Remember, Remember the 5th of November!

By virtue of its connection to Elizabeth of Bohemia, Ashdown House has a link to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the 5^th November Guy Fawkes’ celebrations. Coombe Abbey, the main family seat of the Cravens, has a far greater connection, being the house in which Elizabeth was living at the time of the Gunpowder Plot.

It was the intention of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 conspirators to kill King James I and his eldest son and heir, Prince Henry, plus all the nobility sitting in the House of Lords and all the members of parliament sitting in the House of Commons. They wanted to put a Catholic monarch on the throne. The plot was thwarted when Henry Parker, 4^th Lord Monteagle, received an anonymous letter warning him not to attend parliament:

“My lord out of the love i beare to some of youere frends i have a caer of youer preseruacion therfor i would advyse yowe as yowe tender youer lyf to devys some excuse to shift of youer attendance at this parleament for god and man hath concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme… for thowghe theare be no appearance of anni stir yet i saye they shall receyve a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them…”

Monteagle was married to the sister of one of the Gunpowder Plotters, Thomas Tresham. Monteagle took the letter to Robert Cecil, who informed the King. The king ordered a search of the cellars at the Palace of Westminster. The plot was discovered and Monteagle became the hero who saved Parliament. He was rewarded to the sum of £700 a year - £500 in cash and £200 in the value of land donated to him. He invested the money in business ventures in Virginia.

One of the lesser-known aspects of the Gunpowder Plot is what the plotters intended to happen if they had

actually succeeded. Their aim was to put James I’s daughter Elizabeth on the throne as a catholic figurehead. In 1605 the nine-year-old Elizabeth was living at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire.  Lord and Lady Harington, staunch Protestants, had been charged with "the keeping and education" of the young Princess, as was the wont with royal children in those days. At Coombe, Elizabeth was taught amongst other things, French and Italian, music and dancing. King James did not approve of the education of women, stating that: "to make women learned and foxes tame had the same effect - to make them more cunning." However I think we may assume that by most people's standards Elizabeth was very well educated.

In late October 1605 strange rumours of a plot to overthrow the monarchy were circulating in Warwickshire, which was a stronghold of Catholicism. Lord Harington was warned of a threat to the princess and Elizabeth was taken for her own safety to the city of Coventry, for it was suspected that she might be seized should a rebellion take place. She was lodged in the city with an armed guard. Later, after the gunpowder plotters had been arrested and tortured, it emerged that it had been their intention to kidnap "the person of the Lady Elizabeth, the king's daughter, in Warwickshire, and presently proclaim her queen." The plan had been to seize her from Coombe Abbey and carry her off to Ashby St Legers, a Catholic safe house and the home of Lady Catesby, mother of one of the conspirators.

It is said that when Elizabeth heard of the plot she said: “What a Queen I should have been by this means! I had rather been with my royal father in the Parliament House than wear his crown on such condition.”

For the blog post about other houses connected to the Gunpowder Plot, click here:

http://ashdownhouse.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/houses-of-gunpowder-plot.html

Happy November 5th!

St Hubert's Day

It's a busy week for anniversaries at Ashdown House. On Sunday it is St Hubert's Day. Hubert was born in about 656AD and was the first Bishop of Liege. He is the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians and metalworkers. Interesting mix! He features in full bishop's regalia in the picture to the left which was taken in the Craven Chapel at Ashbury Church.

During the Victorian and Edwardian period, Ashdown House had its own chapel and private choir (which is another, fascinating story). The chapel was located in Ashdown village and was dedicated to St Hubert as the most appropriate saint for a hunting lodge. Choosing St Hubert as Ashdown's patron saint also underlined the importance that the 3rd Earl of Craven and his Countess placed on hunting, which was one of their great passions. They lived permanently at Ashdown and kept a pack of hounds in the kennels there.

The chapel was demolished in the early 20th century and rather curiously was divided into two parts which became the church halls in two local villages. Half of the chapel is pictured to the right!

The Craven Chapel in Ashbury Parish Church  is also dedicated to St Hubert. It contains a beautiful stained glass window of a hunting scene, pictured left, as well as various memorials associated with the Craven family.

Next week here on the blog we are also celebrating Guy Fawkes Night via The Winter Queen and her links to the gunpowder plot. Check back on the 5th for the whole story!

Houses of the Gunpowder Plot

Today is Guy Fawkes' Night in the UK, the night on which we celebrate with fireworks and bonfires the thwarting of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.

Ashdown's connection with The Gunpowder Plot is tenuous, to say the least. The house was "consecrated" to Elizabeth of Bohemia by William Craven and it was Elizabeth whom the plotters intended to place on the throne of England as a puppet ruler in the event that they had been successful in killing both King James VI and I and his heir Prince Henry.

In 1605 the nine-year-old Elizabeth was living at Coombe Abbey with Lord and Lady Harington who had been entrusted with her upbringing and education. I have blogged about Coombe and its connection to the Gunpowder Plot earlier in the year and you can read about it here. In a curious co-incidence, the Craven family bought Coombe Abbey from the Haringtons in 1622, three years before they bought Ashdown and long before William Craven became the devoted follower of Elizabeth, the Winter Queen.

Coombe Abbey is in Warwickshire, and was at the centre of a thicket of properties associated with the Gunpowder Plot, some of which are lost and others that are still standing. Looking at the houses associated with the Plot shows how closely connected were the prominent Catholic recusant families who supported it, and how beautifully placed they were geographically to kidnap the young Elizabeth from Coombe and carry her off to a Catholic safe house.

Coughton Court, south of Coombe, was owned by the Throckmorton Family, who were prominent Catholics. In 1605 it was occupied by the family of Sir Everard Digby, who was one of the conspirators and the man deputed to abduct the Pricess Elizabeth from Coombe when Harington was lured away. My writing colleague Elizabeth Hanbury has blogged about her fascinating visit to Coughton Court here. It was in the drawing-room of the Coughton Gatehouse that the news was broken to Lady Digby and other Catholic supporters that the plot had failed and the conspirators, including her husband, were on the run. The gatehouse still stands as it was in the seventeenth century and visitors can enter the drawing-room where Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant, broke the bad news. The windows of the gatehouse contain heraldic glass commemorating the marriages of the Throckmortons to other prominent Catholic families including the Catesbys and the Treshams.

Ashby St Ledgers, to the east of Coombe, was the principal residence of the Catesby family. It was apparently at Ashby St Ledgers that the conspirators met to discuss the details of the Gunpowder Plot. They assembled in a room above the gatehouse that was private from the main house and also commanded a view of the surrounding area so that they were safe from the danger of sudden attack. Ashby St. Ledgers was also the place where Catesby amassed the armaments and gunpowder for use in the plot. The Gunpowder Plot Society relates that the "Gunpowder Plot Room" in the gatehouse "has its original paneling, and its atmosphere is such that it doesn't take much imagination to picture the plotters, sitting around, amid flickering candles, making their plans in here."

Huddington Court, the home of the Wintour or Winter brothers Robert and Thomas, is a stunning back and white half-timbered house said to have been built in 1340. Legend has it that the ghost of Robert Winter's wife wanders the gardens still waiting for her husband to return. The Gunpowder Plot Society was fortunate enough to be given a tour of Huddington and records the visit and details of many more of the properties associated with the plot on their excellent website.

One property far removed geographically from the focus of the Gunpowder Plot and yet devastatingly affected by the involvement of its owner in the Plot is Lyveden New Bield in Northamptonshire. Lyveden belonged to the Tresham family. Sir Francis Tresham's mother was a Throckmorton; the family were staunch Catholics and Sir Francis died in the Tower of London for his part in the Gunpowder Plot. The heavy recusant taxes paid by the family coupled with the disaster of Sir Francis's death meant that the Treshams were ruined and the house at Lyveden never completed. Today it stands as a 400 year old ruin to the memory of a plot that was foiled and the complicated tangle of family relationships and catholic loyalties that were destroyed as a result.

Elizabeth of Bohemia and the Gunpowder Plot

In the UK current political climate where the scandal of MPs' expenses claims still rumbles on, newspapers have been drawing parallels with other historic political crises such as the Peasants' Revolt and the Gunpowder Plot. A lot of the comparisons aren't particularly valid - the Gunpowder Plotters, for example, may have planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament but they didn't have the support of the majority of the populace. It did remind me, however, of a connection to Ashdown House - and after all, that is what this blog is all about!

In November 1605, Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James VI and I, was nine years old and was living at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire (the house in the picture at the top), an estate which, coincidentally, the Craven family later bought. Lord and Lady Harington, staunch Protestants, had been charged with "the keeping and education" of the young Princess, as was the wont with royal children in those days. At Coombe, Elizabeth was taught amongst other things, French and Italian, music and dancing. King James did not approve of the education of women, stating that: "to make women learned and foxes tame had the same effect - to make them more cunning." However I think we may assume that by most people's standards Elizabeth was well educated.

In November 1605 strange rumours of a plot to overthrow the monarchy were circulating in Warwickshire, which was a stronghold of Catholicism. On 6th November 1605 Lord Harington was warned of a threat to the princess and Elizabeth was taken for her own safety to the city of Coventry, for it was suspected that she might be seized should a rebellion take place. She was lodged in the city with an armed guard. Later, after the gunpowder plotters had been arrested and tortured, it emerged that it had been their intention to kidnap "the person of the Lady Elizabeth, the king's daughter, in Warwickshire, and presently proclaim her queen." The plan had been to seize her from Coombe Abbey and carry her off to Ashby St Legers, the home of Lady Catesby, mother of one of the conspirators.

It is said that when Elizabeth heard of the plot she declared that she would rather have died with her father and brother than become queen under such circumstances. Of course the plot to blow up parliament failed and when Elizabeth did become a queen it was of Bohemia rather than England. How different matters might have been...

We stayed in Elizabeth of Bohemia's apartments at Coombe Abbey, which is now a wonderfully luxurious hotel. I didn't sleep a wink all night for fear (and excitement) of seeing her ghost!! There will be more about Coombe on the blog in future.

Who lived in a house like this?

Ashdown House is sometimes called "the house built for the love of a woman who never lived to see it." The lady in question was Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, daughter of King James I of England and sister of Charles I.

Elizabeth was born in 1596 in Scotland, before her father succeeded Queen Elizabeth I to the throne of England. She spent much of her childhood in the care of the Harington family at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire. It was from there that the gunpowder plotters planned to seize Elizabeth and put her on the throne as a puppet queen after blowing up her father and brother in the Houses of Parliament. Elizabeth's response to the failed plan was that she would rather have died alongside her father than been Queen of England.

She married at the age of 16 to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, a political Protestant match that nevertheless turned out to be very happy. Elizabeth and Frederick lived in Heidelberg in present day Germany before Frederick was offered the throne of the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1619. He ruled for one year only before being defeated at The Battle of the White Mountain by the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor. It is from this time that it is said Elizabeth and Frederick gained their titles of The Snow King and The Winter Queen because they melted away before the spring came. Forced into exile, they lived in the Netherlands and raised their growing family there. Frederick campaigned unsuccessfully for the return of the Palatine lands and died in 1632.

It was during her exile in The Hague that Elizabeth met William Craven, who was to become one of her most ardent supporters. It was Craven who offered Elizabeth the use of his house in Drury Lane, London, when she first returned to England after the Restoration of her nephew, King Charles II in 1660. It is also said that Craven conceived the idea of building a hunting lodge for Elizabeth on one of his Berkshire estates. Work started on Ashdown House in 1661 but sadly Elizabeth did not live to see the finished house. She died in London in February 1662.

More about Elizabeth anon. But if she didn't live in a house like this - who did?