history – Page 3 – History… the interesting bits!

Book Corner: Agricola: Invader by Simon Turney

15/03/202411/06/2024Sharon Bennett Connolly2 Comments

The first volume in a thrilling new historical adventure series by Simon Turney, critically acclaimed author of Legion XXII and Sons of Rome.

58 AD, Rome. Agricola, teenage son of an impoverished yet distinguished noble family, has staked all his resources and reputation on a military career. His reward? A posting as tribune in the far-off northern province of Britannia.

Serving under renowned general Suetonius Paulinus, Agricola soon learns the brutality of life on the very edges of the empire, for the Celtic tribes of Britannia are far from vanquished.

To take control of the province, the Romans must defeat the ancient might of the druids – and the fury of the Iceni, warriors in their thousands led by a redoubtable queen named Boudicca…

I do like a good Simon Turney novel, and this is one of his best! I was a little dubious about Agricola: Invader, wondering if I would appreciate a book set in Roman Britain where the native Britons are the enemy. But the author drew me in with his first scenes, of sword practice and then an imaginary dinner party with some of the great and the good, including Vespasian, Paulinus and Agricola himself. It must have been a fun scene to write and you can tell that Simon Turney is enjoying himself. The scene serves another purpose, it sets up the greater story, whereby Agricola’s mother calls in old favours, using her dead husband’s connections to secure her 18-year-old son his first position in the Roman legions.

From those first scenes, Agricola leaves Rome to take up his appointment in Britannia. He faces jealousy and prejudice within the military hierarchy, while battling the druids and the native tribes, who are chafing under the Roman yoke. We do not meet Boudicca, although Agricola faces her revolt, which is a shame, to e honest. I was looking forward to Agricola and Boudicca staring each other down in a fictitious face-to-face. But no matter. This is Agricola’s story. We see Britannia’s history through his eyes, from the point of view of the great Roman war machine and the Pax Romana. Of the victors.

One cannot help but sympathise with our ancient ancestors but that does not diminish the story.

So, once they were settled onto a new ship, a trireme of the classis Britannica, he began to ask about their destination.

‘Tell me about Britannia,’ he began.

‘Firstly, stop calling it that.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Britannia is a Roman invention. If you want to understand my people you have to stop thinking like their conqueror. To my people it is just “the land” and we are “people of the land”. We have mostly come to think of ourselves in the tribal groups you acknowledge: the Silures, the Ordovices, the Demetae and so on. But here and there you will find small tribes that Rome considers Silurian while they themselves think otherwise. Indeed, you will find tribes who are part if the Silures and are content to recognise the fact, and yet still call themselves by their own ancient names.’

‘Now onder you could not mount an organised defence of your island when we came.’

Luci narrowed his eyes. ‘From what you tell me of your people’s history, you were no different.’

‘I’ll give you that. Perhaps Rome would not have taken Liguria and Gaul if we had managed to overcome our own hatreds and differences long enough to turn them on our enemy. Speaking as a product of their conquest, though, I’m not sure we would have survived without the order that Rome brings.’

A grunt was the only answer to that.

Agricola comes across – at first – as a typical teenager. He’s read the books and knows everything. He’s brash, confident, but is aware of a lack of knowledge of his destination. He even buys a slave, a Briton, to educate him on the people of the land he is to be stationed.

I like Agricola. I like his slave, Luci, even more. A pure invention of Simon Turney, Luci is a Silurian slave, purchased by Agricola in Rome. He has his own story to tell, which comes out in stages and is, at times, surprising. He gives Agricola an insight into the enemy’s minds and tactics, helping the young tribune out in potentially dangerous situations. The relationship between master and slave develops throughout the book. Luci is hardly the submissive, beaten slave. He knows his value, and his own abilities. As does Agricola. It is a fascinating relationship and a highlight of the book.

Simon Turney stays true to the history, depicting the strength and might of the Roman legions as the pacify Britannia. He expertly recreates the Roman campaign that swept across England and Wales.

Agricola: Invader is a riveting read and I am happy to hear that it is only the start of Agricola’s adventures. There’s more to follow! Simon Turney has a passion for the era that shines through on every page. His own enthusiasm for the subject will draw the reader in and leave them wanting more.

To buy Agricola: Invader

About the author:

Simon lives with his wife, children, rabbits and dog in rural North Yorkshire. Having spent much of his childhood visiting historic sites with his grandfather, a local photographer, Simon fell in love with the Roman heritage of the region, beginning with the world famous Hadrian’s Wall. His fascination with the ancient world snowballed from there with great interest in Egypt, Greece and Byzantium, though his focus has always been Rome. A born and bred Yorkshireman with a love of country, history and architecture, Simon spends most of his rare free time travelling the world visiting historic sites, writing, researching the ancient world and reading voraciously.

Simon’s early career meandered along an arcane and eclectic path of everything from the Ministry of Agriculture to computer network management before finally settling back into the ancient world. During those varied years, Simon returned to university study to complete an honours degree in classical history through the Open University. With what spare time he had available and a rekindled love of all things Roman, he set off on an epic journey to turn Caesar’s Gallic War diaries into a novel accessible to all. The first volume of Marius’ Mules was completed in 2003 and has garnered international success, bestseller status and rave reviews, spawning numerous sequels. Marius’ Mules is still one of Simon’s core series and although Roman fiction features highly he now has Byzantine, Fantasy and Medieval series, too, as well as several collaborations and short stories in other genres.

Now with in excess of 40 novels available and, Simon is a prolific writer, spanning genres and eras and releasing novels both independently and through renowned publishers including Canelo and Orion. Simon writes full time and is represented by MMB Creative literary agents.

Look out for Roman military novels featuring Caesar’s Gallic Wars in the form of the bestselling Marius’ Mules series, Roman thrillers in the Praetorian series, set during the troubled reign of Commodus, imperial intrigue in the Damned Emperors series and the Rise of Emperors series, epics of the Knights Templar, adventures around the 15th century Mediterranean world in the Ottoman Cycle, and a series of Historical Fantasy novels with a Roman flavour called the Tales of the Empire.

My Books:

Signed, dedicated copies of all my books are available through my online bookshop.

Out Now! Women of the Anarchy

Two cousins. On the one side is Empress Matilda, or Maud. The sole surviving legitimate child of Henry I, she is fighting for her birthright and that of her children. On the other side is her cousin, Queen Matilda, supporting her husband, King Stephen, and fighting to see her own son inherit the English crown. Women of the Anarchy demonstrates how these women, unable to wield a sword, were prime movers in this time of conflict and lawlessness. It show how their strengths, weaknesses, and personal ambitions swung the fortunes of war one way – and then the other.

Available from Bookshop.org, Amberley Publishing and Amazon UK.

Coming on 15 June 2024: Heroines of the Tudor World

Heroines of the Tudor World tells the stories of the most remarkable women from European history in the time of the Tudor dynasty, 1485-1603. These are the women who ruled, the women who founded dynasties, the women who fought for religious freedom, their families and love. These are the women who made a difference, who influenced countries, kings and the Reformation. In the era dominated by the Renaissance and Reformation, Heroines of the Tudor World examines the threats and challenges faced by the women of the era, and how they overcame them. From writers to regents, from nuns to queens, Heroines of the Tudor World shines the spotlight on the women helped to shape Early Modern Europe.

Heroines of the Tudor World is now available for pre-order from Amberley Publishing and Amazon UK.

Also by Sharon Bennett Connolly:

King John’s Right-Hand Lady: The Story of Nicholaa de la Haye is the story of a truly remarkable lady, the hereditary constable of Lincoln Castle and the first woman in England to be appointed sheriff in her own right. Available from all good bookshops or direct from Pen & Sword Books, bookshop.org and Amazon. Defenders of the Norman Crown: The Rise and Fall of the Warenne Earls of Surrey tells the fascinating story of the Warenne dynasty, from its origins in Normandy, through the Conquest, Magna Carta, the wars and marriages that led to its ultimate demise in the reign of Edward III. Available from Pen & Sword Books, Amazon in the UK and US, and Bookshop.org.

Ladies of Magna Carta: Women of Influence in Thirteenth Century England looks into the relationships of the various noble families of the 13th century, and how they were affected by the Barons’ Wars, Magna Carta and its aftermath; the bonds that were formed and those that were broken. It is now available in paperback and hardback from Pen & Sword, Amazon, and Bookshop.org. Heroines of the Medieval World tells the stories of some of the most remarkable women from Medieval history, from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Julian of Norwich. Available now from Amberley Publishing and Amazon, and Bookshop.org. Silk and the Sword: The Women of the Norman Conquest traces the fortunes of the women who had a significant role to play in the momentous events of 1066. Available now from Amazon, Amberley Publishing, and Bookshop.org.

Alternate Endings: An anthology of historical fiction short stories including Long Live the King… which is my take what might have happened had King John not died in October 1216. Available in paperback and kindle from Amazon.

Podcast:

Have a listen to the A Slice of Medieval podcast, which I co-host with Historical fiction novelist Derek Birks. Derek and I welcome guests, such as Bernard Cornwell and Elizabeth Chadwick, and discuss a wide range of topics in medieval history, from significant events to the personalities involved.

Don’t forget! Signed and dedicated copies of all my books are available through my online bookshop.

For forthcoming online and in-person talks, please check out my Events Page.

You can be the first to read new articles by clicking the ‘Follow’ button, liking our Facebook page or joining me on Twitter and Instagram.

Matilda of Boulogne: From Countess to Queen

08/03/202411/06/2024Sharon Bennett Connolly12 Comments

King Stephen’s wife, Matilda of Boulogne, was a stalwart supporter of her husband. She was arguably more capable than Stephen and often took the initiative in diplomatic negotiations. Acting as Stephen’s wife, she offered a stark contrast to the independence and authority of Empress Matilda that so infuriated the barons. Matilda of Boulogne was a little more subtle than her imperious counterpart, only ever acting in her husband’s name, not her own. Even later, when she held the command of Stephen’s forces during his captivity in 1141, she claimed to act only on behalf of her husband and sons.

Matilda of Boulogne was an example of how a woman was expected to act and comport herself: strong and confident, but subject to her husband’s will. On this last, Empress Matilda failed in the eyes of the barons; she was acting for herself. In the event, the barons of England and Normandy despised her second husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, so they would have been even less receptive to Matilda had her husband tried to assert his authority. It was a conundrum that Matilda was never able to resolve, though she would not give up trying.

According to the Gesta Stephani (The Deeds of Stephen), Stephen of Blois was ‘by far the dearest of all his nephews to King Henry the peacemaker, not only because of the close family relationship, but also because he was peculiarly eminent for many conspicuous virtues’. Born at Blois in or around 1096, Stephen was the third son of Adela and her husband, Stephen, Count of Blois and Chartres. His father was one of the leaders of the First Crusade and may well have departed for the Holy Land before – or shortly after – the younger Stephen’s birth. It is likely that young Stephen had little contact with his father; the count returned from crusade in 1198, only to depart again in 1201.

In 1125, it was King Henry who arranged for Stephen’s marriage to the daughter and sole heiress of the Count of Boulogne, Matilda. Matilda’s mother was Mary of Scotland, sister of Henry I’s first wife, Matilda of Scotland; the younger Matilda was therefore first cousin to Henry I’s daughter, Empress Matilda. The daughter of King Malcolm III Canmore and his queen Margaret of Wessex, Mary of Scotland could trace her illustrious heritage all the way back to Alfred the Great; she had been educated in England alongside her sister. Mary was married to Eustace III, Count of Boulogne, and their only child, Matilda, was probably born the following year, in 1105. The baby’s maternal aunt, Matilda of Scotland, stood as godmother. It is possible that, like her mother and aunt, young Matilda was educated at the convents of Wilton and Romsey. She was certainly a well-educated and capable woman. As we shall see, as an adult, she seems as erudite and well versed in politics as her husband, perhaps with an even better capacity for diplomacy.

Mary of Scotland died when her daughter was around ten or eleven years old, on 31 May 1116. She was buried in the wealthy Cluniac house of Bermondsey Abbey in England.

The county of Boulogne lay within the greater county of Flanders. Nominally owing fealty to France, it was largely autonomous and held extensive interests in England, particularly in Essex and the south-east. The county also controlled one of the most important Channel crossings to England at Wissant. Keeping the county onside by marrying a reliable magnate to the heir to Boulogne was of great interest to Henry. As its heiress, Matilda of Boulogne was a figure of major political significance, her marriage deserving of careful consideration. Given that she was still unmarried at the age of twenty, with such a rich inheritance, it is possible that previous but unrecorded marital arrangements had fallen through, or that her father and uncle had taken extra care in ensuring that Matilda’s hand in marriage went to the right person.

By 1125, King Henry had been married to Adeliza of Louvain for four years, but no children had been born of the union. Likewise, Henry’s daughter, Empress Matilda, had yet to produce a living child and was at this stage more likely to be envisioning a future within the empire rather than as her father’s successor. King Henry may have been looking elsewhere for an heir to his throne; his Blois nephews, Theobald and Stephen, were the obvious candidates. As a bride to Stephen, Matilda of Boulogne would strengthen his claim to the throne, both by her Saxon royal blood and by the financial backing of the county of Boulogne.

Matilda of Boulogne and Stephen were married early in 1125, though the exact date is not recorded. Shortly after the marriage, Matilda’s father, Eustace, a former crusader, abdicated in favour of his son-in-law. Eustace retired to the Cluniac priory at Romilly, taking leave of his daughter and son-in-law in a public ceremony, probably followed by a private farewell, at the priory where he died a short time later, aged about seventy-five. As Count of Boulogne and Mortain, Stephen was now a man to be reckoned with, with considerable resources on both sides of the English Channel; he was the greatest landowner in Suffolk, Essex and the north-west of England.

Rule over the strategically important county of Boulogne would be a suitable training ground for Stephen to get used to exercising significant power in his own right. Through certain charters in the latter half of the 1120s, we can see Stephen administering his cross-Channel lordship. In 1127 he founded Furness Abbey in his lordship of Lancaster. The abbey’s mother house was located at Savigny, in Stephen’s county of Mortain. In the same year, Stephen granted the monks of Canterbury Cathedral priory an exemption from tolls at Wissant, the port through which they shipped their wine.

Empress Matilda depicted at the coronation of her granddaughter, Matilda of England, as Duchess of Saxony, in an image from the Gospels of Henry the Lion.

In marrying into the county of Boulogne, Stephen had joined a family well versed in commerce. He was heavily involved in the county’s business proceedings, usually mentioned alongside his wife, Matilda of Boulogne, who appears to have been the one in charge of the day-to-day management of the county. The Essex town of Colchester was the centre of administration for Boulogne’s interests in England. In the early years of Henry I’s reign the lands in Colchester had been identified as ‘the lands of Count Eustace,’ and were built up with the addition of lands that had belonged to Eudo Dapifer, also known as Iwun al Capel, brother-in-law of William the Conqueror and a member of the de la Haye family, until his death in 1120.

Stephen and Matilda were at Canterbury in person to confirm a charter to the monks of Christ Church, which gave the monks freedom from customs duties for the port of Wissant, granted by Count Eustace. The count and countess placed their sealed charter on the high altar of the abbey church; it is still held in the abbey archives. The ceremony was presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, William Corbeil. In 1131, the couple wrote to the archbishop and the Bishop of Ely to notify them that they had transferred the secular rights of the church at Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire to the Augustinian canons of Colchester, ‘for the remission of our sins and those of our ancestors and for the safe preservation of our son, Eustace, and our other offspring and for our temporal well-being.’ This is the first mention of Eustace and dates his birth to no later than August 1131, when Hervey, Bishop of Ely, died.

The fact these charters were jointly granted by both Stephen and Matilda serve to demonstrate how closely involved Matilda was in the management of the county, and how closely Stephen and Matilda worked together as a couple. The trust they developed in each other would stand them in good stead in the years to come.

In the early 1130s Matilda of Boulogne, like her counterpart Empress Matilda in Anjou, would have been occupied with a number of pregnancies. The couple’s first child, a son named Eustace, was born no later than 1131 and at least two further children, Baldwin and Matilda, were born before Stephen became king in 1135. Little Baldwin died before his father even came to the throne; he was buried beside the altar at Holy Trinity, Aldgate, the abbey founded by the countess’s aunt Matilda of Scotland, Henry I’s first queen. That Baldwin was buried in London suggests that Matilda spent time in England as well as Boulogne during this period. Two more children, William and Mary (or Marie), were probably born after Stephen seized the crown. The three older children were given names that called to mind the county of Boulogne, with both Eustace and Baldwin being the names of several former counts. William, on the other hand, was a reference to Stephen’s grandfather, William the Conqueror, King of England.

Despite henry I having his barons swear – twice – to uphold the claims of his daughter to the throne of England, Henry I left no written instruction as to the disposition of his throne and lands, which led to the chroniclers disputing exactly what the king had intended. What is certain is that in his final days, Henry did not name his heir. Unfortunately, the lack of this definitive designation at the last meant that there was enough ambiguity for Stephen to seize the initiative.

What the chronicles do agree on is that Henry’s death caused a great deal of unrest on both sides of the Channel. According to Orderic Vitalis, ‘on the very same day that the Normans heard that their firm ruler had died in the first week of Advent they rushed out hungrily like ravening wolves to plunder and ravage mercilessly’. On the other side of the Channel, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle made a similar report: ‘Then his land immediately grew dark because every man who could immediately robbed another.’

At Henry I’s death in December 1135, the major players in the drama that was about to unfold were scattered throughout the Anglo-Norman realm. Robert, Earl of Gloucester was at his father’s side; Queen Adeliza was in England; Empress Matilda was in Anjou with her husband, Geoffrey, and in the early stages of her third pregnancy; and Stephen of Blois was in Boulogne with his wife, Matilda. In the days after the king’s death, the lack of a designated heir was evident, and the barons moved to maintain peace in Normandy.

Stephen had decided his own priorities, possibly well in advance of the king’s death and perhaps in collusion with his brother, Theobald. Whether Empress Matilda had an inkling of what Stephen was planning we do not know, though it seems unlikely given her own move into Normandy and no further. Stephen was not with the king when he died. Although he had been with Henry at Rouen earlier in the year, by late November 1135 he was in his county of Boulogne and it was there that the news of the king’s demise reached him, probably two or three days later. The speed of Stephen’s response, and its organisation, shows that he had been contemplating his plan of action for some time.

It is not hard to imagine him sitting in Boulogne, surrounded by his wife and family, watching and waiting for the arrival of the news that would set his plans in motion. According to the Gesta Stephani, ‘as soon as he heard by report that King Henry had breathed his last, forming a mighty design like the famous Saul, [Stephen] made for the coast, since he was the other side of the Channel, and happening to gain a favourable wind turned his mind and his ship towards England’.

Leaving his wife and children in the relative safety of Boulogne, Stephen took what must have been the biggest gamble of his life.