Anne Hyde, Duchess of York

 

Anne Hyde (1637-71) had two daughters who would become Queens and would have been a Queen Consort herself had she not died before her husband became King.

She was the eldest daughter of Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon, who was a prominent royalist during the reign of King Charles I and an active player in the restoration of King Charles II in 1660.

She originally attracted the attention of James, Duke of York, in 1656 when she was a maid of honour to Mary of Orange (the eldest daughter of King Charles I and the mother of the future King William III). James was Mary’s younger brother and next in line to the throne after his elder brother Charles. It was in honour of James that the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was renamed New York when it was acquired by the English government in 1664.

James and Anne became more closely acquainted in 1659, although James wanted to end the relationship after Charles was restored to the throne in May 1660. Charles ordered James to marry Anne, who was heavily pregnant, and the wedding took place in September, with Anne’s first child being born in October. Had Anne not been pregnant, it is unlikely that they would have married at all, given that James was now heir presumptive and, as such, would not have been expected to marry a commoner.

Anne took to her new role with dignity and not a little pride, even winning over her mother-in-law Henrietta Maria. As a wife, she was clearly the dominant party and, according to Samuel Pepys, “the Duke of York, in all things but in his amours, is led by the nose by his wife”. He also observed that “the Duchess is not only the proudest woman in the world, but the most expenseful”.

James, like his brother Charles, had dalliances with a number of mistresses, Anne’s response being to have an affair with Henry Sydney, a courtier who would later find a niche in history as the man most responsible for inviting James’s nephew William to succeed him as King when James was exiled in 1688.

Anne was a high-Church Anglican who gradually turned to Catholicism as her preferred religion. It was her influence that led her husband to follow the same course, one which would eventually lead to his unpopularity and being forced to yield the throne after a reign of only three years (1685-88).

However, Anne did not live to see this happen, dying from breast cancer in 1671 at the age of 34. During her marriage she gave birth to eight children, but only two of them lived into adulthood. These were Mary, who married William III and reigned jointly with him as Queen Mary II, and Anne who succeeded her as Queen when William died in 1702.

© John Welford

Sweyn Forkbeard

 

Sweyn Forkbeard was the father of King Cnut (also known as Canute), the Dane who ruled England from 1016 to 1035. Sweyn was himself the virtual King of England for a brief period in 1013-14.

Sweyn was the son of the Danish king Harald Bluetooth, whom he may have deposed in around the year 987. As king of Denmark, Sweyn spent most of his reign attacking England and extracting the huge sums of money known as Danegeld that severely weakened the English monarchy during the ineffective reign of King Ethelred II, known to history as the “Unready”.

Sweyn was the master of a large and well-equipped fleet of ships, which were used to great effect in mounting raids on the English coast between the years 991 and 1013. It is known that Swain attacked London in 994 and, after ravaging across south-east England, wintered at Southampton, only returning to Denmark after extracting a payment of £16,000.

He then spent several years dealing with problems nearer home, involving Sweden and Poland, one consequence of which was his marriage to a sister of Duke Boleslav of Poland, the child of the union being Cnut, born in around 996.

It appears that he was back in England in 1001-2, as a geld of £24,000 is recorded as having been paid at this time. He was certainly in England in 1003, when he sacked Exeter and ravaged Wiltshire, and in East Anglia in 1004 when Norwich and Thetford were sacked. In 1006 Sweyn’s forces were active in Kent and Sussex. After wintering on the Isle of Wight they raided through Hampshire and Berkshire and extracted a geld of £36,000 in 1007.

Several Danish armies were operating in England during the years 1009-12, and Sweyn was almost certainly the commander of one of them, possibly the one that extracted a geld of £48,000 and murdered Aelfheah, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In 1013 Sweyn returned with a different aim in mind, namely the conquest of England. He sailed up the River Trent from the Humber estuary and landed at Gainsborough. This was within the Danelaw and therefore an area where he could count upon the support of the Anglo-Danish aristocracy. He swept southwards, laying waste the country in an arc through Oxford and Winchester towards London. This gained him widespread recognition as the King of England and forced Ethelred to flee to Normandy.

However, Swain’s victory was short-lived because he died suddenly on 3rd February 10 14, bequeathing his ambitions to his son Cnut, although the return of Ethelred meant that the full imposition of Danish rule on England would have to wait a little longer.

© John Welford

Thorkell the Tall

 

Thorkell the Tall was a Viking leader who was prominent in English affairs during the reigns of Ethelred the Unready (Anglo-Saxon king from 978 to 1016) and Cnut (Danish king of England 1016-35). Danish by birth, little is known of his early life before he landed in Kent with a large army of raiders in the summer of 1009. His forces plundered much of midland and southern England until 1012, which was when some of his men murdered Archbishop Aelfheah of Canterbury contrary to his orders.

Thorkell was paid off - one of the recipients of Danegeld - and entered the service of King Ethelred, contributing a force of around 3500 men and 45 ships. He fought with Ethelred against Sweyn Forkbeard in 1013 and remained loyal to Ethelred throughout 1014.

However, he changed sides to support the claim to England of Cnut - he had certainly done so before the end of 1015. Cnut clearly trusted him and made him Earl of East Anglia in 1017. When Cnut was absent in Denmark in 1019 Thorkell appears to have acted as his regent in England.

His fortunes changed again towards the end of 1021 when, for reasons unknown, he quarrelled with Cnut and was outlawed and banished. He retired to Denmark but remained powerful and a potential threat to Cnut. When Cnut returned to Denmark in 1022 he was evidently strong enough to exact terms of reconciliation that were favourable to himself, with Cnut entrusting him with the government of Denmark.

After that, Thorkell disappears from the historical record and it is assumed that he died around 1024.

© John Welford

 

Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland

 

Henry Fox was a prominent English politician during the late 18^th century, although he never became Prime Minister (or First Lord of the Treasury, to give the function its proper title at the time).

Born in 1705, he was educated at Eton and Oxford. He followed a typical course for wealthy young men of that age, gambling heavily, taking the grand tour to Europe, and entering Parliament in 1735. He was a supporter of the Whig administration led by Sir Robert Walpole and was rewarded with the appointment of Surveyor-General, followed by that of a Lord of the Treasury in 1743. He was appointed Secretary of War by Henry Pelham in 1746, although the role did not really match his abilities.

On the personal side, in 1744 he married Lady Catherine Lennox after an elopement. The marriage was something of a scandal at the time, but it brought Henry Fox considerable happiness, aided by the considerable fortune that he had inherited. Their son, Charles James, would eventually become an even more celebrated politician than his father.

After the death of Henry Pelham in 1754, Fox sided temporarily with his rival and opposite, William Pitt. Pelham’s brother, the Duke of Newcastle, became Prime Minister in his place, but needed a strong counterpart in the House of Commons. This role was offered to Henry Fox, who also became Secretary of State in 1755, but foreign policy was not to his taste and he resigned the post only a year later.

When Pitt took over the leadership role in the Commons in 1757, Fox was happy to become Paymaster, especially as this office was one from which it was possible for a minister to enrich himself in no uncertain manner. Fox held this post for eight years, which increased his fortune at the expense of his personal reputation, and he became widely detested for his cynical conduct.

He did manage one notable achievement in Parliament, which was to ease the passage of the 1763 Peace of Paris that ended the Seven Years War, after which he was elevated to the peerage as Lord Holland. He held no more political offices after 1765, although he did exercise some influence over the political conduct of King George III, who had inherited the throne in 1760 at the age of 22.

Henry Fox was a man of real ability but limited ambition. An interesting footnote to his life was the fact that shortly before his death in 1774 he was forced to settle his son’s gambling debts, which amounted to the almost unbelievable sum of £140,000.

© John Welford

King Louis IX of France

 

King Louis IX was the only king of France to be declared a saint, a status that he earned through his excessive piety and participation in two crusades.

He was born in 1214 and inherited the throne at the age of 12. His mother, Blanche of Castile, acted as his Regent until Louis was 20. France was largely prosperous and at peace during his reign of 43 years.

Louis was highly religious, hearing mass twice a day and surrounding himself with priests who chanted the hours even when he was on horseback. His piety did not stop him from being a courageous knight, undaunted by adversity and a good companion. He was in many respects the ideal king of the Middle Ages.

He took good care of the poor and needy, building hospitals and ordering that 100 beggars be given food and alms from the Royal provisions every day.

In August 1248 Louis set sail on his first crusade, heading for Egypt together with his wife and 35,000 soldiers. Things did not go well. His brother was killed and the army was struck by a plague. Louis almost died from dysentery and was captured by the Saracens. He was not able to return to France for another four years.

In July 1270 Louis embarked on another crusade, this time heading for Tunis, landing near the ruins of ancient Carthage. After some easy victories the army was again ravaged by plague, and this time Louis was himself a victim. As he lay dying he instructed his son and heir, who reigned as King Philip III, to take special care of the poor.

He died on 25^th August 1270 at the age of 56. His body was returned to Paris in a long funeral procession that was lined by mourners wherever it passed through. From the moment of his burial in the Abbey of St Denis he was thought of as a saint, with people praying at his tomb for miracles. He was officially canonised by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297, which was only 27 years after his death.

© John Welford

 

Ernst Wollweber: saboteur for Communism

 

Ernst Wollweber was born in 1898, the son of a miner in Hamburg, Germany. He joined the German Navy in 1917 and was inspired by what was happening at the time in Russia, namely the Bolshevik Revolution. He was one of the instigators of the German naval mutiny of November 1918, hauling up the red flag on the cruiser ‘Heligoland’ at the entrance to the Kiel Canal, this being the signal for the revolt.

He had hoped that post-war Germany would turn to Communism but was disappointed in this when the Weimar Republic was formed in 1919. His response was to lead another shipboard mutiny and take his vessel to Murmansk as a present for Soviet Russia. He was rewarded by Vladimir Lenin by being appointed chairman of the International Seamen’s Union. In this capacity he sailed round the world, acting as an emissary of Communism in China, Japan, Italy and the United States.

The German Communist Party was destroyed by Adolf Hitler when he came to power in 1933, but Wollweber saw an opportunity to cause havoc for the Nazi regime. He based himself in the Danish capital Copenhagen, from where ships left loaded with supplies for the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. His agents were able to insert pieces of TNT explosive into the supplies of coal that fuelled the ships’ engines, with devastating results.

Sabotage now became Wollweber’s weapon of choice. In 1940 he was able to destroy the ‘Marion’, a German troopship heading for Norway. A shattering explosion sank the ship and badly burned corpses, 4000 of them, floated ashore for weeks afterwards.

When the Nazis invaded Denmark in April 1940, Wollweber escaped to Sweden, where he had already organised a sabotage ring. He was promptly arrested, but his agent had recruited two young waitresses whom nobody suspected of nefarious activity. They were responsible for a massive explosion at a freight yard in July 1941 which destroyed truckloads of German shells.

The Germans demanded that neutral Sweden should hand Wollweber over to them, but he stayed in jail until the end of the war in 1945. He was then allowed to travel to Moscow, where he was treated as a Soviet hero. He returned to Germany and organised a spy ring in what became Communist East Germany.

He continued to work as a saboteur, causing explosions on British and American ships. He was almost certainly responsible for a fire on board the British liner ‘Queen Elizabeth’ in 1953, which was the year in which he was appointed Minister of State Security in East Germany.

He did not always see eye-to-eye with the East German regime. In 1961, Walter Ulbricht, Secretary of the East German Communist Party, ordered Wollweber’s arrest. However, when Wollweber contacted Moscow a telegram arrived in Berlin that read “Let Wollweber alone, he is a friend of mine”. It was signed Krushchev.

Ernst Wollweber died a natural death in 1962.

© John Welford

Manco Capac: legendary founder of the Incas

 

Manco Capac, who died in or around the year 1107, is generally described as the first emperor of the Inca people who occupied much of the western side of South America until their conquest by the Spanish conquistadores in the 16^th century.

The stories told about Manco Capac often sound as though they belong to mythology, but he was a real person, even though various legends have attached to him.

It is said that Manco and his three brothers and four sisters originally lived in a cave in the valley of the Vilcamayu river. They moved to the region of Lake Titicaca and brought civilisation to the tribes that lived there. One of Manco’s sisters taught the women how to weave wool threads into cloth and Manco taught the men how to farm. Manco encouraged them to worship the Sun instead of performing human sacrifices and he outlawed incestuous marriages between brothers and sisters.

There is some evidence that two tribes, the Inca and the Allcovisa, did indeed settle together near Lake Titicaca in the late 11^th century and that there was a certain amount of cultural exchange between them.

However, there is no truth in the legend that Manco founded the city of Cuzco, because this is known to have been settled during the 900s and the Inca did not arrive there until the 1200s.

When Manco died he was succeeded by his son Sinchi Roca, and it was he who led the Inca into the Cuzco Valley which would in due course become the centre of the Inca Empire.

© John Welford