The Fetter Lane Fleece Read online

  Rob gamely tried to lighten his friend’s mood and tentatively patted him on the shoulder. “Y’know Ned, its only another day of this according to Meg, so tis better than loosing toes to the black rot.”

  Ned gave back another scowl and tried vainly to draw himself way from the promised cure as it splashed over his bare legs. Damn them all to the nether most regions of Hell! Someone was going to pay for this humiliation. All he had to do now was work out just who that should be. Oh by all the cursed demons and Satan’s imps, why did the accepted remedy for suspected frostbite have to be copious quantities of warm fresh urine? At least, whispered his daemon, there was some consolation. After all it could be worse…it could’ve been his nose.

  Historical Note about Cosenage

  My thanks to Robert Greene, an Elizabethan writer of some note, promising talent, and possessed of a vindictive streak a mile wide. It is from his quill that Ned suffers his more adventurous misfortunes in the doubtful repose of the Liberties. With the advent of the printing press came a flood of books and pamphlets starting of course with the Bible, in either Geneva, Coverdale or Tyndale versions, then the classical Greek and Roman works of history, philosophy and sciences. This eventually gave an opportunity and market for the folios of Master Shakespeare’s works (about whom Greene was livid since it appears he regarded Shakespeare as stealing his rightful position as the leading playwright of London). Finally there were the cheaper Tudor equivalents of penny dreadfuls—news broadsheets and small pamphlets of an improving or cautionary nature such as that fount of all mischief and lewdness; A Notable Discovery of Coosnage 1591 and The Second Part of Cony Catching 1592 where Master Robert Greene gives us an amusing selection of the cons and scams a country gentlemen would have to be wary of when they came to London. If only Red Ned Bedwell could have gotten hold of a copy.

  Regards Gregory House

  Terra Australis 2012

  Religion and spirituality in the Tudor Age as portrayed in the Red Ned Tudor Mysteries .

  In this modern secular era, it is sometimes difficult to encompass how deeply religion was embedded in the words, thoughts and actions of our ancestors. The Church was for good and ill part of everyday life. Its parish and cathedral bells announced the time of day and the whole pattern of the year was structured around the calendar of religious festivals. Every individual in the kingdom understood this, starting from birth with the urgent importance of baptism to death and the saying of perpetual masses for the souls of the departed. At this point we have the emergence of the concept of ‘indulgence’ and the ability of the Pope to remit sins via payment and we know where that led to with Martin Luther. In all of this the Latin Vulgate Bible was the fount of authority and knowledge for both the King, the Catholic Church and all levels of society, which is why its translation into the vernacular was believed to threaten the very foundations of ‘their Christian society’. The sways to and fro in the Tudor Age were equally about power and belief, with the two sometimes so intermixed it was difficult to separate them, especially in the figures of Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey and their Sovereign Majesty Henry VIII. Questions of conscience or expedience determined religious attitudes and delineated a person’s position in society and all too frequently determined their rise or fall on Fortuna’s Wheel.

  To make a valid attempt at presenting this internal and external conflict we have Ned Bedwell viewing his conscience as two distinct entities, his daemon and better angel. From a number of biographies, lives of saints and religious writings this division and representation of moral and ethical judgement was very common from the highest sections of society to the lowest and in many cases recorded in church courts regarding grievous sins and petitions for penance, the intercession of demons, devils and angels crop up frequently. It is in its way a very important aspect of the Tudor world view. For instance passages such as ‘the devil sorely tempted me and I gave in’ or ‘my good angel or patron saint steered me clear of the peril of sin’, are very frequent. Even that great Tudor monarch Henry VIII used this style of Divine intercession and explanation in his public presentation of his need for an annulment, the break with Rome and his marriage to Anne Boleyn.

  For my fictional character Ned, his daemon and angel serve as mouthpieces for his questions of conscience and action in his Tudor world. They give you the reader a glimpse of the inner workings of an ambitious lad beset with questions of friendship, loyalty, lust, advancement and the conflicts caused by his decisions.

  Tudor Coinage and values

  During the reign of Henry VIII the value of coins varied wildly since coins were frequently recalled and subsequently reissued with a lower precious metal content to aid the financing of Henry’s expenditure on war and domestic building programs. It got to such a state that the gold sovereign coins stamped with the portrait of the king were nicknamed old copper noses since frequent handling gave them a red gold colour. Rhenish florins, Thalers and Venetian florins were the period’s equivalent of US dollars and accepted all over Europe. All other coins were evaluated to their standard.

  farthing = quarter of a penny (0.25d)

  halfpenny (0.5d)

  1 penny silver coin

  Half groat silver coin worth 2 pence

  Groat silver coin worth 4 pence

  1 shilling silver coin worth 12d

  1 noble a gold coin worth 6s 8d. (80p, or 1/3 of a pound)

  1 Angel a gold coin worth 7 shillings and 6 pence

  1 pound or a sovereign gold coin worth 20 shillings, i.e. 240 pence

  1 mark was the value of 8 ounces of gold or silver; 123 4d

  Common Tudor Terms

  Ale house: Lower in social scale and quality than a tavern. Usually a room with a few benches and a brew house out the back. In theory, they had to be licensed. These were considered by the city officials as the breeding ground of mischief and crime.

  Tavern: Equivalent to a modern British Pub or American Bar usually serving reasonable quality food and ale.

  Inn: These establishments were the Sheratons or Hiltons of their age, large buildings with a courtyard and stables used to catering to gentry and nobility.

  Inns of Court: These where not the same kind of Inns as above, instead they were establishments which housed fraternities of lawyers and clerks. The cluster of buildings also contained lawyers chambers, offices and sometimes residences as well as a library of legal texts and records and the community’s Great Hall for feasts and ceremonies. Some of the better known Inns were Gray’s, Middle Temple Inner Temple and Lincoln’s. Minor Inns included Thavies, Chancery, Clifford, Lyon and Strand.

  Stew: a brothel or a region of disreputable activities

  Cony catching: a common term for any manner of con trick or swindle

  Cozener: swindlers, fraudsters tricksters etc

  Cozenage: the art or play of a scam rort, swindle or slight of hand

  Curber, hookman: curbing the art of lifting clothes from a washing line, via the use of a hooked pole hence the term hookman and curber.

  Foister: A sometime more aggressive cozener or cozener’s offsider

  Nip: a young boy working with a foister, or cozener

  Roister: A swaggering rogue keen for trouble and brawling possibly an apprentice since they tended to have that reputation.

  Punk: a common name for a part time prostitute

  Fullans and gourds: two different types of ‘altered’ dice either weighted or hollowed.

  Minchin: a young girl in thieves or Liberties cant

  Humours: Tudor medicine believed the human body was made up of four humours and that bleeding or diet could balance the humours according to consultation with an astrological chart, this finally dropped out of favour in the mid 1800’s.

  Night School: the common name for a secret gathering of heretics, evangelicals Lollards or Lutherans meeting to study or discuss the smuggled copies of the Bible translated into English.

  Candlemass: The religious festival of the Catholic faith held on the 2nd Feb
ruary about forty days after Christmas and at the mid point between the Winter solstice and the Spring Equinox. Also Groundhog Day in the Eastern USA.

  Hallowtide: The religious festival of All Hallow’s Eve or Halloween 1st November.

  Brandywine: later shortened to brandy, alcoholic distillation of wine occasionally also used to describe wine fortified with brandy.

  Sack: A very popular form of fortified wine similar to sherry sometimes augmented with sugar and brandy for extra taste.

  Rhenish: as the name implies a wine from the Rhine region, very popular in England.

  Scarlet cloth: this was the common name of the finest woven woollen cloth used for gowns, kirtles and doublets and does not refer to the colour thus you can have blue scarlet or green scarlet as is described in period documents.

  Justice: the local judge or royal official charged with keeping the peace

  The Common Watch: acted as a police force and occasional fire brigade, and regarded by the Tudor citizens as next to useless and dumber than a pile of pig droppings.

  Parish Ward Muster: citizen militia of reasonable quality and equipment, usually recruited from the better classes of Londoners.

  Bedlam: the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem a hospice for those found to be decayed in their wits, mad crazed or deluded, hence the phrase as ‘its bedlam’ or as ‘mad as Bedlam’. In the Tudor period the common term of insanity was Bedlamite.

  The Liberties: areas of the city of London and Southwark under the jurisdiction of the church and exempt from interference by city or county officials, usually swarming with punks, cony catchers, thieves, murders and forgers.

  Wherry: a small boat with one to four rowers used for transport on the Thames, the taxi of its day.

  The Liberties of London, A Tudor Christmas Frolic

  Prologue A Perilous Position

  Ned closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the winter chilled stonework of the bridge. No, he kept on telling himself, don’t look down. That wasn’t a good idea. It may look like any other patch of the murky, stygian gloom of mid winter, but searching for an unseen peril below didn’t help. If he fell he knew what happened. He’d seen it a minute or so ago when the bridge wall collapsed. Earless Nick’s luckless minion tumbled over him and, screaming briefly, had plummeted onto the ice which had shattered with a loud crash, then finally a choking gurgle. So no, he didn’t need to peer down there to see the effects. His imagination was already doing a good enough job supplying him with the images he didn’t need. He already knew the Fleete Ditch by reputation—all of London and the Liberties did. In summer you could smell it for a mile. So a closer inspection of the sluggish, turgid, stream, charged with turds and piss channel scourings was not required. Instead he needed to do something constructive, like figure out how to climb up.

  As it was, his fingers were getting cramped, shoved as they were between the iron and the stone. He’d tried to tighten his grip on the iron staple and who knows, without the gloves, it may have been easier. However as slippery as they felt right now, they protected his flesh from the jagged edged iron. Damn the Liberties work crews and damn Sir Thomas Bloody More! That lofty royal official had been Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and this bridge was under his jurisdiction for repair. Perhaps if the new Lord Chancellor of the Kingdom had spent less time a’ hunting heretics, he could have put that spare energy to better use. Like repairing the bloody Fleete Ditch Bridge!

  Ned attempted to distract himself from this situation. An ancient philosopher had suggested that, when in peril, one should recall a happy or pleasurable occasion to regain a moment of joy. Well he did that, and what readily sprang to mind was the Christmas Revels. His Christmas Revels actually, that he’d organised, financed and in fact should have, at this very moment, been sitting down to, feasting on roast suckling pig with a tankard of the finest sack in his hand. And just think, during these twelve nights of Christmas, didn’t he have so much to be thankful for. Now he was hanging off the Fleete Ditch Bridge. Oh, how could it be better?

  Ned wedged his hand further into the unyielding stone and mortar. Let him see. Of course, Mistress damn her arrogance Black, she could be here instead of him. Oh wait no, no. What would be more fitting was that meepish little rat, the reformist lost lamb, Walter Dellingham! But wait, his daemon supplied one name above all, one name that well and truly deserved to be here; Gruesome Roger Hawkins. It was the fault of that surly retainer of the Black’s that Ned was here swinging off a piece of iron, waiting to plunge to an ignominious end. Oh Christ on the Cross no, not drowned in turds!

  As Ned made an effort to remember a prayer, any prayer, he heard the scraping of a boot on the cobbles of the bridge above him. Slowly the scuffing came closer. Damn—more of Earless Nick’s minions. He’d already gone through three—wasn’t that enough? Anyway that complaint was moot. It was not as if he could get to his dagger or sword—they were up there on the bridge. Possibly he could push himself hard against the stone wall. It was damned dark down here and the bridge lanterns didn’t cast even a smidgen of light this way. The boots hit his sword and the metal chimed on the cobbles. The outline of a figure peered over the edge as if looking straight at him. Ned wasn’t sure whether or not he should call out.

  Then a low voice spoke above him. “Well bless me, it really is Christmas. Fancy finding y’ here Bedwell. Wotcha doin’ down there? Is Walter with y’?”

  Ned closed his eyes for a moment and, to keep his temper in check, slowly counted up to ten—in Latin. “No. No, I don’t have lost lamb Walter here! Now for the love of all the saints, Roger bloody Hawkins, get me up!”

  “Tch tch. That’s a fair nasty tongue on y’ this evening, Red Ned Bedwell.”

  At the wryly amused tone, Ned ground his teeth and sent up another prayer, this time calling on forbearance. “Forgive me Master Hawkins. I’m cold, my arms hurt and damn Walter’s slipped off again.”

  The shadow changed shape as Gruesome Roger Hawkins squatted by the broken wall, no doubt to help him up. “Yeah remember, Bedwell, the day when y’ challenged me at the tavern?”

  “Yes, yes I do.” How could he forget it? That instant in time, just a few days ago was the very harbinger of his hanging off a rusty iron staple on Fleete Street Bridge.

  “Yeah, well so do I Bedwell, an’ I’ll remind y’ of what my reply was. By God’s Blood, afore the week’s out y’ goin’ to rue those words, y’ll be wadin’ through a river o’ shit to beg my forgiveness.”

  Ned sighed. Oh yes he remembered that part.

  “Well Bedwell, here we are, an’ I’m waiting.”

  Ned blinked a few times in sheer surprise. This damned retainer was expecting him to apologise? What of his honour, his dignity, his natural superiority as an apprentice lawyer? As an instance of poor timing, the iron staple, which former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster should have replaced along with repairing the broken wall, chose now to ease out from its mortared hole. “Ahh Meg Black isn’t nearby by, is she?”

  At this point even the shrewish comments of an ungrateful Mistress Black were preferable to what awaited below. Even in the dull gloom of the lanterns Ned could see the glint of Gruesome Roger’s smile and the shake of his head. “No, she’s tending someone down the road. I’s can go an’ get her if y’ want.”

  The iron squealed and Ned’s heart thumped rapidly. “No, ahh it’s fine!”

  “I can come back later if’n y’ want Bedwell.”

  If there was one aspect of his character, apart from his intelligence, that Ned was justifiably proud of, it was his practicality. After all, when hanging twenty foot over a frozen river of ordure, practicality was practically a virtue.

  ***

  Chapter One: A Christmas Revel Christmas Eve London 1529

  The trilling notes of a harp chimed gently behind him as Ned rubbed his hands in front of the blazing fire. The sounds were echoed a moment later by the throaty laugh of a girl and the soft clink of a cup of sweet sack wine bumping the table. A
glance out the diamond paned window told him that they’d made it here in good time. The usual mounds of street refuse were now being steadily covered in a hefty layer of white snow. No doubt even the water tubs that stood under the building’s eaves now had a surface of ice an inch thick. Despite the chill he found the scene alluring. London looked so much different in the white velvet blanket, almost as if it was donning its Twelfth Night mask apparel. Thus in one day she transformed into a pale fair mistress, rather than as some court wit had it, a pock marked crone with the fetid stench of the Fleete Ditch. The improved aspect and the subduing of the foul city airs were to Ned only the first of the benefits the winter snow had bestowed on him.

  The second had been the growling dismissal by his master, Richard Rich, that year’s esteemed Autumn reader at Lincoln Inn. Most prentice lawyers were worked hard by their masters, eager to screw the last ounce of worth from the winter’s light, before having to resort to rush lights or expensive candles. So Ned shouldn’t complain too much because his fingers were cramped from his laboured task of writing up pleas for the upcoming law term. Or that the room’s meagre fire put out so little warmth that the ink in its brass pot frequently froze over and he had to chaff it warm to write. However in his case it was worse, since his master was also inconveniently his uncle. In this season it was a common joke around the Inns that Master Rich’s filial regard for his ‘worthless’ nephew bordered on that of His Sovereign Majesty’s for his recently dismissed former chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey. Thus, despite the difficulties, Ned’s better angel kept reminding him it could be worse. He could be serving his patron, Councillor Cromwell, out in the biting cold on some thankless task. However speculation didn’t aid his plans as his frustrated daemon whispered.