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Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, “the Last Great Englishman”

Posted on June 17, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

Sunday, June 18, will be the 202nd Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, marking the final defeat of the French military leader and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. On the English side stood Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, an Anglo-Irish soldier and statesmen, who was one of the leading military figures of 19th Century Britain, and a man Alfred Lloyd Tennyson dubbed “the last great Englishman.”

1024px-Dangan_Castle,_Co_Meath,_Ireland,_1840

Wellesley spent much of his early childhood at his family’s ancestral home, Dangan Castle, engraving 1842. via Wikipedia ~ Public Domain

remnants of Dangan Castle, Meath, Ireland, the duke’s childhood home

Wellesley was the third surviving son (b. 1769) of an Irish aristocratic family. His father was the first earl of Mornington. In truth, as a child Arthur was uninspiring. A mediocre student. Lazy. Socially awkward. Uninvolved. Only excelling in his playing the violin. At age 12, Arthur entered Eton, where is remained withdrawn and occasionally aggressive. It was the same year that marked his father’s death. Eventually, he was removed from school (1784). Arthur traveled to Brussels with his mother in 1785.

With few options, it was decided that a military career would be a good fit for him. His eldest brother’s connections brought Arthur a number of commissions. The first was as a junior officer in the 73rd Foot. Later, he was the aide-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. As the French Revolution set England on alert, by February 1793, England and France were at war. In April of the same year, Arthur became the commander of the 33rd Foot. His brother’s connections could take him no further. For once, Wellesley was on his own. If he were to advance, it would be because he truly deserved it.

In 1794, the 33rd Foot was part of the English forces that knew defeat in the Netherlands. Although Wellesley knew praise for his part in the Flanders Campaign, the defeat was a mighty lesson for the young officer: He must learn how to lead his men and the “art” of war. Avoiding being shipped to the West Indies because of foul weather, Arthur found himself instead sent to India.

Wellington, then Colonel Arthur Wesley (the last name was later changed to Wellesley) of the 33rd regiment, arrived in Calcutta at the age of 28 in February 1797, after a journey of more than three months. He spent eight years in India, where his brother was Governor-General. These years were spent in honing the skills for which he later claimed greatness. He learned something of being a tactician in battle. It was in India that the future victor of Waterloo and future prime minister of Great Britain first dealt with questions of war and peace and civil government.

On 26 March 1799, the Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore attacked Wellington’s army. The enemy forces had been trained by the French and were well armed, but Wellington’s men held their fire until their enemy was but 60 yards removed. Then, British infantry decimated the columns of their attackers, while cavalry forces scattered the remnants of the attacking force. Later, in April and May of 1799, Wellington participated in the siege of Seringapatam in Mysore and led an attack on the entrenchments of the fortress there. After Seringapatam was taken, Wellington was made civil governor and remained there until 1802.

Wellington defeats Indian leader Dhoondiah Waughat the Battle of Conaghull in India. Getty Images

During his time in Seringapatam, Wellington was ordered to suppress a rebellion in north Mysore led by Dhoondiah Waugh. For the first time, Wellington exercised independent command in battle. During this operation, Rory Muir explains, Wellington “displayed all the characteristics of his subsequent campaigns, . . .” which included attention to logistics and “unremitting aggression.” He fought a battle at Conaghul and won a complete victory. Muir writes that Wellington exhibited a remarkable flexibility on the field of battle. A British officer commented on Wellington’s “alacrity and determination” during battle.

Battle of Assaye ~ J.C. Stadler After W. Heath – National Army Museum, London ~ Public Domain ~ via Wikipedia

On 23 September 1803, Wellington, now a Major General, won his first major victory at the Battle of Assaye. His forces were outnumbered 20:1 by troops of the Maratha Confederacy. A cavalry patrol warned Wellington of the advancing enemy. Despite being outnumbered, Wellington attacked before the enemy forces could set up camp, catching them by surprise. With only 7000 men under his command, he earned a decisive victory at Assaye, but with a heavy cost of men. Wellington later remarked that Battle of Assaye was “the bloodiest for the numbers that I ever saw.” One officer noted that Wellington “was in the thick of the action the whole time . . . I never saw a man so cool and collected as he was.” Another officer commented that Wellington “behaved with perfect indifference in the hottest fire.”

He returned to London and became MP for Rye. In April 1806, he married Kitty Pakenham, a girl he had long loved and to whom he once proposed (but had been found wanting by her father), but meeting her again 1805, he was less enthralled with her, but, perhaps out of duty (for once a gentleman made a promise of marriage, he was honor bound to follow through), he married her, nevertheless. They had two sons, but their marriage was never an easy one.

In 1807, he was appointed Chief Secretary of London, but he did not forsake his army career for a political one. He was often called upon as a military advisor by then Prime Minister, William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland. When the Spanish revolted against Napoleon’s occupation, it was to Wellington that British ministers turned to deliver an advantageous outcome for the Crown.

According to BBC iWonder, “Wellington had been in overall command of British forces in the Iberian Peninsula since 1809. In January 1812 he led troops from Portugal into Spain. Early victories saw Wellington reach Salamanca in June but by July he was locked in stalemate with an evenly matched French force. On 22 July, his opportunity finally came. Over lunch an aide delivered the message Wellington had been waiting for: the French had over-extended. A quick glance through his telescope was enough. ‘Marmont,’ the French general, he said excitedly, ‘is lost.’ In under an hour, his forces won a decisive victory and all Europe acknowledged Wellington’s military genius.

“Wellington’s victory in Spain and even more devastating French losses in Russia forced Napoleon to abdicate. The duke’s old rival was bested. Victory won him a new title – the Duke of Wellington. Invited to become Britain’s ambassador to France, Wellington moved to Paris, even forging relationships with several of Napoleon’s former mistresses as the deposed emperor endured exile on Elba. He was now a big name on the world stage. After a hero’s welcome on his first return to Britain since 1808, Wellington was dispatched to represent the country at the Congress of Vienna which had been convened to re-draw the map of Europe.”

In February 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to France, where he mobilized his army once again. At the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels, Wellesley learned that Napoleon was less than 20 miles removed from the city. Early the next morning, he departed for the front. On 18 June 1815, the bloody Battle of Waterloo took place. The French army was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition: an Allied army under Wellington’s command, along side a Prussian arm under the command of Gehard Leberecht von Blucher, Prince of Wahlstatt. At the height of his military career, Wellesley returned to England as the country’s hero.

Unfortunately, the political battleground was not so easy for him to maneuver. He joined Lord Liverpool’s cabinet at time when the masses were beginning to demand political reform. The refusal of Wellington and the political classes to countenance social and political reform put them out of step with the public.

In his personal life, with his marriage far from a happy one, Wellington sought relationships with several courtesans/mistresses. One of those with with the infamous Harriette Wilson, who wrote a detailed kiss-and-tell book describing their encounters. The publisher, pornographer and scandal-monger Joseph Stockdale, even (unsuccessfully) attempted to blackmail the duke prior to its release. Cartoonists and satirists delighted in Wellington’s reputation.

“Affairs at Westminster were no less fraught. Demand for reform refused to quieten. In 1828, George IV asked Wellington to become prime minister. The government was beset with problems. Divisions ran deep between warring factions of the parties. His new role was something of a poisoned chalice. Cannier political operators may have refused the position but the duke, dutiful to the last, accepted. He quickly discovered that leading the country had little in common with leading an army. The autocratic style which had served him so well in the military did not go down so well in Westminster.

“If Wellington thought MPs could be ordered into unity he quickly discovered he was mistaken. One of the most divisive issues of the day centred on Catholic emancipation. Catholics had been barred from holding public office since the 17th Century but by 1829 these restrictions threatened civil strife. Some Tories, who had championed Wellington’s appointment, were aghast at his support for the Roman Catholic Relief Act. One, the Earl of Winchilsea, was particularly vitriolic in his criticism and on 23 March the duke and the earl fought a duel on Battersea Fields. Both survived.

“Wellington had been willing to countenance Catholic Emancipation for the greater good, but parliamentary reform he could not stomach. As a soldier, Wellington had been famed for anticipating what lay “on the other side of the hill” but he lacked the same degree of political imagination. Whig party leader Earl Grey led the calls for reform but Wellington would not budge. Out of step with the times, Wellington’s popularity plummeted. He lost control of the House of Commons, his government unable to tread a path between the attacks from Ultra Tories and reformists. By November he had little option but to resign.

“Despite the collapse of his government, Wellington had continued to lead the charge against Grey’s proposals for parliamentary reform. As his popularity continued to fall, the iron shutters he had installed on his house to protect his windows from the ire of the mob reinforced the image of the ‘Iron Duke’ refusing to move with the times. But in 1832, with the country in deadlock, Wellington backed down for the sake of the country. After persuading his supporters to stay away from Parliament, the Reform Bill finally passed. Even so, he was mobbed by an angry crowd on Waterloo Day. Wellington had remained active in government, as foreign secretary and, latterly, a minister without portfolio. Approaching his ninth decade, Wellington finally retired from public life in 1846. Even then he retained his post as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, unable to step away completely from the public service to which he had devoted his life – servant of crown and country to the last.

“On 14 September (1852) Wellington succumbed to a stroke at his favourite home, Walmer Castle, in Kent. In death the duke’s divisive political legacy was forgotten. Wellington was the hero of Waterloo once more. On 18 November, Britain said goodbye to a hero of a bygone age. The nation united in a display of grief more extravagant than anything seen before. More than 1.5 million lined the streets to pay their respects as Wellington’s coffin was borne to St Paul’s, where a further 10,000 dignitaries packed into the cathedral. Wellington may have been gone, but his reputation lived on.”

Wellington’s funeral carriage via http://waterloo200.org/200-object/wellingtons-funeral-carriage/

Resources:

Biography Online

BBC iWonder

The Diplomat

“The Duke of Wellington: 11 Things You Didn’t Know,” The Telegraph

Encyclopedia Britannica

The Victorian Web

Posted in British history, buildings and structures, George IV, Georgian England, Georgian Era, history, Living in the Regency, Napoleonic Wars, political stance, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities, religion, titles of aristocracy, war, world history | Tagged Arthur Wellesley, Battle of Waterloo, Duke of Wellington, Georgian England, Napoleonic Wars, political reform, political stance, Politics, real life tales, Regency Era, Salamanca, scandal | 6 Comments

The Duchess of Richmond’s Ball and Waterloo, a Guest Post from Jann Rowland

Posted on June 12, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

On June 15, 1815, perhaps the most famous (or infamous) ball in history was held. The Duchess of Richmond’s ball is generally regarded as the event in which Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was informed of the advance of French forces into the kingdom of the Netherlands. This is somewhat accurate.

In March of 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped Elba and landed in France, quickly assuming control of the Empire of France from Louis XVIII, setting off the Hundred Days campaign. The nations of Europe, quickly mobilized against him, with the British and the Prussians fielding armies in the Netherlands, while the Russians, Austrians, and several Germanic Princedoms marched to support them. Thus, outnumbered and facing enemies on potentially three sides, Napoleon knew his only chance was to defeat the coalition armies separately before they could assemble against him.

The allies had set the date of their invasion of France for July 1, but it was considered possible (perhaps even likely, given the reputation of the French Emperor) the French would attack first. The Duchess of Richmond, whose husband was the commander of British forces defending Brussels, had planned some weeks earlier to host a ball. When rumors of French advances began to run through the city, she asked Wellington if the ball should be canceled his response was: “Duchess, you may give your ball with the greatest safety, without fear of interruption.” Thus, the ball was held as scheduled, the most likely location being a coach house attached to the house the Lennox family was leasing in Brussels.

When the first circles of Brussels society gathered that night, the main topic of discussion was, of course, the rumored impending invasion. Even with so desperate a subject on the tongues of those who attended, however, by all accounts the ball proceeded smoothly. Wellington and his commanders arrived at about 11 PM that evening, and it was said that “with the exception of three generals, every officer high in [Wellington’s] army was there to be seen.”

fineartamerica.com Before Waterloo Painting by Henry Nelson O’Neil

But Wellington had allowed the ball to go on that evening in an attempt to confirm that all was well and proceeding as planned. In reality, he had received word earlier that day that the French army had crossed the Belgian frontier and was engaging the British allies, the Prussian army, to the east. Wellington put the entire British army on alert. But he was still unaware of the speed of the French advance and the location of the attack and did not order his army to mass just yet.

Just before dinner, a dispatch arrived for William, Prince of Orange, commander of the Dutch-Belgian army. The prince handed Wellington the missive, who put it in his pocket and continued on as if nothing had happened. When he read the note twenty minutes later, he ordered William back to his command post and went into supper. To his surprise, William returned only a short time later with word that the French had pushed much further than expected.

By now rumors were flying through the ballroom. Wellington orders both William and the Duke or Brunswick back to their command posts, though he, himself stayed for another twenty minutes. Then he announced his intention to retire. Before he left the room, however, he whispered in Duke of Richmond’s ear, asking if he had a good map. The two men left the room, going to Richmond’s study, where Wellington surveyed the potential battlefields. The French had pushed far enough into the Belgian countryside that they now threatened Quatre Bras, and Wellington, knowing he would not be able to mobilize his army in time to stop them there, exclaimed: “Napoleon has humbugged me, by God; he has gained twenty-four hours’ march on me.” As he surveyed the map, he fixed his gaze on Waterloo and allowed his finger to fall in the name as the place where the British would stop the French.

By now the ball was all but over. Officers were pulled from the ballroom and given orders to return to their units, and many did so without even changing back into their uniforms, fighting in their suits and dancing shoes. Those who bade them farewell weeping with fear for those who were going into danger, knowing not all of them would return. The city soon became a bustle of movement as the regiments departed for the front and the battle against the invading French.

The next day, both the Battle of Quatre Bras and the Battle of Liege were fought. Quatre Bras was a victory for the British as they denied Napoleon the crossroads and his strategic objective of driving a wedge between the two allied armies. Liege was a victory for Napoleon, but he was not able to destroy the Prussians. The British, by Wellington’s design, fell back to Waterloo and linked up with the Prussian army. Two days later, the final battle of the Napoleonic wars was fought at Waterloo, and the French were defeated, ending Napoleon’s power forever.

Posted in British history, Georgian England, Great Britain, Guest Post, Ireland, Living in the Regency, Napoleonic Wars, Regency era, research, war | Tagged Battle of Waterloo, British history, Duchess of Richmond's ball, Duke of Wellington, Napoleonic Wars | 1 Comment

Nigel Lewis’s “The Cover Plan Conspiracy,” a Deception Created by the Allied Forces in WWII

Posted on June 7, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

On June 5 of this week, I posted an article on Exercise Tiger, which was a tragic rehearsal for D-Day. That article brought me to the notice of Nigel Lewis, who has written extensively on the subject. Therefore, I asked him to guest post with us.

The Cover Plan Conspiracy takes a new look at a subject that I first wrote about in a book published thirty years ago. Its American title was Exercise Tiger, after the US landing-operation of that name held in the English Channel in late April, 1944.

Tiger is remembered for an incident in the early morning of April 28^th, when the last of its eight convoys – Convoy T-4 – was set upon by German E-boats. Two of its landing-ships were sunk, and 639 Americans lost their lives. The incident is routinely mentioned in the histories of D-Day and the Normandy invasion, and readers might imagine that there is nothing new to be said about it.

But there is. The T-4 incident is usually seen as a temporary setback in the Allied preparations for the invasion. Set in the final few weeks before D-Day, The Cover Plan Conspiracy goes behind the scenes of the preparations and makes major discoveries about Tiger and T-4. I do not peddle some conspiracy theory. The book is based on hard evidence and years of research in the British National Archives. [Please note: The active part of Exercise Tiger, after the ships set sail, was divided into three phases, 1) the seaborne phase, 2) the landings, 3) the movement inland of the troops who had been landed. The piece below concerns only the seaborne phase (1). The landings were on Slapton Sands. The attack on T-4 was during the seaborne phase, and it occurred almost forty miles from Slapton Sands, off the county of Dorset.]

To the men on T-4 and the other convoys, Tiger was just another training exercise. Their commanding officers knew that it was also a dress rehearsal for the Utah Beach landing in Normandy. But there was something else that even their commanders didn’t know. One of my discoveries is that Tiger was tightly locked into the schedule of the invasion’s top-secret deception plan, Operation Fortitude, also known as the Cover Plan. In fact, the exercise was at the cutting-edge of the Plan, its so-called tactical threat delivered on April 24^th, the day that Tiger began.

There was, then, a deceptive side to Tiger, which has been hidden by subtle distortions of its history. In 1944, for example, the Allied Naval Commander, Admiral Bertram Ramsay, claimed that the E-boats were on a routine reconnaissance sortie when they chanced to run into Convoy T-4. The Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, made the same claim in 1946. The claim is false and was known to be so. The E-boats did not simply happen upon their targets. Almost two days before the attack, the enemy had learned that there were about to be large-scale Allied amphibious operations in the west of the English Channel.

On the morning of April 26^th, just hours before the first convoy put to sea, German photo-reconnaissance aircraft overflew Torbay, a natural harbour in the western Channel where ten of Tiger’s landing-ships lay at anchor. It would have been clear from the photos that the ships were combat-loaded, ready for action. The Germans did not know it was an exercise. To them, it looked like the long-expected invasion. Hitler himself anticipated that the invasion would be on April 26^th.

Certain British officers in charge of the shore defences knew that the recce (Reconnaissance) had tipped off the enemy. But by disguising it in the intelligence bulletins as a harmless flight over the sea “off Dartmouth”, they concealed this vital piece of information. An even more disturbing discovery is that the Allied air forces paved the way for the reconnaissance. During exercises, it was considered “essential” that air-patrols should watch over the loaded ships while they were still in harbour. A few days later the even bigger D-Day rehearsal, Exercise Fabius, was patrolled by the RAF. The patrols for Tiger, however, were cancelled, leaving a wide-open window of opportunity for enemy aircraft to fly through.

Early that morning, the E-boats had arrived in Cherbourg, having moved there from Boulogne. Royal Navy intelligence knew that the move meant that E-boat operations in the west of the Channel were imminent. It also knew that the E-boats only put to sea after their targets had been identified by German air reconnaissance. A German message decrypted by the British code-cracking operation, Ultra, revealed that an E-boat sortie “northwestward” from Cherbourg was planned for the night of the 26^th/ 27^th, but postponed. Also decrypted by Ultra was a report on the air reconnaissance over Torbay. A copy of it was sent to the Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth, Admiral Sir Ralph Leatham.

By lunchtime on the 27^th, it was clear that E-boats were about to prowl the western Channel, and that great danger awaited Convoy T-4 – the only convoy still in harbour. Leatham had the power to stop it from sailing, but did nothing. Other evidence of underhand action and inaction by him is in Chapters 20 and 21 of my book. He could and should have allocated more warships to Tiger, and because he didn’t its convoys – all apart from the first one – were very weakly defended.

What explains this devious behaviour by one ally towards another? The Cover Plan does. Fortitude was nothing if not devious. Its aim was to divert attention from the real area of the invasion, Normandy, by convincing the enemy that the Allies would land 150 miles away at the narrow, eastern end of the Channel, in the area known as the Pas de Calais. Historians have not appreciated how difficult it was to fit the far western end of the Channel – where the Americans were – into this plan. As I explain in Part 1 of my book, the fact that there were more invasion ports to the west than to the east, and the refusal of the Americans to take the Cover Plan seriously, only added to the difficulty.

The success of Fortitude was considered indispensable to the invasion, and the failure of the invasion was unthinkable. For all its make believe, Fortitude was a major operation of war, in which it was legitimate to take risks. It aimed to save Allied lives, but above all it aimed to expedite the invasion, even at the cost of incurring loss of life.

This all has a bearing on Tiger, in several ways. The key point is that because the Americans were too far away from the Pas de Calais to include them in the master-narrative of the Cover Plan, another story had to be found for them. We cannot be sure what the story was. But a “pretended diversion” to the west was probably part of it, and a provocative “mock-invasion” certainly was.

There is also the distressing possibility that Tiger was a sacrifice operation carried out to create an impression of Allied unpreparedness and weakness in the west. Tiger was not the first exercise to double as a deception, and unwitting Allied servicemen – and British civilians – were sometimes killed in deception operations. The sacrifice was usually on a comparatively small scale, but in late April the tactical threat allowed for great risks to be taken to safeguard the secret that Normandy was the Allied landing-area. The large presence of US forces in the west jeopardised the secret, and the high death-toll of Tiger may be an indication of how much it mattered to establish a fake “cover story” for the Americans.

The western alliance was supposed to be bilateral in its thinking, planning, and decision-making. But where the Cover Plan is concerned, the bilateralism broke down. Fortitude was almost entirely a British operation, and it was certainly the British who took the lead in hatching and implementing the scheme within Fortitude – a secret scheme that deserves to be called a conspiracy – that collaterally contributed to the deaths of 639 Americans in the E-boat attack. An unresolved question is the extent to which Supreme Allied Headquarters and some of its US generals, including Eisenhower, were aware of the scheme.

The English Channel in early 1944 was a highly dangerous place, and Tiger’s seaborne phase was made even more perilous by the lowering of the air and sea defences and the dissembling of the enemy air recce over Torbay. These were all intentional measures, and in my book I suggest that whether or not Tiger was used as the vehicle for a sacrifice operation, it “certainly became one”. I also say that the 639 who died were “sacrificial victims of the Cover Plan”.

I stop short of saying that a sacrifice on that scale was specifically intended. Before coming to that conclusion, I would want further evidence. Meanwhile, there is the evidence that we already have, of premeditation on the Allied side of the Channel. The deceptionists – as the deceivers called themselves – must have realised that their actions increased the odds that one of Tiger’s convoys would be attacked, ships sunk, and lives lost. They may, however, have gambled on the chance that there would be no attack, or, if there were one, that its death-toll would be low – an acceptable price to pay for the security of the invasion.

If so, the gamble did not come off.

Excerpts from The Cover Plan…

From Chapter 1 – Hesketh’s History

In Arlington Cemetery, Virginia, is a plaque to the memory of the men who died that night. Commending their sacrifice, it states that they died in “the Allied cause”. So they did, but the same may be said of any Allied soldier who died in World War II. In their case, the specific cause was deeply hidden. Caught without knowing it in a story designed to delude the enemy, they were sacrificial victims of the Cover Plan, whose ruthless demands were intrinsic to the catastrophe of T-4. The one operation – the training exercise – was mangled in the machinery of the other one: the deception structured around it.

British historian John Keegan’s description of the T-4 incident, “sad but subordinate”, no longer applies. It would be more accurate to say that it was made to seem subordinate. The emotive story of the doomed convoy turns out not to be random, after all. It can no longer be regarded as an optional add-on to the pre-D-Day history of the Normandy landings – it is right at the heart of that history. Nor can it be construed simply as a “sad” story, sad though it is. General Bradley, the commander of First US Army, rightly called it “one of the major tragedies of the European War”.

What happened to T-4 was monstrously unfair, but there is also a certain wartime inevitability to it, and it is a tragic inevitability. It seems incredible that hundreds of men could die merely for a story. But there were powerful forces at work in the background to Tiger, and the British too were prey to those forces, as we will see …

The deceptionists worked under a disadvantage. They were not responding to events so much as setting the scene for events yet to come, trying to mould an outcome that still lay in the future. Knowing that it was a successful outcome, we are less likely to be amenable to the idea that it might have been less successful if there had been no deception around Tiger, or that T-4 may have forestalled a greater tragedy. Those arguments now look frail and hypothetical. But the deceptionists lived with hypothesis on a daily basis. In trying to second-guess the enemy, they could only act on the basis of conjecture. The ramifications of this point will become clear as the story progresses.

The Cover Plan posed ethical dilemmas that most of us would find intolerable. But the deceptionists could not let the dilemmas detain them for long. They had to choose. They acted out of military necessity, as they saw it, and it is often hard to see how, in the circumstances, they might have acted differently.

But decisions that may have seemed inevitable to them at the time do not necessarily seem so to us in the present-day. There was, as we will see, an objective basis for the Tiger deception, but was it objectively necessary to go ahead with it? There can be no definitive answer to that question. It lies in the realm of “might-have-been” history. Objective necessity does not eliminate the human factor, however. That too had a part to play, as it usually does. Character-defects in some of the commanders make one suspect that the Tiger deception may have got out of hand and run away with itself. I am thinking of the stubborn pride and arrogance that the Greeks knew as hubris, and the misplaced “gung-ho” enthusiasm that is the fatal flaw of many a military disaster. Wartime deception is a dangerous game – the deceptionists may have played it too assiduously.

I will present the evidence known to me, and set the T-4 disaster in the context of the extreme and exacting circumstances in which the decision to weave a deception around Tiger seemed inevitable and right. Before the reader rushes to judgement, I ask that those circumstances be taken into account. It is not my intention either to blame the British en bloc, or to absolve them from blame. But it would be an over-simplification to take the story out of context and see it in black-and-white terms, with the British as the villains of the piece. Their judgements may be in doubt, but not their motives. They were not driven by narrow British self-interest. It was their duty to ensure the security of the invasion, and they took the decisions they did because they saw Allied advantage in taking them. They did not die in the Allied cause, but they did act in that cause. If this is immoral, it is the immorality of war itself.

The concept of the Tiger deception seems to have been British, and the operation was British-led, but readers should be aware from the outset that Americans too took part. The full extent of US participation is unclear, but there were certainly Americans active in carrying out the operation, and others who covered it up. It was eventually an Allied operation, as the Cover Plan was supposed to be. The story unfolds within a warring family – what Eisenhower called “the family relationship of SHAEF”. Americans and British were of course on the same side, not like the house of Atreus in Greek tragedy, warring with one another. It is well known, however, that they were not always as united in thought and deed as they liked to present themselves as being. T-4 – a secret grief of the western alliance – takes that knowledge to a new level.

From Chapter 6 – Sacrifice

Because of Allied protocol, the British could not directly intervene in the crisis in the west. But protocol could not be allowed to get in the way of the overriding operational need for a fully effective Cover Plan. Given US unwillingness to co-operate in the Plan, only the British could save the day by creating the “necessary false picture” in this area. They therefore had to intervene, but could only do so indirectly. Soon enough, Harold Kehm’s prediction of 1943 would come true, as the British took over the American share of the Cover Plan.

To repeat my earlier caveat, all the people in this story – British and American alike – were under the compulsion of the impersonal forces unleashed by war. It would be a mistake to interpret the story in wholly personal terms, to imagine, for example, that the British set out to settle a grudge and punish the Americans for their negligence and non-co-operation in the Cover Plan. That is not how it was. It was the misfortune of the Americans that they had the geographical bad luck of occupying the area that it was most problematic for the deceptionists to accommodate within the Cover Plan. At the same time, it was an Allied responsibility – which became a British responsibility – to ensure that the Overlord cover was watertight and comprehensive. Despite the high-level US reluctance to get involved in the Cover Plan, and despite the extreme difficulty posed by the West Country and the US forces concentrated there, leaving them out of the Plan was not an option.

About the Books…

Set in England in the momentous final few weeks before the Normandy invasion of June 6th, 1944, this is the astonishing true story of the deadliest, best kept secret of the Anglo-American alliance of World War II.

The Cover Plan Conspiracy is a complete reappraisal of one of the most publicised but also most misunderstood episodes of the whole D-Day period. In the early morning of April 28, 1944, enemy torpedo-boats attacked an American troopship convoy in the west of the English Channel. Convoy T-4 was the final follow-up convoy of Exercise Tiger, a huge US dress rehearsal for the Normandy landings. The story ever since has been that the 639 Americans killed in the attack were the accidental victims of an unforeseen disaster in training.

The real story, told here for the first time, is devastatingly different. Nigel Lewis draws on extensive research and a wealth of fresh evidence to show that Exercise Tiger was secretly enmeshed in the Allied deception plan for Normandy, the invasion’s so-called “Cover Plan”. Without their knowledge, the men taking part in Tiger were entangled in Allied deception strategy, acting out a narrative designed to mislead the enemy before D-Day. The hundreds killed in the convoy disaster were secret sacrificial victims of the D-Day Cover Plan.

Shedding unprecedented light on Allied disarray and the secret war waged by the Allies before Normandy, this book breaks new ground. The Cover Plan was intended to fool the enemy for a few months. The cover-up of Tiger and T-4 has deceived the historians and peoples of two nations for more than seventy years.

The Cover Plan Conspiracy falls naturally into four parts – The Plan, ‘A Larger Plan’, The Operation, and The Cover-Up. All four parts are available here.

Please note, there are no maps in the book.

Part 1: The Plan sets the scene for the whole book and describes Anglo-American disagreements and other problems that led to the larger plan …

Part 2: ‘A Larger Plan’ shows the net closing around Tiger, and explains the circumstances in which the exercise got caught in the Cover Plan …

Part 3: The Operation exposes the covert steps taken to weaken Tiger’s defences and tip off the enemy, culminating in the attack on its final convoy …

Part 4: The Cover-Up reveals what was done in 1944 and afterwards to conceal the Tiger deception and the real causes of the convoy disaster …

You might also check out…

Exercise Tiger: The Dramatic True Story of a Hidden Tragedy of World War II Hardcover – July, 1990

(This book is only available from 3rd Party book sellers (starting at $3.95)

In the autumn of 1943, the United States armed forces, with the cooperation of the British government, evacuated seven villages and took over 30 acres of Devon to set up a high security camp where thousands of young American recruits could be trained for the forthcoming invasion of Europe. Known as Exercise Tiger, the operation included manoeuvres and rehearsals on landing craft in the English Channel. On the night of April 28th 1944, the landing craft had an inadequate escort of warships and seven German E-boats in the area moved in. At first, the Americans thought they were part of the exercise, but then they saw that their friends were being wounded and killed on several of the vessels, the order was given to abandon ship. Many of the soldiers who jumped, drowned soon after hitting the water.

Meet Nigel Lewis…

Nigel Lewis was born in Central America in 1948 and is a graduate of Cambridge University. He was a journalist for twenty-five years, for the BBC and other outlets. The Cover Plan Conspiracy is his second excursion into the investigative history of World War II. His first book, Paperchase (1981), exposed a state secret of the Soviet bloc, the secret purloining, by Poland, of thousands of priceless musical and other manuscripts evacuated during the war from the Prussian State Library in Berlin. He is also the librettist of The First Commandment, the English version of an early Mozart opera.

In the late 1980’s he wrote a blow-by-blow documentary account of the E-boat attack on Exercise Tiger in 1944, published in the UK as Channel Firing and in the USA as Exercise Tiger. He is currently working on another book about the US presence in wartime Britain – Bugbear: the Americans and the Beaches of the West Country, 1943-1944. He lives in London, and spends part of the year in Italy.

Posted in American History, book excerpts, British history, excerpt, Guest Post, history, legacy, military, real life tales, research, war, world history, writing | Tagged Allied forces, American history, book excerpts, British history, Exercise Tiger, military, Nigel Lewis, nonfiction, The Cover Plan Conspiracy, world history, World War II | 2 Comments

Jonathan Martin, Arsonist ~ Full of Fury and Fire

Posted on June 3, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

Many of my Regency stories is set in Yorkshire, one of my favorite places in the UK. Today, I bring you a tale that occurred on 1 February 1829, in the town of York and, specifically, involved the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Saint Peter, now known as York Minster.

An artist’s impression of Martin in captivity ~ https://www.onthisday.com/articles/the-fire-and-fury-of-jonathan-martin

One Jonathan Martin was outraged with what “went on” in the Gothic cathedral. Martin had sent the church’s clergy several warning letters regarding their sins: “repent of bottles of wine, and roast beef and plum pudding.”

Martin was born at Highside House, near Hexham in Northumberland, one of 12 children. His brother John Martin was an English Romantic painter, engraver and illustrator. Another brother, William Martin, was an English eccentric and self-described philosopher. Jonathan was said to have been farmed out to his aunt, Ann Thompson, a staunch Protestant to spoke often of her visions of hell to the boy. Jonathan was “tongue tied” and spoke with an impediment.

Later, he stood witness to his sister’s murder by a neighbor and was sent to his uncle’s farm to recover from the shock. Eventually, Jonathan was apprenticed to a tanner but was caught in London and press ganged in 1804. He served for six years upon the HMS Hercule and even saw action at the Battle of Copenhagen.

Jonathan finally returned to England when the HMS Hercule was broken up in 1810. He settled to Durham, where he married and where his son Richard was born in 1814. Shortly, thereafter, he became a Wesleyan preacher and denounced the Church of England. He was well-known for disruptive Protestant church services, calling the members of the clergy of the Church of England as “vipers from hell.”

In 1817, he was arrested, tried, and sent to a private asylum in West Auckland for his threats to shoot Edward Legge, the Bishop of Oxford. Later, he was transferred to the public asylum in Gateshead, from which he escaped in June 1820, but was quickly recaptured.

In 1821, upon learning his wife had died, Martin escaped a second time from the asylum. He was not recaptured, and, so, he returned to work as a tanner and a preacher. Because he believed that all prayer should come from the heart, rather than be recited from formal liturgy, Martin thought it his mission to expose the “corrupt state” of the established church, and he acted according to those tenants for nearly a decade following his return to society. He published his autobiography in 1826, with additional editions in 1828, 1829, and 1830. This was his chief source of income.

In 1828, he remarried; this time to Maria Hudson. The couple moved to York, where he experienced another mental breakdown in 1829.

On Sunday, 1 February, Martin attended the evensong (the Anglican equivalent to Vespers in the Roman Catholic Church) at York Minster. During the service, he became distracted by what he termed to be a “buzzing sound” coming from the organ. Instead of returning home after the service, Martin hid in the building, finally making his way to the bell tower. Ironically, any who noted his light did not question its presence in the tower. Later that night, Martin set fire to the woodwork in the choir area, using hymn books, cushions, and curtain as the fuel, and then escaped by climbing down a bell rope from the tower.

Evensong rehearsal in the quire of York Minster, showing carved choir stalls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choir#/media/File:Evensong_in_York_Minster.jpg

Smoke was not noted until the early hours of 2 February. It was raging by 8 of the clock. It took until the afternoon of 3 February before the fire was under control. “A section of the roof of the central aisle approximately 131 foot (40 m) long was destroyed, stretching from the lantern tower towards the east window, together with much of the internal woodwork from the organ screen to the altar screen, including the organ, medieval choir stalls, the bishop’s throne, and the pulpit. The cause – arson – soon became apparent, and the culprit was identified from threatening placards Martin had left on the Minster railings in previous days, including his initials and address. (Jonathan Martin, arsonist)

Martin was captured near Hexham on 6 February. He neither denied his guilt nor resist arrest. He simply declared his actions as “God’s will.”

He was tried at York Castle in March 1829, before Baron Hullock and a jury. At his trial Martin said: “It vexed me to hear them singing their prayers and amens. I knew it did not come from the heart; it was deceiving the people.” Martin was defended by Henry Brougham, who had gained notoriety for defending Queen Caroline in 1821 and who became a liberal leader in the House of Lords, as well as Lord Chanceloor of Great Britain (24 November 1830 to 9 July 1834). Unfortunately, like the placards left at the scene, Martin had sent a series of letters to the clergy at the York cathedral. He had signed each with “JM” and include his address. One of them included the threat: “Your great Minsters and churches will come rattling down upon your guilty heads.”

“At his trial Martin told the judge: ‘After I had written five letters to the clergy, the last of which I believe was a very severe one, I was very anxious to speak to them by word of mouth; but none of them would come near me. So I prayed to the Lord, and asked him what was to be done. And I dreamed that I saw a cloud come over the cathedral – and it tolled towards me at my lodgings; it awoke me out of my sleep, and I asked the Lord what it meant; and he told me it was to warn these clergymen of England, who were going to plays, and cards, and such like: and the Lord told me he had chosen me to warn them.’

“Feelings were running high against Martin, so much so that a detachment of soldiers remained in court during the trial because the judge feared that he might be lynched. He is said to have smiled a great deal during the hearing, fuelling howls of anger from the public gallery.” (The Fire and Fury of Jonathan Martin)

Despite the jury ruling that he was guilty on a capital charge, which should have resulted in a death sentence, the judge declared him not guilty on the grounds of insanity. He was detained in Bethlem Royal Hospital, where he remained until he died nine years later. During this period of detention, he made a number of drawings, including self-portraits and an apocalyptic picture of the destruction of London. His son, Richard, from his first marriage, was brought up by Jonathan’s brother John. Richard committed suicide in September 1838, three months after his father’s death.

Other Sources:

Balston, T, The life of Jonathan Martin … with some account of William and Richard Martin (1945).

H. C. G. Matthew, ‘Martin, Jonathan (1782–1838)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, October 2006.

“Jonathan Martin, A Madman Who Set Fire to York Minster.” The Newgate Calendar.

Rede, Leman Thomas. “Arson and Sacrifice: The Life and Trial of Jonathan Martin.” York Castle in the Nineteenth Century, Being an Account of All the Principal Offences Committed in Yorkshire, from The Year 1800 to the Present Period; with The Lives of Capital Offenders; Accompanied with Interesting Anecdotes, Etc.

Posted in British history, buildings and structures, Church of England, Georgian England, Georgian Era, Great Britain, history, real life tales, religion, research | Tagged arsonist, British history, buildings and structures, Church of England, Georgian Era, Jonathan Martin, real-life tales, religion, York Minster | Comments Off

The Brides, the Grooms, and the Weddings in Jane Austen Novels, a Guest Post from Eliza Shearer

Posted on May 29, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

This post originally appeared on the Austen Authors Blog on April 30, 2019.

The wedding season is well and truly upon us. I have three weddings this year, two of them in the next few weeks, which has got me thinking about how vow exchanging ceremonies feature in Jane Austen’s novels…

The Tradition

“It was a very proper wedding. The bride was elegantly dressed; the two bridesmaids were duly inferior; her father gave her away; her mother stood with salts in her hand, expecting to be agitated; her aunt tried to cry; and the service was impressively read by Dr. Grant.”

Mansfield Park, Chapter XXI

Weddings in Jane Austen’s time were not that different from the sort of celebrations we are used to today. Some of the elements and features that we immediately recognise (even expect) in a contemporary wedding were already present. The blushing bride, the emotional future mother-in-law and the bridesmaids and their unspoken duty not to upstage the bride have been around for over two-hundred years. Who knew?

The Wedding-Clothes

Of course, some details were slightly different. For example, the bride’s family was expected to provide “wedding-clothes” for their daughter, which comprised of her wedding dress, new gowns and the linen required to equip her new home. In Northanger Abbey, Mrs Allen says that Miss Drummond (later Mrs Tiney) was so wealthy that “when she married, her father gave her (…) five hundred to buy wedding-clothes.” That is the same as the yearly income of Mrs Dashwood and her daughters in Sense and Sensibility, so it must have been quite the trousseau.

The quantity and quality of a bride’s wedding-clothes were a social marker, and hence Mrs Bennet’s obsession with the matter in Pride and Prejudice, in spite of the circumstances of Lydia and Wickham’s marriage. She instructs her brother to “tell Lydia she shall have as much money she chooses to buy them (wedding clothes)” and even “not to give any directions about her clothes till she has seen me, for she does not know which are the best warehouses.” Too bad that her husband isn’t having any of it.

The Wedding Ceremony

Maria Bertram and Mr Rushworth’s wedding in Mansfield Park is particularly lavish, as it marks the marriage of a Baronet’s daughter and a very wealthy man. Most of the ceremonies during the Regency were a more modest affair, even when those getting married had a generous income. Having said that, the trend for simplicity was not to everyone’s liking. Here’s the delightful passage at the end of Emma, from the point-of-view of self-important Mrs Elton. It describes Mr Knightley’s and Emma’s wedding, and the subtext tells us what Austen thought of extravagant ceremonies:

“The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own.-‘Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!-Selina would stare when she heard of it’.”

Emma, Chapter 55

The Wedding Cake

Although weddings were not necessarily followed by a celebratory meal, the wedding cake was the centrepiece of any Regency wedding. The recipe made for a rich and dense confection, packed with dried fruit and a fair bit of alcohol, not unlike the Christmas pudding already popular at the time. The wedding cake was cut and distributed to friends, family and neighbours, and would keep for ages, if not consumed immediately after the ceremony.

In Emma, while at Mr and Mrs Weston’s wedding, Mr Woodhouse consults with Mr Perry about the digestibility of the wedding cake. “Mr Woodhouse’s delicate stomach could bear nothing rich, and he could never believe other people to be different from himself”, so he is pleased when the apothecary admits that “wedding-cake might certainly disagree with many—perhaps with most people, unless taken moderately.” Mr Woodhouse tries to convince guests not to consume the sweet, but in spite of his best efforts, all the wedding cake is eaten up, and even the little Perrys are rumoured to have eaten some!

The New Carriage

Last but definitely not least, wealthy newlyweds would sometimes purchase a new carriage for the wedding, marking in yet another way their new status as a married couple. In Persuasion, upon marrying Captain Wentworth, Anne Elliot becomes “the mistress of a very pretty landaulette.” The lack of a brand new carriage is precisely the only faux pas in the Rushworths’ wedding. This is the sentence that follows the paragraph of Mansfield Park quoted above:

“Nothing could be objected to when it came under the discussion of the neighbourhood, except that the carriage which conveyed the bride and bridegroom and Julia from the church-door to Sotherton was the same chaise which Mr Rushworth had used for a twelvemonth before. In everything else, the etiquette of the day might stand the strictest investigation.”

Mansfield Park, chapter XXI

Given Jane Austen’s eye for detail, and the combined wealth of the bride and groom, this is no small detail. I see it as the author’s subtle way to convey that the Rushworths’ marriage was doomed from the start.

The Perfect Wedding Guest

If you have any weddings coming up this year, enjoy the celebrations, but remember what is expected of a good wedding guest. As Miss Woodhouse puts it when discussing the Westons’ nuptials in the opening chapter of Emma: “we all behaved charmingly. Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks; not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen.” I intend to make Emma’s words my guide in the next few weeks.

Which is your favourite Austen wedding and why?

Posted in Austen Authors, Church of England, Georgian England, Georgian Era, Guest Post, marriage, marriage customs, Pride and Prejudice, Regency era, Uncategorized | Tagged Austen Authors, Georgian England, guest post, Jane Austen, Regency, traditions, weddings | 2 Comments

The Common Practice of Primogeniture in Regency England

Posted on May 15, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

Of late, I have been studying the laws and statutes that comprised the practice of primogeniture in Regency England. In truth, I can only work on the project for a few hours each day for some of the material is written in such legal jargon that it has me back checking the meaning of certain words and of individuals, known widely in the UK, but of which I am unaware here in the States. Therefore, I am attempting to clear my thoughts by placing them on paper.

First, I discovered that there are few statistics available to chronicle the incidence of primogeniture as part of settlements and wills. During the period in which I am researching there were no register of settlements of land ownership, existing in the greater part of England. Scotland had such a register, but looking at them creates a conflicting estimates of settled and unsettled property. I have looked at several sources for wills, but they do not show the extent of the land bestowed. Nor can I determine with any accuracy whether they are displaying a will that aggravates or mitigates the settlements upon the eldest son. In the Regency, as far as I can tell there was no distinction in the records as to land passing by will and land passing by settlement. Even so, we can catch a glimmer of the influence of primogeniture on the social life of England.

First, we must recall that personal property is exempt from the law of primogeniture. Nor must it be forgotten that by English law, ordinary lease holds whether they consist of lands or houses, count as personalty and are distributed as such on intestacy; whereas, money in trust for investment in land counts as realty and falls under the same rule of inheritance. Vast lease holdings were constantly included in settlements of personalty, all without any references to primogeniture. In most instances, the funds were invested equally for the benefit of all the sons and daughters, though a power was usually reserved to the parents of modifying this distribution by “appointment,” at their own discretion. Testators of small landed estates purchased with their own funds also could direct the land to be divided equally among their children.

For members of the yeoman class or of the gentry, the ordinary practice was of primogeniture, with the inheritance going to the eldest son, but that, in accordance with the Scottish rule of legitim, younger children could be compensated, so far as possible, for their disinherison. If the land was burdened by mortgages, it could be sold and the profit divided equally among the survivors.

Gavelkind stood in contrast to the custom of primogeniture. Gavelkind is practiced in Kent, Wales, and parts of Ireland. In gavelkind the younger children are placed on equal footing with the eldest son, either by the subdivision or by heavy charges on the tenant-right.

Primogeniture was popular among the landed aristocracy and those who wished to be counted among their ranks. Among English squires, Scottish lairds, and the Irish gentry, primogeniture was accepted as a fundamental law to which the practice of entails, which was introduced in 1685, added substantial power. Currently in England, where so much land is in the hands of corporations or trustees for public objects, and where almost all deeds relating to land are in private custody, we cannot venture to speak with much confidence on this point.

Large estates were generally entailed either by will or settlement. Smaller hereditary estates were also often entailed. Some land that changed hands each year did so by the governance of the law of intestacy. What we do know is that an intestate may be carried into effect by arrangement within the family, or an amicable suit in equity, without the public becoming aware of the fact, especially if those wishes should coincide with the course of descent at common law.

Mr. Joshua Williams, a barrister at Lincoln Inn (1845) in his Principles of the Law of Real Property says, “In families where the estates are kept up from one generation to another, settlements are made every few years for this purpose; thus, in the event of a marriage, a life-estate merely is given to the husband; the wife has an allowance for pin-money during the marriage, and a rent-charge or annuity by way of jointure for her life, in case she should survive her husband. Subject to this jointure, and to the payment of such sums as may be agreed on for the portions of the daughters and the younger sons of the marriage, the eldest son who may be born of the marriage is made by the settlement tenant-in-tail. In case of his decease without issue, it is provided that the second son, and then the third, should in like manner be tenant-in-tail; and so on to the others; and in default of sons, the estate is usually given to the daughters; not successively, however, but as ‘tenants in common in tail,’ with ‘cross remainders’ in tail. By this means the estate is tied up till some tenant-in-tail attains the age of twenty-one years; when he is able, with the consent of his father, who is tenant for life, to bar the entail with all the remainders. Dominion is thus again acquired over the property, which dominion is usually exercised in a re-settlement on the next generation; and thus the property is preserved in the family. Primogeniture, therefore, as it obtains among the landed gentry of England is as custom only, and not a right; though there can be no doubt that the custom has originated in the right which was enjoyed by the eldest son, as heir to his father, in those days when estates-tail could not be barred.”

Posted in Act of Parliament, Anglo-Saxons, British history, business, commerce, Georgian England, history, Living in the Regency, marriage customs, primogenture, Scotland, titles of aristocracy, Wales | Tagged custom, entailments, gavelkind, law, primogeniture, Regency England | 3 Comments

Special Licences in Regency Era

Posted on May 13, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

In 1753, the Hardwick Marriage Act passed, and Georgian couples in England and Wales could choose among three ways to marry: with the reading of the banns, by a common (sometimes referred to as an “ordinary”) licence, and by special licence.

Marriage requirements in England according to Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753–

a couple needed a license and the reading of the banns to marry
parental consent if either was under the age of 21
the ceremony must take place within a public chapel or church by authorized clergy
the marriage must be performed between 8am and noon before witnesses
the marriage had to be recorded in the marriage register with the signatures of both parties, the witnesses, and the minister.

Banns had been in use since the 1200s. An actual reading of the banns took place at the parish church over three consecutive Sundays (a minimum of 15 days, if one started counting on the first Sunday). They were called in the parish or parishes in which the bride and groom resided. The purpose of banns is to enable anyone to raise any canonical or civillegal impediment to the marriage, so as to prevent marriages that are invalid. Impediments vary between legal jurisdictions, but would normally include a pre-existing marriage that has been neither dissolved nor annulled, a vow of celibacy, lack of consent, or the couple’s being related within the prohibited degrees of kinship. Banns were more than likely used by the majority of the residents of a village or town. There was little or no expense involved. The couple then had ninety days to finalize the ceremony. If not done for whatever reason, the Banns would need to be called another time.

The wording of banns according to the rites of the Church of England is as follows:

I publish the banns of marriage between NN of (parish) and NN of (parish). This is the first / second / third time of asking. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it. (Book of Common Prayer 1662)

According to Louis Allen at Jane Austen’s London, “A common licence could be issued by archbishops, bishops, some archdeacons and ministers in parishes which were ‘peculiars’ (eg St Paul’s cathedral). The 1753 Act required a marriage by licence to take place in a parish where one of the spouses had been resident for at least four weeks (i.e., George Wickham in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice), but this was often ignored.

“To obtain a licence someone, usually the bridegroom, had to apply at the registry for the appropriate jurisdiction and submit an allegation which was a statement, under oath, that there were no impediments to the marriage. Usually the document included the names, ages, occupations and marital status (single or widowed) of the parties and, if one of them was a minor, it had to name the parent or guardian giving their consent. Sometimes a money bond was provided to back up the allegation.

“Allegations, bonds and the licences themselves survive quite rarely. The licence was given to the couple to hand to the clergyman who would perform the marriage and, presumably, they often did not give them back.”

By the Regency the aristocrats were more likely to marry by ordinary license to avoid the publishing of the banns for 3 Sundays in a row. In that manner, it was easier to have a quiet family wedding in the local church. Quite a few middling sort married by common license as well to avoid vulgar comment from friends and enemies. The Hardwicke Marriage Act said all marriages by minors by license without permission were NULL and VOID from the beginning. People usually went to court (Church court) to have this made official to avoid other legal complications.

A Special Licensc was obtained from the Archbishop of Canterbury in Doctors Commons in London. The big differences between the “special” license and the “common” license were the cost – over 20 guineas plus a £4 to £5 Stamp Duty for the paper — and that the couple could be married at any time of the day and anywhere they wanted. All the other requirements were the same. As one can imagine, only someone very wealthy with a very good reason to pay the money, and go to the trouble of traveling to London and gaining an audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury, would hassle with it. Not an easy task even if rich.

The Archbishop did not need to know the couple—or the man’s title in the peerage—although the Archbishop usually knew of the family if the man was at all connected. The Archbishop was not personally involved with the granting of special or standard licences, which were dispensed at the office in Doctors’ Commons. He did have the right to limit the granting of special licences to whomever he wished. However the grants were customarily limited to the nobility, aristocracy, Judges, high ranking clerics, barristers, etc.—those who would be thought to extend their word as their bond that the information on the form was true as to age and permission. The ones who asked for special licences did not need to name their parishes as they would have for a standard license. In the Regency one had to appear in person or have the father or legal representative do so. It has to be someone who could swear to the truth of the facts. In this case, the most important part is that the female have valid permission for the marriage. If the invalidity of the marriage ever came to light, the couple would need to be remarry, if they so wished. Unfortunately, all children born during the voidable marriage would be considered illegitimate.

If the man (groom) is of an aristocratic family, a barrister, a clergyman, or otherwise of the status where he is likely to subscribe to the code that his word was his bond, he could obtain a special licence. If he wanted, the man could obtain a standard licence from the local bishop and pay the fee for a bond. It would be necessary for him to give the name of the church in which he and his prospective bride planned to marry, which was usually his parish church. The Ton customarily had two parish churches: Most had a country church and lived within the parish of St George Hanover Square in Town.

Though, obviously, more peers and their families married by special licence than did the gentry or the lower classes, in reality, there really were no more than about 300 issued in a hundred years. In other words, do not be misled by the number of dukes or the number of special licences one finds in Regency romance novels. Both were smaller in number than one could be led to believe.

All weddings, no matter where they took place, had to be recorded in the register of the parish church in which the wedding takes place. Even if a couple married by special licende at home, the marriage register was supposed to be signed by them.

Unlike the issuance of ordinary licences, there were no allegation bonds for special licences. The archbishop limited the disbursement of the special license to those who Gave their word—or from whom he expected to be truthful. The standard licence required a £100 bond. The fee paid was not great, and they never paid more unless the truth of the assertions came into question.

For further questions, have a look at these sites:

Miranda Neville’s Blog:

http://mirandaneville.blogspot.com/2016/01/what-did-special-license-look-like.html

Nancy Regency Researcher

http://www.regencyresearcher.com/pages/marriage.html

There’s actually quite a lot of detailed info on this page, including who can issue licenses if people are from different areas of England.

https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Marriage_Allegations,_Bonds_and_Licences_in_England_and_Wales

Posted in British history, Church of England, George IV, Georgian England, Georgian Era, Jane Austen, Levirate marriage, Living in the Regency, marriage, marriage customs, marriage licenses, Regency era, Wales | Tagged Archbishop of Canterbury, British history, calling of the banns, Church of England, common license, England, Hardwicke Marriage Act 1753, marriage, ordinary license, special license, Wales | 6 Comments

The Foils of Jane Austen, Part 1, a Guest Post from C. D. Gerard

Posted on May 10, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

The post originally appeared on the Austen Authors’ blog on January 26, 2019. Enjoy!

The question of why we love Jane Austen so much has been pondered by many a scholar and reader over the past 200 years. But if you ask ten people this question, you will surely get ten different answers.

Some would say the plots are what they like best. Others read and admire Austen for her wit and humor. And what about her amazing insight into romantic relationships?

I would say what makes Austen so great is her characters. After you’ve read an Austen novel, you remember these vibrant people in the story that jump right off the page. We remember Elizabeth Bennett’s staunch individuality, or Marianne Dashwood’s vulnerable and romantic disposition. We think of Fanny Price’s morality, and of course, who could dismiss the all-time favorite Fitzwilliam Darcy, the broodingly handsome hero who saves the day, not only for Elizabeth, but for the entire Bennett family.

But what about the minor characters? Most people don’t even give them a second thought. Why? Minor characters are the foundation that holds up the major players in a story. The are foils; put there to do a variety of things. They make a major character look prettier, or even plainer; think of Isabella Thorpe next to Catherine Moreland in “Northanger Abbey,” or more heroic, which was George Wickham’s function in regard to Darcy.

I have always been intrigued by these characters, and who they could have been i.f they’d had a stronger voice, and went beyond mere support of the main characters. So I decided to start developing them by giving them a story of their own.

The first one I wrote about was Mrs. Dashwood from “Sense and Sensibility” in my novel “Mrs. Dashwood Returns.” This was because I always thought Mrs. Dashwood got what you might call “a bum rap.”

Why? Just look at the plot. The story begins with the tragedy of her losing her husband and her home. She is betrayed by her stepson through his greedy and evil wife, leaving her and her daughters with very little means. Let’s face it; Fanny Dashwood makes the evil stepmother in “Cinderella” look like Mother Theresa.

Mary is forced to move from Sussex to Devonshire, and live on the kindness of a relative. Her daughters are jilted by the men they desire. It seems to never end as Mrs. Dashwood goes from heartbreak to heartbreak.

In the end, it is implied Mrs. Dashwood is happy with her daughter’s good fortune, but what about her life? We assume John and Fanny Dashwood go back to Norland Park and their immense wealth. They suffer no consequence for the pain they caused. The same goes for Mr. Willoughby. Sure, he marries a woman he doesn’t love; but what is that to all the wealth he gains in the process? I just felt things weren’t right with the universe, if these villains were allowed to triumph. In other words, Mrs. Dashwood needed a win.

And that is where “Mrs. Dashwood Returns” begins. Living quietly in her Devonshire cottage ten years after the weddings of her daughters, she is content, until circumstances led her back to Norland Park. There, in confronting John and Fanny, she gets the opportunity to be recognized as someone of worth. She is able to look back on her life and put things in prospective. She still holds bitterness over her and her daughters travails, but finds that though kindness and forgiveness, which are part of her nature, she makes peace with those that harmed her and her family. She also finds the love and support of a mysterious man that unexpectedly comes into her life when she thought all possibility of that kind of love was gone.

Most of all, I wished to make her into someone who was fearless; and never afraid to stand up for herself and her family. She is a great matriarch without great wealth or titles.

I plan to examine more minor characters. Next time, I will bring to light Thomas Bertram, oldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Bertram, and the hero of my novella, “Becoming Sir Thomas.”

Posted in Austen Authors, books, excerpt, Georgian England, Georgian Era, Guest Post, historical fiction, Industry News/Publishing, Jane Austen, Living in the Regency, Mansfield Park, real life tales, Regency era, Regency romance, Vagary, writing | Tagged Austen Authors, C. D. Gerard, characterization, foils, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, minor characters | Comments Off

The Effects of Primogeniture on Family Dynamics

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

51Bi-8QRTGL._SX381_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg As a writer of historical fiction set in England during the Regency era, I am constantly dealing with the ramifications of the practice and the law of primogeniture. In primogeniture, the first born legitimate son is the sole inheritor of his father’s estate and realty property. This is done is preference to daughters, younger sons, other male relations, and elder illegitimate sons. The son of a deceased elder brother inherits before a living brother by right of substitution for the deceased heir. A system of perpetual entails are achieve by entailing the property not on the man’s son, but upon his grandson. But what does this practice do to the other members of the family.

First, what is the distinction between the law of primogeniture and the custom practiced within Great Britain. The custom of primogeniture is nestled in the practice of entailing land. The law of primogeniture concerns the rule governing the inheritance of property from an individual dying intestate. Ordinarily, the real estate of said individual devolves on the eldest son or heir-at-law, which is determined by the canons of descent. British history tells us soon after the Norman Conquest the right of the eldest son to inherit his father’s land moved from custom to an indefeasible right to a judicial practice during the reign of Edward IV, when the father acquired the power to disinherit his son by fraudulent actions, to Henry VIII’s Statute of Wills, where the right of testamentary bequest was partly conceded, to the period of the Restoration, which abolished feudal tenure and extended the limitations to the whole estate.

The seventeenth century saw the devolutions of settlements, which reflects modern law. Hence all realty devolved to the eldest upon a parent’s death intestate. Even so, personal property is dispensed by different provisions passed during the reign of Charles II and James II. These are known as the Statutes of Distribution. The personal property of an intestate is separated as such: (1) if there is no widow, the children receive the property in equal shares; (2) if there are children and a widow, the children receive two-thirds (after creditors have been repaid) and the widow one-third; (3) the eldest son still retains the real estate, but he is also entitled to his share of the personal property; (4) if there is a widow, but no children, the widow receives half; the other half goes to the man’s father, if alive; if not, to his mother and siblings in equal shares; and (5) if there are no widow, children, parents or siblings, personal property goes to the next of kin, traced by definition of civil law.

220px-Sarah_Sophia_Child_Villiers,_Countess_of_Jersey_(née_Fane)_(1785-1867),_by_Alfred_Edward_Chalon.jpg Although on the surface women of the aristocracy appeared to enjoy the power of their positions, in reality, like their middle-class counterparts, they depended upon the men in their lives for their status and their financial futures. Only a very few, such as Sarah Villiers, Countess of Jersey, knew financial freedom, managing to retain the power she inherited from her mother, the only issue of Robert Child, the principal shareholder in the banking firm Child & Co. Under the terms of Child’s will, not only did Lady Jersey inherit Osterley Park, but she became senior partner in the bank. At her death, Lady Jersey’s personal estate was near £300,000.

However, Lady Jersey was the exception. Generally speaking, a woman depended upon her father or her husband, or in the case of spinsterhood or being a widow, her fate might rest with a brother or a cousin or some distant relative. Even family trusts and jointures did not protect a woman’s limited income from ending up in her husbands’ hands to use as the husband wished. Neither did the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870, which allowed married women to be the legal owners of the money they earned and permitted them to inherit property. In 1882, this principle was extended to all property, regardless of its source or when it was acquired.

Daughters were a financial burden on their families: gowns, fripperies, special tutors to “polish” their manners and accomplishments, as well as the drain of their portions upon the estate coffers. A daughter who did not marry or who did not “take” well in society became pensioners at the loss of their parents.

Needless to say, the custom of primogeniture protected and maintained families.

Charles Neate speaks of the “familial” aspect of primogeniture. “It is a hard thing for a father to have to confess and excuse his extravagance to a son, or to justify his desire for a second wife. It is a worse thing for a son to judge his father’s excuses, or to decide naturally, as head of the family, whether it is right that his father should be allowed to marry again.” [Probyn, J. W. (Editor). Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries: A Series of Essays Published Under the Sanction of the Cobden Club. London. Cassell, Petter, & Galpin. page 403.] The eldest son’s indefeasible right to succession weakens parental authority, especially as both the fathers and the sons age.

418DATBF3PL._SX385_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg Moreover, a widow’s fate is always tentative under the idea of primogeniture. A widow loses much with the death of her husband. A woman’s place in society is linked to her husband’s position. While her son claims his late father’s role, the widow must step aside to permit the son’s wife the role of mistress of the estate. Often such meant her removal to a smaller residence. In The Scarlet Tree (Macmillian, 1947, 16-17), volume two of a four-part autobiography, from Osbert Sitwell, the author describes his grandmother Lady Londesborough. (William Henry Forester Denison, 1st Earl of Londesborough married Lady Edith Frances Wilhelmina Somerset, daughter of Henry Somerset, 7th Duke of Beaufort in 1863.) “Not only did the old lady lose [him], but … nearly all her belongings, being obliged to pursue hereafter the dolorous manner of life decreed by tradition for an English dowager; not only were horses and carriages and grooms and gardens and houses and jewels and plate, and indeed, the whole luxurious decoration of life by which she had been so long surrounded, snatched from her at a single grab, but she also forfeited … the love of the majority of those who had pretended to be her friends. She felt, I apprehended, peculiarly desolate, though as a rule she would not admit it.”

Common law says a widow was legally entitled to a dower share or one-third of her husband’s estate after his death, for under the law of primogeniture, the husband owned only the real property, not the furnishings, etc. He could designate a higher percentage in his will, but that would be the exception, not the rule. As the dowager, she would receive one-third of the income produced by the “farm” or the rental property of her husband’s estate. This meant one-third of the rents and the income from crops grown upon the land. At the husband’s death, a mortgage or outstanding debts offset the value of real estate and other property. However, the dower’s share could not be sold until after the widow’s debt.

Under English common law, the man’s widow was entitled to a share of her deceased husband’s real estate. After the widow’s death, the husband’s will determined how the real estate would be dispensed. She had no right to sell or bequeath the land to another. Depending on the income she was provided by her dower rights and the dowry, the money and goods negotiated by the bride’s father or guardian upon her marriage, she could live well and independent or lead her days within the world of poverty.

Nancy Regency Researcher adds, ” One point the source that has not been mentioned in [the information on the “dower” is the widow could not receive dower if she received anything in the marriage settlements or the man’s will – such as a jointure of any size or any legacy whatsoever to the wife, that deprived her of her right to dower. Any settlements made in the marriage settlements or mention in a will deprived the widow of dower. She only had a chance at dower if she was left no other income. If the successor does not set it up in a legal fashion that suits both parties, then the sheriff arranges matters and is the one to give the widow her dower.

“The rules in the city of London vary somewhat as do those in Kent or where gravelkind is practiced. The rules generally only applied where there was no will. What paraphernalia belonged to the wife and what to the estate has also caused bitter controversy. Much depended on whether the widow was the mother of the successor or not. Sometimes the furniture was declared part of the hereditary estate like the pictures and could not be sold or divided up. Barristers and solicitors have been making their fortunes over wills and estates ever since they were first created.”

The Real Property Commission of 1828 was issued by King George IV to inquire into the law of England respecting real property. The Commissioners regarded the English law of intestacy as “far better adapted to the constitution and habits of this kingdom than the opposite law of equal partibility, which, in a few generations, would break down the aristocracy of the country, and, by the endless subdivision of the soil, must ultimately be unfavorable to agriculture, and injurious to the best interests of the State.” (The Solicitors’ Journal and Reporter) In other words, the Commission ruled that the land should not be divided and subdivided through generations of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, etc., until little was left of the original estate.

Primogeniture and inheritance plays a major role in my romantic suspense novel, Angel Comes to the Devil’s Keep, a 2017 Finalist for the Daphne Du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. When one brother wishes to claim the earldom belonging to the elder, murder is the least of the man’s transgressions.

Angel Comes to the Devil’s Keep [Romantic Suspense]

Huntington McLaughlin, the Marquess of Malvern, wakes in a farmhouse, after a head injury, being tended by an ethereal “angel,” who claims to be his wife. However, reality is often deceptive, and Angelica Lovelace is far from innocent in Hunt’s difficulties. Yet, there is something about the woman that calls to him as no other ever has. When she attends his mother’s annual summer house party, their lives are intertwined in a series of mistaken identities, assaults, kidnappings, overlapping relations, and murders, which will either bring them together forever or tear them irretrievably apart. As Hunt attempts to right his world from problems caused by the head injury that has robbed him of parts of his memory, his best friend, the Earl of Remmington, makes it clear that he intends to claim Angelica as his wife. Hunt must decide whether to permit her to align herself with the earldom or claim the only woman who stirs his heart–and if he does the latter, can he still serve the dukedom with a hoydenish American heiress at his side?

Posted in British history, eBooks, Great Britain, history, Living in the UK, primogenture | Tagged Angel Comes to the Devil's Keep, books, custom of primogeniture, Great Britain, law, primogeniture | 2 Comments

Using Austen as a Historical Resource, a Guest Post from Don Jacobson

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Regina Jeffers

This post originally appeared on Austen Authors on January 30, 2019. Enjoy!

One of my favorite books is Natalie Zemon Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre (1983) which heralded the advent of a new historical school: that of subaltern history—essentially the history of sergeants not generals. Davis used court records and other documents to reconstruct a mid-16^th Century narrative that was all but lost to history. Davis’ work was undertaken in the midst of what historians have come to articulate as the cultural turn, a period when post-Vietnam War historians combined anthropology, sociology, and history to create ethnographic studies. Such treatises endeavored to offer a more informed context against which the rise of specific personalities and movements can clearly be projected and better be understood.

I do commend the book (not necessarily the film) to you. However, Davis’s treatment of assumed identity and its ultimate unmasking is not central to this essay. Rather it is the conclusion of Professor Davis’ Preface that sets the stage for my contemplation about how readers can use the Canonical works as historical documents revealing nuances of English life several levels below the rarified atmosphere inhaled by those whose existence attracted the attentions of men like Lord Acton.

I would figure out why Martin Guerre left his village and where he went, how
and why Arnaud du Tilh became an imposter…and why he failed to make it
stick. This would tell us new things about sixteenth-century rural society. …
And I would have the rare opportunity to show an event from peasant life
being reshaped into a story by men of letters.

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Turning to the works of Jane Austen, we find many places where the author used her own observations as a member of the gentry, albeit rising from modest roots as a clergyman’s daughter, to add context to her writing. Austen created a world, as I have noted before, that was utterly familiar to her audience. Her readers did not require explanations the actions of her characters nor the great social questions that roiled British society during the Napoleonic period (~1792-1815). War, slavery, the Industrial Revolution, social mobility (both upwards as well as downwards), and religion were amongst the topics against which the good Lady cast the movements of the persons populating her created worlds.

Like Mary Shelley, whose The New Prometheus explored (nearly 70 years before Nietzsche wrote Parable of the Madman) explored the question of Man displacing God in the universal hierarchy through the Industrial Revolution, Austen, I believe, can offer us insights into the world in which she lived.

Consider the question of the Church. Austen watched her father, a Church of England vicar, interact with a panoply of characters who surely passed through or brushed against the parsonage at Steventon. She certainly stored those encounters to call them up later when her writing demanded it.

Likewise, Austen was certainly aware of the echoes of The Great Awakening, a purification movement led by George Whitefield, an associate of the Wesley brothers, who, in a series of evangelical meetings (1740) in the American colonies, put a stick in the spokes of Church dominance in American colonial politics. Then there were the activities of the afore-mentioned Wesleys—John and Charles—who pointed to the inherent corruption of a state-run church. Their movement and its followers, today embodied in the Methodist conference, was derisively referred to as Dissenters. They were barred from English political life and the gentry, itself dependent upon government good-will. The Dissenters instead founded their own schools and went into the one avenue of advancement open to them…trade.

Might Charles Bingley’s father or grandfather have been non-conformist Dissenters?

However, back to religion.

There were surely those who were engaged in one of the avenues of financial security open to them: second and third sons of gentle birth. Trapped as they were by Britain’s hidebound grip on male primogeniture (even unentailed Pemberley would have ended up in the hands of Georgiana Darcy’s husband through coverture if ODC had never gotten together) inheritance, these young men often availed themselves the squirearchy’s employment service, the Church of England.

Like the aristocracy, the Church was not merit-based.

Lest you think I am forgiving of William Collins, I must, as Churchill said If Hitler invaded Hell I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons, offer a degree of mitigation. We need to look beyond his shortcomings. How could an unconnected man like Collins, also short on intellectual fortitude, find employment after his ordination? Yet, work he must lest he gently starve while waiting for Mr. Bennet to meet his Maker.

A more accomplished man with higher status like Edmund Bertram, admittedly strained by the denial of his preferred living and being forced to accept £100 a year, could afford not to scramble if either his father or brother was willing to feed and house him. Collins had no such avenues open to him. Who would grant him a living and why?

Desperation would have amplified Collins’ natural syncophancy, much as Austen did, to allow him to be appealing to Lady Catherine. Likewise, we must assume that Austen did not create the personality of Lady Catherine from the whole cloth. We can infer that both Collins and Lady Catherine served as examples of personality archetypes. I would imagine that she heard her father wax poetic about this curate or that benefactor.

Austen does offer us a different portrait of churchmen once we gain some distance from the oleaginous Collins. I always find much to admire in the upright nature of Edward Ferrars. His honorable nature, exemplified by seeking to fulfill his promise to Lucy Steele and sacrificing his own happiness in the process, allows us to see the decent sort of man who most likely inhabited the large number of livings across the Isles. Ferrars was Austen’s first published portrait of a Man of God.

And, we must recall that Austen returned to type with Bertram in Mansfield Park after she swung her ink-tipped blade in Pride and Prejudice. I could imagine either man spending all night at the bedside of a failing parishioner with none of the sanctimonious pretensions that Collins would have expressed to inflate his feeble ego. None of these men are Bishops, Canons, or Archbishops. That was left to Trollope in Barchester Towers.

I took the Ferrars/Bertram model to heart when developing the character of Edward Benton (Bennet) in The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey, the first book in the Bennet Wardrobe series. While I was not reconstructing a hidden discourse, I sought to apply the same techniques Austen put to work as she shaped her characters. I cast Benton in the reformist as opposed to Dissenter mode, assuming that he too would conduct his ministry in whatever parish he could win, never seeking to advance himself to the detriment of his congregants and community.

Please enjoy this excerpt from The Keeper.

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This excerpt is © 2017 by Don Jacobson. Any reproduction in any manner either electronic or print without the expressed written consent of the author is prohibited. Published in the United States of America.

This excerpt was extracted from a letter from Benton to Mary Bennet dated July 23, 1812. In it he describes an encounter in Boston with the 77-year-old John Adams, lately the second President of the United States, at a reception for Harvard students at the Boylston house. Here we see Benton expounding the ideals of a young man deep in faith but also social consciousness.

&&&&

“We were seated together by chance near a beautiful bay window overlooking the back garden when Mr. Adams spoke to me.

He turned his gaze upon me and asked, “So, Mr. Benton, you are attending Harvard College. But, you are a stranger in a strange land, trapped here by the circumstances of war. Why are you here? Are you a spy? Are you some sort of agent provocateur for your masters at St. James? Explain yourself.”

I recalled that Mr. Adams had been the most accomplished lawyer in Massachusetts during colonial days. One only has to read his Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law or his defense of the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre to understand that he has a mind like a steel trap, ready to snap shut and extinguish anyone who prevaricates. Thus, my answer was frank.

“Sir, my family is of gentle circumstances, but without great resources. A distant relation prevailed upon Bishop Hobart to sponsor my studies at the College. I hope to take Holy Orders upon graduation and then, once the war has ended, return to Great Britain. My ministry will be amongst those who are in the middle of a social upheaval we are calling ‘The Industrial Revolution.

“I am no radical. But I do believe that the government in Westminster is held firmly in the grip of landowners who have no concept of how the world is changing around them. Great Britain will always grow things, to be sure. But, new and prodigious wealth will be found in the mines, looms, and forges that are springing up across the Midlands.

“Land powered the Agricultural Revolution. But, Mr. Adams, people will power the industrial one. And those souls will need spiritual support and advocates to take their part.”

The Old President leaned back in his chair. Dropping his chin onto his chest and planting his stick on the floor like a monarch would the scepter of state, he stared at me as if he would bore a hole to my soul.

“You sound like my son John Quincy. He is always going on about how the world will move on the legs of millions and be powered by steam. You also remind me of my revolutionary brother Mr. Jefferson. Always the bright-eyed idealist.

“You know, the world has made much of the break between us. That was politics. He and his family have always been dear to Mrs. Adams and me. We have begun exchanging letters again these past several months thanks to the machinations of Dr. Rush and my wife.”

Posted in American History, Austen Authors, book excerpts, British history, Georgian England, Georgian Era, historical fiction, history, Industrial Revolution, Jane Austen, Living in the Regency, peerage, political stance, reading habits, real life tales, Regency era, research, Vagary | Tagged American history, book excerpt, British history, Don Jacobson, guest post, historical fiction, history, Jane Austen, research, The Keeper | Comments Off

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