate the series’ strengths and
weaknesses, its insights and moments of apparent madness. This is a com-
prehensive guide to The Tudors as both history lesson and popular cultural
phenomenon.”
– Greg Walker, Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature,
University of Edinburgh, and author of The Private Life of Henry VIII:
A British Film Guide
 List of Contributors

Keith Altazin teaches history at University High School, Baton Rouge and
currently is revising his doctoral dissertation, “The Northern Clergy and the
Pilgrimage of Grace” (Louisiana State University, 2011) for publication.
Caroline Armbruster is a PhD candidate in History at Louisiana State University,
where she is writing about religion and gender.
Thomas Betteridge is Professor of English Literature and Drama at Oxford
Brookes University. He is the author of Writing Faith: Literature, Religion, and
Politics in the Works of Thomas More (2010), Shakespearean Fantasy and Politics
(2005), Literature and Politics in the English Reformation (2004), and Tudor
Histories of the English Reformation 1530–1583 (1999); editor of Borders and
Travelers in Early Modern Europe (2007), Sodomy in Early Modern Europe (2002);
and coeditor with Thomas S. Freeman of Henry VIII and History (2012), coeditor
with Greg Walker of The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Drama (2012), and coeditor
with Anne Riehl of Tudor Court Culture (2010).
Susan Bordo is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and holder of Otis
Singletary Chair in the Humanities of the University of Kentucky. She is the author
of The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen
(2013), The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (2000), Feminist
Reinterpretations of Rene Descartes (1999), Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of
Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. (1997), and The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on
Cartesianism and Culture (1987); coauthor with Leslie Heywood of Unbearable
Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (2004); coeditor with Alison
M. Jaggar of Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and
Knowing (1989); and host of “The Creation of Anne Boleyn” blog.

xiii
xiv List of Contributors

Elizabeth Lane Furdell is retired Professor of History at the University of North

Florida. She is the author of Fatal Thirst: Diabetes in Britain Until Insulin (2009),
Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (2002), The Royal Doctors:
Medical Personnel at the Tudor and Stuart Courts (2001), and James Welwood:
Physician to the Glorious Revolution (1998); and editor of Textual Healing: Essays
on Medieval and Early Modern Medicine (2005).
Maria Hayward is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of
Southampton. She is the author of Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry
VIII’s England (2009) and Dress at the Court of Henry VIII (2007); editor of The
Great Wardrobe Accounts of Henry VII and Henry VIII (2012), The 1542 Inventory
of Whitehall: The Palace and Its Keeper (2006); coeditor (with Elizabeth Kramer)
of Textiles and Text: Re-establishing the Link Between Archival and Object-based
Research (2007) and (with Frances Lennard) of Tapestry Conservation: Principles
and Practice (2005).
Robin Hermann is Associate Professor of History at the University of Louisiana
at Lafayette and author of “Money and Empire: The Failure of the Royal African
Company,” in Daniel Carey and Christopher Finlay, editors, The Empire of Credit:
The Financial Revolution in the British Atlantic World and “Empire Builders and
Mushroom Gentlemen: The Meanings of Money in Colonial Nigeria,” in The
International Journal of African History.
Megan L Hickerson is Associate Professor of History at Henderson State
University and author of Making Women Martyrs in Tudor England (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005).
Krista J. Kesselring is Professor of History and Associate Academic Dean at
Dalhousie University. She is the author of Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State
(2003) and The Northern Rebellion of 1569: Faith, Politics, and Protest in
Elizabethan England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and coeditor with Tim Stretton,
of Married Women and the Law: Coverture in England and the Common Law
World (2013).
Carole Levin is Willa Cather Professor of History and Director of the Medieval
and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Nebraska. She is the coedi-
tor with Charles Beem of Palgrave Macmillan’s “Queenship and Power” series;
and author of Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and
Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), The Reign of Elizabeth I (Palgrave Macmillan,
2002), and The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and
Power (1994); coauthor with John Watkins of Shakespeare’s Foreign Worlds:
National and Transnational Identities in the Elizabethan Age (2009); and editor
of Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance (2007), High and Mighty Queens of
Early Modern England: Realities and Representations (Palgrave 2003), and
Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman (2003).
 List of Contributors  xv

Estelle Paranque is a PhD candidate in History at University College London.

Carlie Pendleton is a PhD candidate in History at Oxford University.
Samantha Perez is a PhD candidate in History at Tulane University, an Instructor
of History at Southeastern Louisiana University, and author of The Isleños of
Louisiana: On the Water’s Edge (2011).
Glenn Richardson is Reader in Early Modern History and Academic Director of
History and Philosophy at St. Mary’s University College. He is the author of
Renaissance Monarchy: The Reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I, and Charles V
(2002) and The Field of the Cloth of Gold (2013); editor of The Contending
Kingdoms: England and France 1420–1700 (2008); and coeditor with Susan
Doran of Tudor England and Its Neighbours (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
William B. Robison is Professor of History and Head of the Department of
History and Political Science; coauthor with Sue Parrill of The Tudors on Film and
Television (2013) and host of the associated website www.tudorsonfilm.com; coed-
itor with Ronald H. Fritze of the Historical Dictionary of Stuart England (1996)
and Historical Dictionary of Late Medieval England (2002); and director of the
film Louisiana During World War II.
Victor L. Stater is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History
at Louisiana State University and author of Duke Hamilton Is Dead: A Story of
Aristocratic Life and Death in Stuart Britain (1999), Noble Rule: Stuart Lord
Lieutenancy and the Transformation of English Politics (1994), and A Political
History of Tudor and Stuart England: A Sourcebook (2002).
Tatiana String is Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, author of Art and Communication in the Reign of Henry VIII
(2008), and coeditor with Marcus Bull of Tudorism: Historical Imagination and
the Appropriation of the Sixteenth Century (2012).
Anne Throckmorton is Assistant Professor of History at Randolph-Macon College.
Kristen P. Walton is Professor of History at Salisbury University and the author
of Catholic Queen, Protestant Patriarchy: Mary Queen of Scots and the Politics of
Gender and Religion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and a forthcoming biography of
Margaret Tudor.
Retha M. Warnicke is Professor of History at Arizona State University and author
of Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012), Mary Queen of Scots (2006), The Marrying of Anne of Cleves:
Royal Protocol in Early Modern England (2000), The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn:
Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (1989), Women of the English Renaissance
and Reformation (1983), and William Lambarde, Elizabethan Antiquary
1536–1601 (1973).
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

William B. Robison

“You think you know a story, but you only know how it ends. To get to
the heart of the story, you have to go back to the beginning.” Thus does
a voiceover by Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII introduce each of
the thirty-eight episodes of Showtime’s The Tudors. His statement is one
with which historians can only agree. Regrettably, its apparent promise of
concern for historical accuracy is one on which four seasons and thirty-five
hours of the hugely popular cable television series largely fail to deliver.
More revealing of what is to come is that the first episode starts not in
1509, the real beginning of Henry’s reign, but c. 1518 with the well-
staged but fictitious assassination of Henry’s nonexistent uncle, followed
in rapid succession by the king being “inconsolable,” angrily calling for
war with France, and gleefully having sex with Bessie Blount, all within a
few minutes both on-screen and in the storyline. From there the anach-
ronisms, time compression, distortions, and outright inventions multiply,
mingling with occasional moments of historicity and culminating with
Henry agreeing with Thomas More and Thomas Wolsey’s proposal to
create something that sounds like the League of Nations.1

W.B. Robison ( )
Department of History and Political Science, Southeastern Louisiana University,
Hammond, LA, USA

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

W.B. Robison (ed.), History, Fiction, and The Tudors,
Queenship and Power, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-43883-6_1
2 W.B. ROBISON

This initial episode reveals a fundamental identity crisis that pervades

the entire series. Is it supposed to be a serious historical drama, a clever
deconstruction of traditional history, an artsy exercise in sociopolitical
criticism, a period soap opera, or the world’s longest piece of soft-core
pornography? Is its target audience well-read history buffs, the hip intel-
ligentsia, the demographic drawn to “chick flicks,” or fans who like some
semblance of a plot with their gratuitous sex and violence? That one can
perhaps answer “all of the above” to both questions does not really clarify
matters. Creator and writer Michael Hirst’s response to criticism of the
series has been similarly ambivalent. On one hand, he has said that his goal
was entertainment rather than historical accuracy, which is fair enough—
he is in the entertainment business. On the other hand, it is clear that
he wants to be taken seriously in commenting about history even if not
for recounting it literally. For example, he has said that his goal was to
challenge the traditional views of Henry and the English Reformation.
Further, he admits that there was too much emphasis on sex in the first
two seasons, but that did not prevent his creating a bevy of fictitious sexual
encounters in the third and fourth. Beyond that, he has made the all-too-
frequent mistake of assuming that he can “improve” an already exciting
story.2
Nevertheless, The Tudors is a genuine cultural phenomenon, one that
historians of early modern England can hardly afford to ignore. It is by
far the longest filmic event ever to deal with the Tudor dynasty. Filmed in
Ireland for the Showtime premium cable television channel in the USA, it
also appeared on BBC2 in the UK, CBC Television in Canada, and TV3 in
Ireland, is now in syndication on other networks, is being distributed by
Sony Pictures Television International, has been released through various
digital outlets, and is available all over the world on DVD and Blu-ray,
both as individual seasons and in a boxed set. It has won forty-one televi-
sion awards and been nominated for sixty-five more, many of its stars have
become international celebrities, it has its own rather sophisticated web-
site, where one can buy a variety of series-related merchandise, and it has
spawned fan sites, fan clubs, and fan fiction, as well as keeping Tudor blogs
abuzz with commentary. Although the show has drawn fire from some
television critics, others have had a largely positive reaction, while viewers
have made it one of the highest rated programs in Showtime’s history.3
The popular appeal of The Tudors poses both a dilemma and an oppor-
tunity to historians. Many have reacted with amusement, dismay, hostil-
ity, and/or cynical resignation to its extremely casual relationship with
 INTRODUCTION 3

historicity. But despite its many inaccuracies, the plot lines are often dra-
matic and engaging, the actors are generally good, the production values
are high, and the series does certain things well, for example, its depiction
of court pageantry and sport. All this makes the story seem plausible, gives
it an “authentic” look, and renders it as likely to mold popular opinion
about Henry and his era in the twenty-first century as Alexander Korda’s
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) did in the twentieth century.
Historians cannot afford simply to disdain and dismiss the show; rather,
they have a responsibility to engage constructively the inaccuracies in The
Tudors (and other films) unless history is to concede the field to fiction.4
However, historians can also take advantage of the popularity of The
Tudors. In terms of scholarship, it provides abundant material for students
of the emerging field of “Tudorism,” which Marcus Bull and Tatiana String
describe as “the post-Tudor mobilization of any and all representations,
images, associations, artefacts, spaces, and cultural scripts that either have
or are supposed to have their roots in the Tudor era.” The Tudors already
has been the subject of scholarly articles and presentations at professional
conferences, in many of which contributors to this volume have partici-
pated. Moreover, historical films like The Tudors can serve a practical pur-
pose, for discussing them in the classroom and the public forum—as well
as scholarly publications—can encourage interest in real history, stimulate
critical thinking, and reinforce memory. With proper guidance, students
and others can be remarkably adept at comparing films with works of his-
tory and ferreting out errors. The extraordinary popularity of The Tudors
makes it particularly useful in this regard. Therefore, rather than merely
bemoaning its manifold flaws, it behooves historians to expose its errors
while exploiting its Tudorist appeal.5
English filmmaker Michael Hirst is no stranger to the Tudor period or
to controversy about his history-based projects, having written the screen-
plays for Shekhar Kapur’s feature films Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth:
The Golden Age (2007). Most of the directors for The Tudors—Jon Amiel,
Ciaran Donnelly, Brian Kirk, Alison Maclean, Colm McCarthy, Charles
McDougall, Jeremy Podeswa, Steve Shill, Dearbhla Walsh—have worked
in both film and television, and some have collaborated with Hirst and/
or worked on other historically themed shows, as have cinematographer
Ousama Rawi, editors Lisa Grootenboer and Wendy Hallam Martin, score
composer Trevor Morris, and costume designer Joan Bergin.6
The star of The Tudors, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, is an odd choice to
play Henry VIII, to whom he bears absolutely no physical resemblance
4 W.B. ROBISON

and whose colossal ambition, conflicting impulses, gargantuan appetites,

and outsized emotions he often struggles to convey. On-screen more than
anyone except the king is Henry Cavill as Charles Brandon and, after him,
Anthony Brophy as imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, both decid-
edly ahistorical but nonetheless engaging. Several characters who were
major players in the political and religious struggles of the 1530s and
1540s and who thus should appear in all four seasons arrive late or depart
without explanation: Henry Czerny, a lightweight amalgamation of the
2nd and 3rd Dukes of Norfolk, the latter of whom should have a major
role throughout Henry’s reign but vanishes at the end of Season One;
Hans Matheson, who portrays Archbishop Thomas Cranmer with insuf-
ficient gravitas in Season Two and then is gone; Simon Ward, a rather one-
dimensional Catholic fanatic as Stephen Gardiner, who does not show up
until Season Three; and Alan Van Sprang, a remarkably unpleasant Francis
Bryan who mysteriously appears at the beginning of Season Three and
disappears at the end.
Seasons One and Two are distinctly better than Three and Four, in part
because Maria Doyle Kennedy and Natalie Dormer’s strong performances
as Henry’s longest-lasting and most interesting wives, Catherine of Aragon
and Anne Boleyn. Neither Anita Briem or Annabelle Wallis, Jane Seymour
in Seasons Two and Three, respectively, measures up; Joss Stone is able but
miscast as the supposedly ugly Anne of Cleves; Tamzin Merchant’s ado-
lescent appearance and behavior as Catherine Howard make her frequent
nude scenes seem like child pornography; and Joely Richardson, though
very good, has a fairly limited role as Catherine Parr. The first two seasons
also feature stronger supporting actors, notably Sam Neill as the most
fully realized on-screen Wolsey ever; Jeremy Northam, who emerges from
the shadow of Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons) as Thomas More;
Nick Dunning, splendidly slimy as Thomas Boleyn; and James Frain as a
more complex Thomas Cromwell than the paper villain usually seen on
film. The major characters in Seasons Three and Four are less compelling,
for example, Max Brown and Andrew McNair as Edward and Thomas
Seymour, respectively; Emma Hamilton as Anne Stanhope; Rod Hallett as
Richard Rich; Frank McCusker as Risley (Thomas Wriothesley); Torrance
Coombs as Thomas Culpeper; and David O’Hara as the Earl of Surrey. A
notable exception is Sarah Bolger, who plays Princess Mary with consider-
able subtlety as she evolves from a sad, neglected teenaged girl into the
bitter young woman who later burned nearly 300 heretics.
 INTRODUCTION 5

Season One’s main attraction is the breakup of Henry’s first marriage

to Catherine of Aragon and perpetually hot pursuit of Anne Boleyn,
whose family urge her to replace her sister Mary in the king’s bed but who
refuses to yield, even if in a dream sequence she urges him, “Seduce me.”
Other story lines include Wolsey’s efforts to obtain a divorce for the king
and the papal crown for himself; a failed plot by the Duke of Buckingham
(Steve Waddington) to seize the throne; the birth of the royal bastard
Henry Fitzroy (Zak Jenciragic) to Elizabeth Blount (Ruta Gedmintas),
his ennoblement as Duke of Richmond, and eventual death; alternating
plans for war against and alliances with Francis I of France (Emmanuel
Leconte) and Emperor Charles V (Sebastian Armesto), including marriage
proposals for Princess Mary and much pageantry; completely invented
marriages by Henry’s sister Margaret (Gabrielle Anwar) to the king of
Portugal and then Brandon; Henry’s pamphlet war with Martin Luther;
More’s estrangement from the king and nascent persecution of Lutherans;
Cromwell’s premature arrival; royal temper tantrums; and lots of sex; all
culminating with Wolsey’s fictitious suicide.
Marital politics continue to dominate Season Two, with Henry getting
his divorce and marrying Anne, who gives him a daughter Elizabeth but
no son, encourages his affair with Madge Shelton (Laura Jane Laughlin)
to forestall other rivals but is gradually supplanted by Jane Seymour any-
way, and is arrested and convicted on charges of adultery trumped up by
Cromwell. Also, Henry breaks with a Roman Catholic Church anachronis-
tically led by Pope Paul III (Peter O’Toole); Cranmer rises to prominence
as Anne encourages religious reform; the Boleyns secretly try to poison
Bishop John Fisher (Bosco Hogan), whose cook Richard Rouse (Gary
Murphy) is boiled alive for the offense; More and Fisher are executed for
refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance to Henry; Catherine is exiled from
court, separated from Princess Mary, and stoically declines and expires;
Mary is declared illegitimate and forced to serve her younger sister, later
declared a bastard herself; Anne dies after a dramatic speech from the scaf-
fold; and Henry gluttonously devours a swan, which is clearly a symbol for
his deceased second bride.
It is the triangle of Henry, Catherine, and Anne that gives the first
two seasons dramatic tension, and once both women die, the series loses
energy. Season Three (eight episodes instead of the usual ten) introduces
a new Jane Seymour, who reconciles Henry with his daughters, unsuc-
cessfully appeals for mercy to the rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and
dies after giving birth to Prince Edward, which leads to a bizarre episode
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6 W.B. ROBISON

in which the king goes into seclusion (and apparently mad) with only his
fool Will Somers (David Bradley) for company. Meanwhile, Brandon sav-
agely suppresses the Pilgrimage of Grace (a role that in reality belonged to
Norfolk), and Henry has a fling with the fictitious Lady Ursula Misseldon
(Charlotte Salt), who also sleeps with Bryan when he is not having sex with
Anne Stanhope or on the continent trying to assassinate Reginald Pole
(Mark Hildreth). Cromwell, with the assistance of artist Hans Holbein
(Peter Gaynor), engineers the king’s marriage to Anne of Cleves, the fail-
ure of which leads Cromwell to the scaffold and Henry to the bed of
the nymphet Catherine Howard. Princess Mary has a brief flirtation with
Philip of Bavaria (Collin O’Donoghue), but his Protestantism and rapid
departure put a sad end to that.
Season Four witnesses Henry’s marriage to the incredibly silly Catherine
Howard, whose past affair with Francis Dereham (Allen Leech) and cur-
rent one with Thomas Culpeper lead to divorce and beheading for her,
heartbreak for the presumably aging king (who does not look older), and
an unexpected royal marriage for Catherine Parr, the wife of Lord Latimer
(Michael Elwyn) and the unofficial fiancé (pending her husband’s death)
of Thomas Seymour. It also includes the king’s highly improbable bed-
ding of the recently rejected Anne of Cleves. The Seymours’ feud over
politics and social status with Surrey and over religion with Gardiner, who
relentlessly pursues Protestants, including Anne Askew (Emma Stansfield)
and the queen. Seeking to recover his youth on the battlefield, Henry
successfully besieges Boulogne at an enormous cost in lives and money,
and Brandon has an affair with the imaginary Brigitte Rousselot (Selma
Brook). Gardiner’s intrigues against Catherine and plot to put Mary on
the throne get him imprisoned in the Tower, while Surrey’s ambition for
the crown leads to his execution. While Holbein paints Henry’s famous
portrait, the ghosts of the king’s first three wives appear in succession and
berate him for his poor treatment of them and their children. Henry sends
his family away, and the series ends with him examining his new portrait
and then turning to leave the room. His death is not shown.
Unfortunately, while The Tudors is visually appealing and features some
good performances, no amount of beauty or good acting can rescue it
from Hirst having drastically rewritten history without any real justifica-
tion for doing so. One expects a certain amount of invented dialogue and
“stage business” in even the most accurate of historical dramas, but such
things as amalgamating Henry’s two sisters into one, having Margaret
marry and murder the King of Portugal (she did neither) and then wed
 INTRODUCTION 7

Brandon (whom her missing sister Mary married) mangles history to no

apparent dramatic purpose. The plethora of similar inaccuracies through-
out the series belies Hirst’s claim that it was “85 % accurate.”However,
Hirst does enjoy some support among scholars. Ramona Wray seeks to
explain the many historical inaccuracies in The Tudors not as anomaly or
error but as indicative of “a process now recognized as a characteristic
of quality television—a ‘complex seeing.’” In other words, it is rife with
clever inside jokes. Wray’s observation might make sense with a film like
Shakespeare in Love, which consistently engages in clever self-mockery, but
it gives Hirst more credit than his record—with Elizabeth, Elizabeth: The
Golden Age, and The Tudors—seems to deserve. However, Wray is not
alone. Jerome de Groot also sees it as an extended example of postmodern
playfulness.
Still, a major element of The Tudors’ appeal is not so much intellectual
subtlety but lots of good-looking men and women, brightly (if inaccu-
rately) costumed and frequently naked, with the more or less constant
prospect during moments of non-erotic activity that they will be naked
again soon. As Ginia Bellafante observed in her New York Times review of
Season Two, “If The Tudors fails to live up to the great long-form dramas
cable television has produced, it is not simply because it refuses the visceral
messiness of a Rome or a Deadwood… but more significantly because it
radically reduces the era’s thematic conflicts to simplistic struggles over
personal and erotic power.” Or as Tim Dowling noted in The Guardian in
2009, “Almost everyone in The Tudors is young, thin and beautiful. Not
only is this a little unlikely, it can also make it hard to tell them apart.”
All that said, the goal of this volume is not merely to do a “hatchet job”
on The Tudors but to assess it as a work of art, as a representation of his-
tory, as a reflection of modern and perhaps postmodern concerns, and as a
potential tool for teaching. While the contributors express strong criticism
where we believe it justified, we also express appreciation for what the
series does well. Moreover, we do not all agree in our assessments of the
series, and we hope that our disagreements will be as interesting and useful
to readers as our agreements.
Chapter 2: “Henry VIII in The Tudors: Romantic Renaissance Warrior
or Soap Opera Playboy?”is twice as long as the others not as the result
of editorial self-indulgence but because it also incorporates warfare and
diplomacy. Henry’s legacy and his place in historical memory—both real
and imagined—occupy all contributors to this volume; Henry is the main
character, whose depiction in Hirst’s script and by Meyers on-screen sets
8 W.B. ROBISON

the tone for the entire series; andThe Tudors’ central problem is the way
it portrays the king’s personal life, England’s domestic politics, Henrician
foreign policy, and the international ramifications of the break with Rome
and the English Reformation. The historical Henry remains controver-
sial, and filmmakers genuinely concerned with historicity must address his
complex personality and the myriad motives for his often unpredictable
actions; his abundant talents, powerful intellect, and extensive learning,
as well as his boisterous behavior; the real reasons for his ardent pur-
suit of both love and war; if, when, and why he changed from a young
Renaissance humanist prince into a brutal tyrant; whether he made his
own policy or followed the lead of ministers like Wolsey, Cromwell, and
Cranmer; to what extent he abandoned traditional Catholic doctrine and
embraced reform after the break with Rome; and other issues.
It might be difficult for a typical two-hour film to address adequately
and accurately all these aspects of a reign lasting almost four decades, but
it certainly should be possible for a thirty-five-hour television series to do
so. Yet, if Hirst’s script occasionally pays lip service to such a goal, it fails
to pursue it in a sustained and nuanced manner and is frequently ahistori-
cal. From start to finish, The Tudors is characterized by tensions between
actual history and inexplicable fictional deviations, between the complex
Henry and Meyers’ one-dimensional character, between traditional filmic
tropes and Hirst’s self-conscious new paradigm, between the filmmakers’
desire to be taken seriously and the temptation to pander to viewers with
sex and sensationalism, between the capricious and cruel but charismatic
king of reality and the merely capricious and cruel incarnation on-screen,
between the romantic Renaissance warrior and the soap opera playboy.
If Chap. 2 criticizes the series for eschewing historical accuracy and
departing from filmic tradition to depict Henry in ways that are trou-
bling, Chap. 3: “Catherine of Aragon in The Tudors: Dark Hair, Devotion,
and Dignity in Despair,”credits it for breaking with the typical on-screen
treatment of Catherine, who almost always suffers badly in comparison
with Anne Boleyn. Though Catherine was the daughter of two powerful
and successful regnant monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of
Castile, was an intelligent, learned, politically skillful, and deeply religious
woman, and was married to Henry longer than his other five wives put
together, film and television often concentrate on her later years, make
her appear old and shrewish, and downplay her intellect, learning, and
religion. The Tudors—while not entirely free of these tendencies—gives
Catherine far more time on-screen, covers a greater portion of her life than
 INTRODUCTION 9

any production except The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), and treats her
religious devotion more seriously than any save Anne of the Thousand Days
(1969). True, it ignores her early years in England as Prince Arthur’s wife
and widow, the happy phase of her marriage to Henry (foreshortened in
the series by Anne’s early arrival), her intellectual parity with the king, and
her accomplishments as queen, notably as regent during Henry’s absence
in France in 1513, and at times it makes her too much a victim. It also, like
every other filmic depiction except Six Wives, makes her brunette rather
than blonde. However, Hirst offers a more fully developed Catherine who
is not just a bit player in the story, and Maria Doyle Kennedy gives her
depth, displays a genuine range of emotions, and invests her with real
dignity. Therefore, despite its problems, The Tudors offers at least a partial
corrective to popular views of Catherine.
Similarly, Susan Bordo argues in Chap. 4: “The Tudors, Natalie Dormer,
and Our ‘Default’ Anne,” that Dormer’s Anne is superior to the default
version derived from Eustace Chapuys and Catholic polemicist Nicholas
Sander, described by Paul Friedmann in Anne Boleyn (1884) as “incred-
ibly vain, ambitious, unscrupulous, coarse, fierce, and relentless,”and still
found in modern scholarship like David Starkey’s Six Wives: The Queens
of Henry VIII (2004) and fiction such as Philippa Gregory’s The Other
Boleyn Girl (2001) and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up
the Bodies (2012). The real Anne, though fond of a good time, encoun-
tered evangelical thought at the French court, became an avid student of
scripture, assisted importation of English Bibles, gave Henry copies of
Simon Fish’s Supplication of the Beggars and William Tyndale’s Obedience
of the Christian Man, sought to convert monasteries to educational
purposes, and was the patron of such evangelicals as Thomas Cranmer,
William Barlow, William Bill, Edward Foxe, Thomas Goodrich, Hugh
Latimer, Matthew Parker, and Nicholas Shaxton, and reformist scholars
at Cambridge. The filmic Anne appears on-screen more often than any
other wife, usually in some variation of the default version, which gives
scant attention to her intellect, learning, and zeal for reform. Emphasis
on romance typically takes the story farther from documented history,
for though Henry’s love letters survive, their amorous activity on camera
is the fruit of scriptwriters’ imagination. Initially The Tudors offered little
improvement, for Hirst scripted Anne as a one-dimensional sex object in
Season One, where her sexuality overpowers other aspects of her charac-
ter, especially after the signature “Seduce me” scene. However, Dormer, a
student of history bothered by this mischaracterization, persuaded him to
10 W.B. ROBISON

pay more attentionto Anne’s faith and intellect in Season Two, where—
though it comes amid a welter of factual errors and inventions—her char-
acter increasingly reflects the queen’s real convictions.
If The Tudors offers clearer understanding of Catherine of Aragon
and Anne Boleyn even in the absence of accurate narrative, that is not
the case with their successors, as Retha Warnicke demonstrates in Chap.
5: “The Last Four Queens of Henry VIII in The Tudors.” They are less
well represented in contemporary sources and modern scholarship, get
less attention on film, and are less familiar to viewers, which can tempt
filmmakers to treat them as a blank slate. Jane Seymour was likely quiet
and religiously conservative but remains enigmatic, and on-screen she has
been everything from a ruthless schemer to a virtual nun. In The Tudors
she is a bit of both, for in Season Two Anita Briem’s Jane is on the verge
of becoming Henry’s mistress, while in Season Three Annabelle Wallis’
Jane is his devoutly Catholic wife. The conventional wisdom is that Anne
of Cleves was ugly, though film makers often prefer to make her funny.
In The Tudors she is neither, for its account of her marriage is persistently
grim, and there never has been a more epic failure to cast a homely Anne
than with Joss Stone. Though Hirst draws upon historical sources for her
dialogue, he forfeits the credit by having her sleep with Henry after his
remarriage. Warnicke aptly describes the youthful Tamzin Merchant’s
Catherine Howard as an early modern Lolita, though Vladimir Nabokov’s
adolescent heroine is less silly. Conversely, Joely Richardson is a compel-
ingly mature Catherine Parr, and Hirst notes her intellect and Protestant
activism, though he fabricates some details, for example, making Hugh
Latimer her chaplain.
The series exhibits more sensitivity with Henry’s progeny, as Carole
Levin and Estelle Paranque show in Chap. 6: “The Significance of the
King’s Children in The Tudors.” Mary was a tragic figure who has never
been the primary subject of a serious film in English, though she figures
briefly as a child in movies about Henry and Edward VI and as the bad
old queen in those about Lady Jane Grey and Elizabeth. Thus, her sta-
tus as a major character in The Tudors is a significant departure. Perhaps,
because it never exploits her for sexual content (save for Francis Bryan’s
pointlessly vulgar joke about cunnilingus at her expense and an occasional
wistful kiss), it deals with her psychological development with consider-
able subtlety, and Sarah Bolger does a fine job in the role of the adolescent
and young adult princess—the gradual emergence of her determination
to wipe out heresy is especially effective. Bláthnaid McKeown is also good
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 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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 LEGEND LAND

Being a further collection of some of the Old Tales told in

those nearer Western Parts of Britain served by the Great
Western Railway

Volume Four Price Sixpence

[Click on the map to see higher resolution version.]
 LEGEND LAND
Being a further collection of some of the OLD TALES told
in those nearer Western Parts of Britain served by the
GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY, now retold by LYONESSE

VOLUME FOUR
Published in 1923 by
THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY
[FELIX J. C. POLE, GENERAL MANAGER]
PADDINGTON STATION, LONDON
 CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Contents and Illustrations Page 2
Foreword 3
The Whispering Knights 4
The Shadow Curse of the Raggedstone 8
How Bath was Discovered 12
King Arthur’s Camelot 16
The Witch of Wookey 20
Guy of Guy’s Cliff 24
The Ghostly Bishop of Fingest 28
Wayland Smith and His Cave 32
Herne the Hunter 36
The Ghost of Bisham Abbey 40
The Evil Wedding of Stanton Drew 44
The Story of Wild Darrell 48
Sumer is icumen in (Supplement) 52

This is a reprint in book form of the fourth series of The Line to

Legend Land leaflets, together with a Supplement, “Sumer is icumen
in,” the oldest English song.
The Map at the beginning forms a guide to the localities of the first
six legends, that at the back to the remainder.

Printed by Kelly & Kelly,

Moor Lane, London, E.C.2
 FOREWORD
Volume Four brings Legend Land nearer to the great centres of
modern life. It comprises some of the old stories told of districts
within easy reach of such busy cities as London, Birmingham and
Bristol.
In it you will find historic and pre-historic romance mingled. Some of
its tales are as old as any in our land, tales born of the very ancient
belief that saw in “Druid” stones a human origin. Other stories are
romances of much later date, of events almost within the memory of
our great-grandparents’ great-grandparents.
Here you will find two legends that come from Shakespeare’s land,
legends that must have been well known to that great lover and
teller of old tales. And in the legend of Herne the Hunter you will
recognise a story which Shakespeare himself told in “The Merry
Wives of Windsor.” And it was probably an old tale when he repeated
it.
In “King Arthur’s Camelot” you meet with a very old legend of that
great hero of British historical romance; and in the story of “Wayland
Smith” you get an echo of the lore of the old Pagan gods which
invading Anglo-Saxon tribes brought to England soon after the
Romans left it.
Manners and customs change; the old creeds die as the new ones
arise, yet—and it is very wonderful to realize it—some of the old
stories have survived every phase of the passing centuries’
intolerance of the past, and are told to-day in a form not so very
different from that in which they were first narrated by our semi-
savage ancestors, over their camp fires in the heart of primeval
English forests.
But civilization is “improving” away romance very rapidly. And it is
worth while to hang on fast to the last remaining shreds of those
other days when life, though ruder, had more time for simple dreams
of wonderful things.
lyonesse
 THE WHISPERING KNIGHTS.
High up on an outlying spur of the Cotswold hills, where
Warwickshire and Oxfordshire meet, there is a sort of miniature
Stonehenge, known as the Rollright Stones; and the Story they tell
about them is that they were once a king and his courtiers who, by
evil spells, were changed suddenly into Stone.
The Rollrights are scattered about the hill top, seven hundred feet
above sea-level, a mile or so from the quiet village of Little Compton.
And this is the old Story of how they came there.
Ever so long ago there came marching over the hills a king and his
army bent upon the conquest of England. As they neared the
summit of the hill the king was met by a witch who told him that he
had nearly achieved his desire. She spoke in rhyme, and her words
are remembered in the neighbourhood even now.

“If Long Compton you can see,

King of England you shall be,”

she said. The king rushed forward, but, owing to treachery on the
part of some of his men, his view of Long Compton, which lies in the
valley below, was impeded.
Then the witch turned to him with a croaking laugh, and muttered:

“As Long Compton you can’t see

King of England you shan’t be.
Rise up stick, and stand still stone,
For King of England you shall be none.
You and your men hoar stones shall be
And I myself an elder tree.”

The unfortunate king, although within a few paces of a spot from

which he might have viewed Long Compton and so become ruler of
this realm, was unable to move a step further. His joints became
stiff, his energy left him, and in a few minutes he had turned into
stone. And there you may see him to-day as “the King Stone,” a grey
weathered monolith standing stark in a field, but in a place from
which Long Compton is invisible.
But his treacherous supporters who had hindered him from success
did not escape. The old story tells that there were five knights who
led the company. Seeing their leader’s strange fate, they tried to
escape. But the same doom overtook them. A few hundred yards
from the “King Stone” is a group of five large upright slabs. These
are the “Whispering Knights,” turned to stone in the very act of
conspiring against their king.
Nearer to the silent king is a circle of stones, once his faithless
soldiers, and all about grow elder trees, said to be descendants of
that witch who was herself transformed into an elder after her magic
spell had worked upon the king and his men. They tell you that if
you stick a knife into these elders you will sometimes draw blood.
The Rollright Stones form a weird relic of some long forgotten time.
Men have written of their strange appearance throughout many
centuries. Bede called them the second wonder of the kingdom.
Whether the legend of their formation be true or not, it must have
been some very important event that caused them to be erected.
You may best reach them from Rollright station on the line between
Banbury and Chipping Norton, and if you dare venture up to visit
them on a moonlight night, they say you may find the fairies at their
revels, dancing all about.
This is a peaceful English country of hill and vale, fine country
estates—Compton Winyates with its matchless Tudor mansion is
near at hand—and little churches, rich in architecture, that will repay
a visit. Here you are on the outskirts of Shakespeare’s land, real
generous England, full of history, that has not changed so very much
since the spacious days of Elizabeth—the England that the English
tourist all too seldom sees.
The King Stone.
 THE SHADOW CURSE OF THE
RAGGEDSTONE.
Near the middle of England, where the Malvern Hills rise abruptly to
a height of nearly 1,400 feet above the sea, is the double-peaked
rugged Raggedstone hill about which several strange old legends
centre. A restless spirit is said to haunt the bleaker portions of the
summit, but a stranger legend is that of the Shadow Curse, called
down upon this hill by a monk of Little Malvern in the olden time.
Little Malvern lies in the plain at the foot of these hills, and at the
Benedictine monastery there, as the old story tells, there was once a
rebellious brother. His offences against the monastic discipline were
so serious that the Prior decreed, as his punishment, that he should
crawl on hands and knees every day and in all weather, for a certain
period, from the monastery to the top of the Raggedstone and back
again.
The wretched monk had to obey, and day after day, week after
week, he performed his penance. But the pain and degradation of
his task embittered him, and they say that before his punishment
was completed he died upon the hill of exhaustion and humiliation.
Others say that he sold his soul to the devil in order to be free of his
hated task, but anyhow before he disappeared from human ken, he
put a bitter curse upon the hill that had caused him so much
suffering.
He cursed with death or misfortune whomsoever the shadow of the
hill should fall upon, having in mind that in those days of sparsely
populated land the people who would suffer most would be the Prior
and his brethren in the monastery beneath.
Now the shadow of the Raggedstone is very seldom seen. Only at
rare times when the sun is shining between the twin peaks does it
appear, and those who have seen it describe it as a weird cloud,
black and columnar in shape, which rises up between the two
summits and moves slowly across the valley.
Many stories were told, in times past, of the misfortunes that
happened to those upon whom this uncanny shadow fell; and it is
recorded that Cardinal Wolsey was once caught by this weird cloud,
and to that the old folk attributed the misfortune that came to the
proud man when at the height of his power.
Wolsey in his early days was a tutor to the Nanfan family whose
house was at Birts Morton Court, a couple of miles from the foot of
Raggedstone. The young tutor fell asleep in the orchard one day,
and awoke suddenly, shivering, to find the strange unearthly shadow
moving across the trees.
Much of Little Malvern Priory, the home of that miserable monk of
long ago, remains to-day. Its domestic buildings are almost intact,
with amazing good fortune having escaped the common fate of such
edifices. There are, too, the old monkish fish ponds, now lily
spangled in spring time, and an old preaching cross. The parish
church is part of the old priory church and contains a finely carved
rood screen and some most interesting stained glass.
Great Malvern, some three miles away, clinging as it were to the side
of the great Worcestershire Beacon, is a place with world-wide fame.
It, too, has its great priory church, and all the attractions and
conveniences of a favourite inland resort.
But the chiefest charm of the Malverns—there are seven of them—is
their hills. These form a glorious range, of varying barren and
wooded mountainous country, flung as it were as a far outpost
beyond Severn of the wild Welsh mountains many miles to the
westward.
The view from these Malvern Hills is, perhaps, unequalled. They say
nobody knows exactly how much of England and Wales can be seen
from them. Fifteen counties are certain, and in that range is included
the Wrekin, the Mendips, and the Welsh mountains as far as
Plinlimmon.
On the fine upstanding Herefordshire Beacon is, perhaps, the best
specimen of an ancient British camp that we have. Tradition says
that here Caractacus defended himself from the Romans.
It was “on a May morning on Malverene Hulles” that Piers Plowman
had that vision of which Langland wrote five hundred and more
years ago.
Few centres in our country offer such varied scope to the holiday-
maker as the Malverns, where nature and history vie with one
another in the matter of attractions.
The fresh upland air is tonic and health-giving. That weird dark
shadow of the Raggedstone can never have fallen here, or, if it have,
its mystical power has become impotent by reason of the many
beauties of the place.

The Malvern Hills.

 HOW BATH WAS DISCOVERED.
Some people may tell you that the Romans discovered Bath, but the
old story gives the honour to a British Prince, Bladud, who is,
variously, said to have been the father of King Lear, and the eldest
son of King Lud. Like these two illustrious monarchs, Bladud came in
time to be king of Britain. But that was after he had passed through
a very sad experience.
Prince Bladud, as was becoming the eldest son of a king, spent
many years in Athens studying the liberal arts and sciences. But,
alas! while in Greece he became a leper, and on his return to Britain
he had to be shut away from his fellow-men, for fear that he should
infect them with the dreaded disease.
The Prince bore his confinement patiently for a time, but at last it
became unendurable, and he escaped in disguise, and went out into
the world to forget his royal birth and to earn his living as best he
could. His wanderings brought him to the hamlet of Swainswick, a
few miles from where Bath now stands, and there he found the only
occupation given to one afflicted as he was, that of a swineherd.
Here for some time he carried on his lowly duties, content to be a
free man, no matter how humble his station in life. And they say
that early one winter’s morning when he was out in the
neighbouring woods with his pigs, the animals suddenly became
restive. Before he could stop them a large part of the herd had taken
panic and rushed furiously down a hill-side into a swamp, at the foot
where they began to wallow in the mud.
Bladud pursued them, wondering that pigs should seek to roll in cold
muddy water on a winter’s day. But when he reached them, he
found, to his surprise, that the water and slime in which they rolled
was hot, and that steam arose from the marsh. This explained the
problem to the Prince, though he marvelled greatly at the existence
of such springs.
But there was another surprise in store for him. He noticed that
those pigs that habitually went to the hot swamp were in ill-health
and afflicted, somewhat like himself, with skin diseases. After a short
time they became fat and well, their coats as clean and glossy as
any in the herd.
“If this marvel can come to base animals,” Bladud mused, “why
should it not come to me?” So he determined to try the effect of the
hot springs upon his own complaint, and after a few weeks’ bathing
in them, to his intense joy, he found his leprosy leaving him. By
summer he was cured completely of his affliction, and he returned to
the king, his father, to announce his good fortune.
King Lud, who had mourned him as dead, was over-joyed to see his
eldest son again; more joyful still to find him cured. So Bladud
resumed his duties at Court, and in due time, when Lud died, he
became King of Britain. Then it was, as a token of gratitude, and
that others might benefit from the miraculous waters he had found,
that he built a great city on the scene of his cure, and that city we
know to-day as Bath.
Of course, when the Romans came, they were delighted to find this
wonderful “spa” as we call it. They put up great buildings, and their
chief men visited Aquæ Sulis, as they called it, to be cured of gout
and rheumatism, and a score of other complaints. And because of
the wonderful buildings they left behind them—and many of them
remain to this day—people, who do not know the old story, say that
they founded the city.
But no matter who really did found it, we know that for nearly 2,000
years people have been visiting Bath and finding a cure there which
they have sought elsewhere in vain.
Bath is a wonderful city set in glorious surroundings, and you need
not be an invalid to enjoy a visit there. With its memories and relics
of Beau Nash, and the spacious days of the eighteenth century; its
wonderful old Abbey Church, its Roman remains and its sunny
sheltered walks, Bath is an amazingly attractive place in which to
spend a holiday. The country round about is full of interest, the town
possesses every attraction a holiday resort should possess.
Of its waters, let the doctors speak. They will speak of them as
enthusiastically as Bladud must have done, and tell you that, in
Bath, you may find all the benefits that so many people travel
hundreds of miles to Continental spas to seek.
Roman Remains
at Bath.
 KING ARTHUR’S CAMELOT.
This is the story the people of the country-side have been telling
from time out of memory. Very learned men have disputed their
facts and warred and wrangled over great Arthur’s history, and you
must please yourself which side you take, but this is a story of
Cadbury Castle, which tradition holds was King Arthur’s Camelot,
where that famous hero:
 “ ... kept his Court Royall
with his fair Queen, Dame Guinevere the gay:
And many bold Barons, sitting in hall
With ladies attired in purple and pall....”

And it was here, too, that was installed the immortal Round Table,
with the chivalrous knights that sat about it.
You will find this Camelot a mile or two from Sparkford station,
between Castle Cary and Yeovil, on the main line from Paddington to
Weymouth. It is a great rounded hill seared with ancient ramparts
and ditches, and crowned by a mound which was King Arthur’s
palace.
They will tell you that Cadbury Castle is slowly sinking into the earth;
that at one time it was vastly bigger. But they will tell you, too, that
King Arthur has not forgotten his old home, and that he and his
knights may often be seen galloping round the old fortifications on
moonlight nights, mounted on gallant chargers shod with silver
shoes.
And should you doubt this, antiquarian records will prove you wrong;
for on the hill some years ago, a silver horseshoe was dug up.
From Cadbury a faint path may still be distinguished running towards
Glastonbury—you can see Glastonbury Tor from the top of Cadbury
Castle—and along this track, if you are lucky, you may sometimes
see the great King, a sad expression on his face, his knights with
their attendant squires in his train, riding back to fabled Avalon,
which is Glastonbury, and his tomb in the abbey there beside that of
Queen Guinevere.
It was from Cadbury, when Camelot’s towers crowned the hill, that
the knights set out on their quest of the Holy Grail.
You will not find it hard to believe these old legends, if you sit for
awhile in the silence and peace of the great earth bulwarks of
Cadbury Castle and look out across the pleasing country beneath
you. You can almost hear the faint jingle of harness in the air, and
the soft whisperings of dead and gone men and women who had
looked upon Arthur himself.
Apart from its legendary interest, Cadbury Castle is one of the most
remarkable places in all Somersetshire. Four high earth walls
surround the hill, the innermost faced with stone. Within the lowest
rampart you will find King Arthur’s well; on the hill side strange
terraces that were once, they will tell you, shady gardens where fair
ladies walked in the cool of a summer’s evening.
The little stream, the Cam, flows from the foot of the hill, and close
at hand are the villages of Queen Camel and West Camel, again
suggesting the old name of Cadbury.
But Somersetshire is steeped in Arthurian legendary lore. In the far
north of the county near Clevedon another Cadbury disputes with
our hill the honour of having borne upon it Camelot. And
Glastonbury, almost midway between the two, is the very centre of
Arthurian romance.
Around the history of the great King has arisen so much controversy
that you must read the experts for yourself and make your own
choice. And what could provide a more glorious holiday amusement
than a quiet journey through this, King Arthur’s own, land on a
pilgrimage to the many beautiful places it holds that commemorate
in name and tradition the life of the greatest hero of romance in
Western literature?
Cadbury Castle.
 THE WITCH OF WOOKEY.
Nobody knows how long ago it was when the Witch of Wookey was
alive, but she was a terribly hideous person, and she did all sorts of
horrible things until a monk of Glastonbury Abbey decided that she
had wrought quite enough evil, and determined to rid Somersetshire
of her baleful presence.