CHAPTER 1: RIPON, GLOUCESTER & LEICESTER WITH A FEW DEAD ROYALS

It would fair to say that A and I hold wildly different views on the monarchy. Whilst I am fascinated by the power and personalities of the kings and queens up until Georgian times and I enjoy much of the pomp and ceremony associated with the modern royal family, A is an ardent republican. This difference of opinion has led to many disagreements, with arguments sometimes rumbling on over several hours during a friendly night in together with our wives or on a lengthy car journey. A has a historical background as a former history teacher, but his interests lie in social history whereas I am definitely a big events kind of historian. My love of the subject stems from my schooldays, which is surprising given that, at times, it was incredibly badly taught. At junior school you began with the Stone Age and worked your way through to the Victorians. Then at age eleven you moved to secondary education and headed back off to the Stone Age before, once again, working your way through to the Victorians. It was history taught as fact, full of wonderful stories that I loved but later discovered weren't always historically accurate. This revelation didn't occur until well into my adult life, discussing the Tudors with one of Sue's work colleagues. He was extolling the virtues of Tudor monarch Mary I whilst belittling her half sister, Elizabeth I. I couldn't understand this as I'd been taught the very opposite. The reason for our difference of opinion stemmed from the fact that I'd been to a Church of England grammar school whilst he'd had a Catholic education. When I became a primary school teacher, history teaching had changed to take on a more thematic approach. Children studied Invaders and Settlers, the Romans and the Victorians. The stories were still there but now children were encouraged to look for evidence to support them, to question the traditional telling of events and to empathise with the principle characters. The latter got some bad press, as if a seven year old 21st century child could have any idea what life would have been like for a child their age back in medieval England, but that wasn't really the point: it was about exploring a period of history in a way that stimulated thinking and discussion rather than children just being fed a diet of alleged facts. This approach compared favorably to the sterile history lessons I'd been subjected to as a teenager which consisted of an hour listening to the teacher read her notes out whilst we copied down the relevant facts from which we'd fashioned a piece of prose for homework. Once a year, we'd swat up on the key facts and then regurgitate them in exams. This new way of teaching gave children a much better understanding of history and you could still weave a good yarn about the Great Fire of London or the Execution of Charles I. The one issue I had was that in dipping into short periods of history, you lost that sense of chronology that you develop from starting from the Stone Age and going through to the Victorians - twice! 

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The page accompanying the A4 folded guide to Gloucester Cathedral contains no mention of the context of our visit: I have a feeling that we were on our way somewhere or maybe on our way back, but the details elude me. I do remember that we parked at Gloucester Docks, an area of the city that was undergoing a major transition from a thriving port to a centre of tourism, with many museums, shops and leisure activities now occupying former warehouses. It was once linked to the sea by the Sharpness Canal, and was a major centre for the import of timber, wines and spirits, bones and guano for fertiliser and citrus fruits. Its good connection with the canal network and later the railways meant it was an ideal port of entry for many years, but as roads superseded these forms of transport, trade fell away. We didn't tarry in the docks as we didn't want to risk a hat trick of 'arrived too late' at the cathedral. We entered through the north door and picked up our guides before heading into the nave. This was the first cathedral that we had purposefully visited for our collection and there was no protocol as to what to do next. In the event, I set off straight away for Edward II's tomb whilst A took a more circuitous route around the periphery. The tomb, constructed in the 1330s on the order of Edward's son, Edward III, was a magnificent affair with an alabaster effigy of the unfortunate King lying on his back. This was one of the first times alabaster, a form of gypsum, had been used in this country, its softer nature making it far more workable for intricate carvings than marble. At the time of his interment, Gloucester had not yet become a cathedral and it is thought that the presence of a royal tomb here, spared what was then the Abbey of St Peter from the fate of so many other religious communities during the dissolution of the monasteries during the time of Henry VIII. In fact, it was Henry who created the diocese of Gloucester and installed a bishop and his cathedra there. 

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A says that if royalty didn't exist you wouldn't invent it. I argue that the desire to pass on what you have to your children is a powerful human trait that explains why the hereditary principle developed in early times and continues to influence the choice of leaders to this day. Originally kings were just the elected leaders of their tribes but in practically every civilisation, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Chinese, dynasties start appearing. You don't have to invent them A, they occur naturally. The hereditary principle became established in England with the Normans and, interestingly, during the one interlude where we abolished the monarchy, Oliver Cromwell was succeeded as Protector by his son, Richard. Even in that most republican of republics, the United States of America, family influence and power are key. How else can you explain how, in a country of three hundred million where, in theory, anyone could be elected president, ten of the 45 are related to other presidents (two fathers and sons, Adams and Bush, one grandfather and grandson, Harrisons, with Madison and Taylor second cousins and the more distantly related Roosevelts in case you were wondering.) The problem with hereditary rulers is that the qualities of leadership are not necessarily passed down in the genes. Take poor Edward II. His father, Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, warrior King, the man who conquered Wales and built a ring of fortresses to protect his newly acquired territory was always going to be a hard act to follow, especially if you relied too much on the advice of friends and upset the powerful nobles. His friendships, first with Piers Gaveston and then with Hugh Despenser were the root cause of his fall from power and, after being forced to abdicate, he ended up imprisoned and most likely murdered at nearby Berkeley Castle. 

The nature of Edward's friendship with Piers and Hugh has been the subject of much discussion by historians, suffice to say that three local abbots were approached to take his body into their abbeys for burial and they refused. Abbot Thoky of St Peter's took a different approach and it was one that paid dividends. Not only did the abbey escape destruction in Tudor times, the shrine of the late King became a place of pilgrimage and pilgrimage in medieval times meant cash, and lots of it. This enabled them to rebuild the old Norman abbey church creating, as my guide informed me, a fascinating blend of Romanesque drums pillars and perpendicular Gothic tracery. The east window was once the largest stained glass window in the world, one of a number of records held by English cathedrals at one time or another. It commemorates the Battle of Crecy; a key English victory in the Hundred Years War waged by Edward's successor, his son, Edward III and it still contains many pieces from the original design. Edward II isn't the only Royal burial in the cathedral as there is also an effigy of Robert of Normandy, the eldest of William the Conqueror's sons. He inherited the Norman dukedom in northern France and then proceeded to quarrel with his brothers, the English kings William II and Henry I. Eventually he was captured by Henry and died a prisoner in Cardiff Castle. His body is somewhere in the cathedral but nobody quite knows where. His effigy appeared a hundred years after his death, showing him in full armour over a vivid red tunic that still retains its colour to this day. 

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I met up with A again in the wonderful enclosed cloisters, nowadays familiar as a filming location for various Harry Potter films. As we walked quietly around this serene setting, I shared with him an idea that had I'd developed standing in front of the royal tombs. "I'm going to visit all the burial places of English monarchs from the Norman Conquest," I informed him.

 "Royalty: if it didn't exist you wouldn't invent it," he replied, ever one to repeat a beloved mantra no matter how many times you'd heard it before. I quickly concluded that I would be carrying out this new collection on my own and once I was back home, I set about discovering where my quest would take me. Unlike collecting cathedrals which was a shared venture necessitating a new visit together even if we'd each been to the place separately on our own, my royal body hunt was already partly complete as I'd made many visits to Westminster Abbey, lingering by each of the royal tombs, recalling the stories of these great and not so great monarchs. We'd also had a holiday in Normandy where we visited the abbey at Fontevraud which contains the bodies of Henry II and Richard the Lionheart. I'd also stood on Bow Bridge in Leicester, peering into the murky depths of the River Soar in an attempt to catch sight of Richard III's long dumped bones - little did I know. I now scoured the list to see if there were any other locations I could tick off but although I'd been round Windsor Castle, I couldn't ever remember visiting St George's Chapel so that would be have to be a special journey. There were also a number of monarchs buried in cathedrals we were yet to visit so I could kill two birds with one stone when we made those journeys. Victoria and Edward VIII were out of reach, finding their final resting place in the mausoleum at Frogmore in the grounds of Windsor Castle and closed to the public. 

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That left William I in Caen, Normandy, George I in Hanover (the last British monarch to be buried outside the country), Empress Matilda in Rouen and Jane, queen for nine days, in St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower of London, plus three monarchs lying in the vicinity of long since demolished churches and abbeys. I decided that I wouldn't make any special journeys but I'd try to locate the missing bodies when I was in the vicinity of their final resting places. The first opportunity didn't arise until many years later when holidaying with friends on the River Thames. Our boat journey began and ended in Reading, passing Windsor en route. I had no wish to go around the castle again but I did want to visit the chapel - St George's Chapel. It is what is known as a Royal Peculiar, falling under the direct jurisdiction of the monarch (we were to meet another of these on a future cathedral visit.) I now was able to add another ten, possibly eleven rulers to my collection, with five buried in two vaults beneath the chapel floor and five at different places around the chapel. Edward IV began the building in 1475 - he's there in one of the vaults. So is his predecessor Henry VI whom Edward most likely had murdered in the Tower of London during the Wars of the Roses, later arranging for his rival's body to be dug up from Chertsey Abbey and reinterred in his new chapel. The building was completed in 1527 by Henry VIII - he's also there along with wife number three, Jane Seymour. After having his head separated from the rest of his body, both bits of Charles I were reunited there and there is also a goodly selection of Hanoverian and House of Windsor monarchs including William IV, Edward VII and Georges three to six. In 1789, work was carried out to repair part of the flooring in the chapel during which the sealed vault of Edward IV was breached. The workmen found four tombs inside. Two belonged to Edward IV and his queen, Elizabeth Woodville. The others were assumed  be those of two of their children who had died in childhood, George and Mary. However, 21 years later two more tombs were discovered in a different part of the chapel, one of which bore the name of George. Records show that Mary was buried alongside her brother George, so if they were buried in these tombs, who were the occupants of the unnamed tombs next to Edward? Could they be the so called Princes in the Tower, Edward IV's sons, the uncrowned twelve year old Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York? Tradition has it that their bones are in Innocents' Corner in Westminster Abbey, having been found in the Tower of London during the reign of Charles II but many experts now think that these bones belong to some other children - one may even be that of a girl. If our present queen would allow the Westminster bones to be re-examined (they were looked at last century but long before many of the modern techniques for ascertaining the age and identity of ancient relics had been developed) we might have a better idea who the bones belonged to, but she won't. Don't ask me why: you'd have to put that question to her majesty. So I might have been in the presence of an eleventh monarch Edward V in St George's Chapel, and then again, I might not. 

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As we moored up at the end of a very enjoyable week's sailing on the Thames, I took the opportunity to hop ashore in the attempt to locate anything that might remain of Reading Abbey. It was here that Henry I, son of the Conqueror, was buried. His body was lost when the abbey was destroyed but the town council had helpfully erected information that allowed me to stand in various parts of the long gone abbey and record another burial place visited. I did warn you that some of my collections remain unfinished and this is one of them. Apart from Caen and Hanover, I have still to find the remains of Faversham Abbey where Henry's nephew, Stephen, was laid to rest. I did discover Matilda's tomb on a recent short cruise up the River Seine to Rouen, except that I didn't. Matilda is an interesting character. The daughter of Henry I, she first married the Holy Roman Emperor hence her title of Empress Matilda, and after he died she married Geoffrey Plantagenet , the Count of Anjou. She was engaged in a battle for the English throne with her cousin King Stephen, the one buried at Faversham, and after defeating him, she travelled to London to be crowned England's first ruling queen. Unfortunately, the population of London wasn't into feminism and refused her a coronation so she had to settle for the title Lady of the English. For a long time she ruled parts of England whilst Stephen controlled others. This period of history is referred to as The Anarchy for good reason. Eventually she moved to be with her husband who now ruled Normandy, leaving the war against Stephen in the hands of her son, the future Henry II. Our cruise ship was late docking in Rouen and then it took an age to disembark so it was already twilight by the time we arrived at the cathedral. It would not be an exaggeration to say the cathedral was poorly lit and so we stumbled around in the dark trying to find a tomb that may or may not have had some form of identification. Suffice to say I never found her tomb although I must have walked past it several times as we circled around searching. 

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