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terrariumfiction · 2 years ago

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The Tale of the Tattoo'd Pig - catchup

It's been a while since I've last posted because I've been suddenly and unexpectedly busy.

Working the British Art Show 9 as invigilator has seen my confidence grow a lot, and whilst I was attending Hardeep Pandhal's artist talk at KARST, I introduced myself to Tom Milnes, the project manager of AUP's Cornwall Street Project Space. I had seen that, through the Meanwhile Use scheme, AUP had been using this empty shopfront to showcase staff, student and alumni's work. At the last minute, Tom contacted me asking if I'd be up for filling a gap in their schedule. I had no work ready for an exhibition of this kind of scale, but I knew I couldn't say no to the opportunity to have a solo show.

Following the feedback I got at the end of last year (that I needed to more carefully think through my installation plans), I saw this as the perfect opportunity to practice installation and spatial presentation of work. In crits, everyone always encourages me to think big, and consider presenting my work in an immersive environment, which I finally had the opportunity to do.

(the previous exhibition, of work by AUP BA Fine Art students - a challenging gallery space to use well)

The Cornwall Street space is a challenging one in many ways: the room is an empty shopfront, its architecture acts sort of like a funnel and none of the walls are really appropriate for 2D work. The overhead lighting is horrible and blue. The carpet is also horrible and blue. I knew that people would only be able to enter the space on one evening - the opening - and that otherwise the interactions viewers would have with the work would be through the window.

My plan was to make an exhibition that could primarily be seen through the window, but could also act as a kind of set for a performance on the opening night - something that was immersive for viewers who entered the space, but also captivated people who were just glancing at it from outside.

The first thing I did was cover the floor in straw. Straw is very cheap to buy, and very quickly covered up the nasty blue carpet (this was important to me because blue as a colour in the context of faux-medieval storytelling represents wealth and nobility). It's also a sort of shortcut to making a space feel immersive: it brings with it a strong, musty smell; it dampens sound and adds a new sound of its own (rustling under feet); it changes the colour of the floor. I wanted to bring the world of the fiction out into the space - straw being a medieval material, and also a material that sits at the intersection of human and animal relations (bedding for livestock or pets, food, natural yet manmade). The abundant presence of a classically "outdoor" material in an ordinary indoor space created a kind of surreality to the exhibition as well. I knew it would attract the attention of passersby.

I bought a roll of cheap, brown fabric from the scrap store to hang on all the walls. The presence of hanging fabric suggests curtains, making the space feel theatrical, but also on a practical level it covered up the noisy and irregular walls.

Regarding the work I decided to present, I opted to centre the show around the chapter of Dinner Machine: The Tale of the Tattoo'd Pig. This chapter was one I had finished and polished last year, and from which I performed an extract at the final show. This chapter makes the most sense to perform live as it is primarily dialogue. Also, knowing this event would be organised entirely around this one reading, I felt I could perform the whole scene rather than just an extract, which was exciting.

So far this academic year I have been working on drawing comic pages of Chapter 1, which have been taking a long time and are not appropriate to show in this kind of way, so I decided to quickly make new work to show instead. I scanned and enlarged some of the marginalia doodles I had been doing, and scruffily attached them to large pieces of cardboard. I wanted them to appear somewhere between a cardboard standee and a piece of theatre set dressing.

This was pretty much my first time working on such a large scale, and working so quickly, but I don't think they ended up looking rushed in the same way my installation did at the end of last year. I think (hope) they appeared scruffy in an intentional way, but well considered. I hung them from metal hooks with butcher's twine.

Here's a link to a previous blog post about the imagery itself (the butt trumpets): https://terrariumfiction.tumblr.com/post/702731762011455488/butt-trumpets

I thought these would work well because they are so crude and juvenile; they are quite approachable images to a range of audiences, and are maybe an unexpected thing to see when walking through the city centre. I hid the most confrontational one (FUCK THE LORD - TRUMPET TOWARDS A REPUBLIC) at the back, which was pretty much too shaded to see from the street.

As well as these large, mechanically-reproduced drawings, I wanted there to be a smaller-scale piece of work as well, that would warrant closer inspection on the opening night. It was my plan to source some pigskins, tattoo them, and crudely preserve them (with salt and alkaline solution akin to the tanning process). The other materials I had used in the production of the work (paper, board, staples, thread, fabric) were all materials that go into bookbinding, and I thought that presenting a drawing work that was ink on animal skin would more firmly link these bookmaking processes and their visceral histories. I couldn't find any pig skins in the end, so did some drawings with a dip pen on textured paper. I cut and hung these drawings to appear like animal hides do when they're being turned into parchment.

These drawings more closely illustrate the chapter I was to be performing - showing copies of medieval images of slaughter. There's a weird cartoonish glee to the violence in these images, that I supplemented with contemporary cartoon language. I sort of wanted these drawings to appear like "flash sheets" - pages prepared by tattoo artists of smaller tattoos that can be readily purchased.

The text in the scroll on the top right image is from Umberto Eco's essay 'Dreaming of the Middle Ages'; I wanted these works to present (loosely) some of the critical contexts within which this project sits - ideas of neo-medievalism, ecological philosophy, etc. The annotation "BECOMING-WITH SAUSAGE", for example, playfully references Donna Haraway's notion of "becoming-with" discussed in Staying With the Trouble.

To give the work the uncomfortable presence of animal-made-material, I smeared the frame with lard.

Next post will be about the performance itself. Below, please find more pictures of the installation.

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a-ham-esq · 6 years ago

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you may be my poem.

flint/silver - rated m.

length 2.9K.

Part one of two. (Ao3)

Chapter One - the soul to tenderness.

The wind skittered across the deck as the light of the hot sun glinted off the surface of the water in golden fractals; the crew were working hard on the sails as they flapped in the wind. The Captain’s cabin was quiet, apart from the occasional shout or creak; it was as peaceful there as it ever was in the sea. Flint sat behind the Captain’s chair once more, feeling the surge of power rushing through his bones, not only had he taken his crew back with just a few short words, but he’d taken a fucking warship. He turned the chair to the windows and watched as the ship carved out its path in the water, white foam capped the tips of the waves, Flint rose and opened the windows, letting the cool sea air flood the cabin. It felt good to let the wind through his hair, to feel the salt of the spray of the sea on his face. Life was going to change once they reached Nassau, things were going to be different, he would be sure of it. The Urca gold was going to shift the perception of what Nassau would be capable of; Flint smiled as he imagined the gold, piles of it lining the pockets of Nassau, making war with England possible. He would do what he and Thomas had set out to do; he would honour his legacy, the memory of the man that he had loved. Though he was jerked out of his thoughts by the creaking of the door.

“How you’re sitting there, now, I don’t know.” Silver said coming into the cabin without knocking, Flint looked up at him and raised an eyebrow, “one minute, you’re looking at being strung up by your neck and the next you’re captaining a fucking warship. I do not understand how you talked yourself out of that one.”

“I don’t know why you think that you can waltz in here like you own the place like you think you can do whatever you want,” Flint growled, even if Silver had pulled him from the water, that didn’t make them friends.

Like he was won’t to do, Silver ignored Flint and sat in a chair opposite his desk; he leaned back, kicking his boots up and on to the mahogany. “I saved your life, you at least owe me a chat, right?”

“No,” Flint said, shaking his head and getting up to try and shift Silver out of his cabin. “I owe you nothing, you’re lucky you’re still alive. Don’t push it.”

“The men say you visit a witch whenever we make port,” Silver tipped his chin so that he could look Flint in the eye; Flint paused where he was, freezing and looking at Silver. His eyes were blue, blue as the sea on which they sailed. “They say that she cursed you so that you always have to return to her. That she’s-“

“Controlling me like a puppet, I’ve heard the rumours, what of them?” Flint moved backwards and sat in the chair, knocking Silver’s boots off the desk as he did so.

“I was just wondering if it was true,” Silver shrugged, “I met a witch once, I went to Salisbury for the day, to see the standing stones there, a witch jumped out of a hedgerow; or well she said she was a witch, I don’t actually know. Certainly, she was green enough, but I’m not sure whether that was the alcohol or not.”

“She’s not a witch,” Flint mutters, “more like a ghost I cannot rid myself of,” he sighed, “so you want to know more about my past, well Mr Silver, how about you tell me something that isn’t a lie and then maybe we can talk.”

“I was born in Bristol,” Silver looked at him from under his eyelashes, he took a deep breath, and the cocky smile that usually took residence on his face dropped and was gone, “then my mother got sick and well, we all know what happens to boys who find themselves without parents. I got sent to an Orphanage. St Cecilia’s.”

“Well.” Flint sighed “that’s not much of a story.” He smiled and reached for a bottle of rum that he kept under his desk. “Padstow for me. In Cornwall. My father was a fisherman, then he was a carpenter, then well… then my mother died and so did my younger brother and then my father was nothing really at all.”

“Apparently we’ve both had shit lives then,” Silver sighed, now that he was talking about his past, it was incredibly difficult to stop. The words came rushing out him like water from the mouth of a river, they poured from him and he was unable to stop them, “when I was twelve I was apprenticed to a blacksmith. I was told by the other boys there that he was a… a- well, you know. And then I started sleeping with a piece of glass under my pillow, but it wasn’t enough apparently.”

“That’s pretty shit,” Flint snorted, “did you slit his throat?” He poured Silver another large measure of the rum, before lifting his tankard to his lips and drinking in deep.

“No,” Silver shook his head, he wasn’t looking at Flint, his eyes were focussed on his lap, “didn’t have the guts to. I ran away about a year later and joined the Merchant Navy not long after, no skills, nothing to offer. But they took me anyway, trained me as a rigger, didn’t have the stomach for heights so after that I was just a dogsbody but it was better than being in Bristol. There, nothing I told you was a lie. Now we can talk,” Silver looked back up, his blue eyes crinkled in thought, as he watched Flint drink more from his rum.

“Now we can talk,” Flint inclined his head, “you want to know about Miranda?” He asked, watching Silver’s expression shift when he mentioned her name.

“I wanted to know the truth behind her,” Silver nodded, he coughed, leaning back in his chair and taking a mouthful of rum, “I didn’t want this to bite us in the arse.”

Flint looked around to the sea, the windows were still open but the breeze was no longer coming through them; the cabin seemed closer and smaller than it had done when Silver had been talking about his life. The walls of the ship were closing in on him and the heat in the small room was rising steadily. Flint felt a drop of sweat roll down his back and soak into his shirt where his belt kept the material close to his skin. A part of him wanted to shut down this conversation, wanted to tramp out the desire that Silver had to learn about him and his past. His ghosts belonged to him and him alone, Silver had no right to ask about them, but Flint had been an island for too long; there was no way he could work alone anymore. Not with his crew balanced on the edge of a knife, and Silver was frightening clever. He considered the man sitting before him before he opened his mouth to speak.

“I was sent to Thomas Hamilton to be his liaison from the navy, I was supposed to dissuade him from plans he had for Nassau. In the end, though, I rather did the opposite; I was convinced that he held the answer to save Nassau, to stop the colony from failing and make it new. Thomas brought me into his plans and he had me wrapped around his little finger. I was trapped in his spider's web but, make no mistake, I wanted to be there. Miranda, or Mrs Barlow, as you know her, was Thomas’s wife.” Flint choked on the last word, he hated talking about Thomas in the past tense, it made him feel sick. “We started an affair, and then his father found out. Thomas was sent to Bedlam and I was ordered to leave London and never come back. I never saw him again. But I brought Miranda with me, she was ordered to leave too and well I swore to myself that I would protect her, give her a life that Thomas would want for her. I broke that promise but I will help her in any way I can. I love her, I suppose.” Flint sighed, he had never told another soul about his past, never, it was cathartic in a way. Silver for all that he could talk was also quite a good listener; he kept quiet and non-judgemental, just sipping on his rum and occasionally shifting in his seat.

“You’re,” Silver gasped when Flint had stopped speaking, “you. You and Thomas, were, together, no offence, Captain but you didn’t strike as the type.” Silver started to smile when he caught Flint’s shocked look. “You didn’t think I’d care? I lived in an all-boys orphanage for years, I know exactly what goes on. Really, I was in the Merchant Navy, you don’t think I’ve not…” He gestured with his hand, and Flint saw an image of Silver on his knees flash before his eyes quite unbidden. “I couldn’t care less about whatever happened between you and Thomas, but I need to know that Miranda won’t affect us, that she won’t ruin this thing with the Urca gold.”

Flint didn’t say anything for a few seconds, he took a pause to breathe, whatever he’d expected Silver’s reaction to Thomas and him, it was not this. Silver could have gone screaming to the crew, or been disgusted; this nonchalance thought was not what Flint had thought would happen. It shocked him a little, enough to make him stop and consider the man in front of him. He knew that Silver was attractive, all tanned skin and curly hair with eyes a brighter blue than they had any right to be, but the problem was that Silver himself knew he was attractive. Flint had never found that trait in people enticing, but Silver somehow made it so.

“She won’t,” Flint waved his hand and with Silver’s nod, that part of the conversation was dropped. Flint poured more rum.

Soon the sun dropped below the horizon, and somehow lanterns in the cabin were lit, and Silver and Flint were still talking and drinking. Flint wasn’t sure when the atmosphere in the room shifted, like curtains that had been hanging dropped and now Flint could see the whole picture. The way he viewed Silver changed; from the annoying, dishonest thief, Flint now saw the man beneath those things that he projected to the world. Flint watched as Silver tied his hair up into a ponytail, moving the curls away from his face; it made him look older, made the crows feet at the corner of his eyes stand out more. They continued the routine that had started when Silver told Flint of his past, it came to the part where Flint shed James McGraw.

“I suppose,” Flint sighed, leaning his elbows on to the table and resting his face in his hands, “I suppose he had to die, James McGraw would not have survived Nassau.”

Silver watched him, Flint could see the other man through his fingers, but Silver made no move to speak. Seconds ticked by on the clock on the mantle, and still Silver did not speak. A full minute must have passed, with the two of them watching each other before Silver opened his mouth.

“I should have liked to have met him,” Silver said softly, leaning forward in his seat, “James McGraw, I would have liked to meet him. He sounds like a good man.”

“He was,” Flint grunted, shaking his head, the alcohol had fogged his senses; it had been a while since he found himself at the bottom of bottle four. “I suspect you’d not like the man I was, I know he’d have hated you.”

“Oh yeah?” Silver had his smirk back, and there was nothing Flint wanted more than to wipe it off him. “How’d you know? Maybe we could have been friends.” Silver paused again, as he leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms, and smirking all the while. He seemed to dismiss the thought in favour of running his tongue over his top lip, when he next spoke, his words were slow and deliberate. Silver’s eyes sparkled, a colour Flint had only seen in the hottest flames, “But, Captain, what does James Flint think of me?” He said.

Flint was frozen to his chair, he did not move, he barely breathed, something was happening and this was the last chance to stop it. “He,” Flint choked before he brought his brain back to his body, and then the fuzzy feeling from the alcohol was gone and he was once again present in the moment. The world was back in focus and he was in his body once more, terrifying and exhilarating at the same time, like riding the top of a huge wave as it crashed and rolled down back into the swell of the sea. “He hasn’t quite made up his mind.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Silver moved then, standing from the chair in one languid motion as he rolled his body forward.

Flint didn’t even think, or there were simply too many thoughts surging through his mind to focus on just one, he moved at the same time, standing and twisting around the desk. They met halfway. The two of them, so often at odds but now it was as though they were linked together with invisible cords. Suddenly, all at once, Silver was everywhere; he was crowding into Flint’s space. Hands were Flint’s shoulders, they gripped at him with sinewy strength, and Flint could slowly feel himself giving in. This was different than his first kiss with Thomas, there was no cautious hesitation here, though they were not yet kissing. Desire, hot and sharp had overtaken them. And Silver was there, in front of him, with his eyes the colour of the sun-bleached sky as it reached above the sails on a hot day.

Silver smiled, teeth white against his tan skin, Flint’s eyes couldn’t help but dart down to Silver’s lips. Their noses brushed as they fell together, caught up in the heat of the moment and their desires, Flint's hands reached around the back of Silver’s head, finding the leather tie and letting his hair fall loose around his shoulders. Flint pressed their foreheads together and they paused like that for a moment, time stretched itself around them as the ship rocked with the waves in the open sea. Silver smelled like the sea, all salt and the freedom of the sweeping waters, he looked up at Flint a blush spread on his cheeks pinking them. One of Flint’s hands was still tangled up in Silver’s hair, resting at the back of his neck; his thumb was rubbing small circles into the skin there.

They breathed together a moment's silence while the ship creaked around them, Flint loved the feeling of the swell and ebb of the sea underneath him; he revelled in it and the warmth of Silver’s body pressed up against his own. Still, they did not kiss, Flint had every intention of making this moment, these few seconds last longer than they had any right. Silver did not seem to mind as his eyes darted around Flint’s face, as though he was memorising every line, each freckle, and scars that littered Flint’s skin. One of Silver’s hands moved from Flint’s shoulders, and a rough fingertip traced its way along the side of Flint’s face, along the side of a scar; Flint could not help himself as he leaned into the touch. Flint could feel Silver’s body heat radiate out from under his clothes, he longed to slide the man’s coat off, so that he could glimpse the heated flesh underneath it; he could see a sliver of Silver’s chest where his shirt had fallen open, it was the same shade of pink as Silver’s cheeks. Flint longed to press a kiss to it, to the dip between Silver’s collar bones.

Silver’s eyes fluttered shut, as he finally closed the scant distance between them. The kiss, when it finally happened is sweeter than Flint expected it to be. A press of lips against his own, Silver’s hand was properly cupping the side of his face. Flint was lost in the touch, he was buoyed along with the crests of it, and he gave himself over to it entirely. Silver made the most delicious sound Flint had heard, as he was back up against the side of the desk, one of Flint’s thighs sliding home between his.

“Fuck,” Silver said when they broke apart, “fuck, Captain.” He was grinning, looking up at Flint utterly debauched.

Flint said nothing in return, instead he chose to finally, finally, slide Silver’s coat off his shoulders; Silver was more well-muscled than Flint expected him to be, it was a pleasing surprise. Flint was content with simply spending the rest of his night like they were. It seemed, though, that the other man had another idea; Silver turned and pushed everything on the desk off it, as he hopped up on to the mahogany surface. Silver spread his legs and drew Flint between them, and there cradled between Silver’s thighs, Flint found Home.

A/N: Thanks for reading my first Black Sails fic!!! If you liked it please consider reblogging!! If you reblog maybe add tags????? Message me what think!! Thanks again!!! Consider leaving a comment on the AO3 version liked above!!

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harryandmeghan0-blog · 6 years ago

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Henry III was not the true ruler of England

New Post has been published on https://harryandmeghan.xyz/henry-iii-was-not-the-true-ruler-of-england/

Henry III was not the true ruler of England

Henry III (1207-1272), the eldest son of King John (c1166-1216), came to the throne at the age of nine. He was king of England from 1216 until his death in 1272, ruling longer than any other English monarch until George III reached 56 years on the throne in 1816. He is traditionally viewed as a weak ruler whose untrustworthiness led to the Second Barons’ War from 1264 to 1267. And yet, says historian Matthew Lewis, the English king is often underestimated. Here, Lewis reveals 10 lesser-known facts about Henry III, including why he is largely the reason that Magna Carta is remembered today…

September 19, 2018 at 8:00 am

Henry had two coronations

Henry of Winchester, the eldest son of King John, came to the throne in 1216 at the age of nine, with half the kingdom in the hands of rebel barons seeking to make Prince Louis of France the new king of England.

Henry was at Devizes Castle when he became king on 19 October 1216. With London largely in Louis’s hands, those loyal to the new king decided a coronation was urgently required. On 28 October, 10 days after his father’s death, Henry was crowned at Gloucester Cathedral after being knighted by elder statesman William Marshal, considered by many to have been the greatest knight of the medieval period.

Henry’s coronation robes were begged and borrowed from those who attended, cut down to fit him, and in place of a crown a small gold circlet that may have been borrowed from his mother was used, since earlier that year his father had lost his jewels in The Wash [a bay and estuary at the north-west corner of East Anglia on the east coast of England, where Norfolk meets Lincolnshire]. The papal legate Guala oversaw proceedings, but allowed Peter des Roches, the warrior-Bishop of Winchester, to crown Henry.

On 17 May 1220, with the country secured by Marshal’s expulsion of the French and the peace he had made with the rebel barons, Henry underwent a second ceremony at Westminster Abbey which William of Coventry recorded was done “with such great peacefulness and splendour, that the oldest men amongst the nobles of England who were present asserted that they never remembered any of his predecessors being crowned amid such concord and tranquility”. It had taken these three years to secure peace, during which time Louis had been defeated at the battles of Lincoln and Sandwich [both 1217]. The Pope insisted on Henry’s second ceremony to correct any defect that might have been perceived in the hurried first, and because a coronation at Westminster Abbey was, by now, the correct way to install a new king.

The coronation of King Henry III, 13th century (location unknown). Found in the collection of the British Library. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Henry III was not the true ruler of England

In May 1213, Henry’s father had submitted the kingdom of England to the rule of the pope along with an annual tribute of 1,000 marks. When Henry was crowned in 1216, he acknowledged Pope Honorius III as his feudal lord. When the coronation ceremony was repeated in 1220, it was on the instruction of Honorius who felt that the first at Gloucester had not been entirely proper. The papacy effectively owned the kingdom of England and the lordship of Ireland and Henry was the pope’s liege man, making the pope equivalent to a king and Henry to a nobleman who owed service to the pope. This meant that the papal legate, the pope’s representative in a country, was ultimately responsible for the running of the country.

After Pandulf, the papal legate who represented the pope in England, was dismissed as legate in 1221 at the request of Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who resented a higher authority in the church than himself in the kingdom, the pope agreed not to send another legate to England. But Henry requested a legate in 1237 when he needed papal support against the barons, who threatened to rebel once more, and then again in 1265 when civil war had broken out. Ottobuono Fieschi (the legate sent in 1265), who would later become Pope Adrian V, served for three years and helped to heal the wounds of the Second Barons’ War, mediating between the two sides and bringing them together on terms that suited both Henry and the barons by restoring the king without being too punitive.

Successive popes expected a huge income from England, leading to complaints from the English clergy about papal exactions. From Henry’s perspective, having a feudal overlord – someone else who was in charge and could ultimately take the blame – always gave him a ‘get out of jail free-card’ when trouble arose, blurring responsibility for unpopular policies and making it difficult for the barons to bring the king to account.

Henry tried to move his father’s body

In 1216, King John had requested that his body be buried at Worcester Cathedral between the shrines of St Wulfstan and St Oswald. There is a possibility that he had intended to be buried at the monastery he had founded at Beaulieu, but the choice of Worcester was, in the end, forced upon him by circumstance, because when John died much of the north and the south-east was in rebel hands and Beaulieu could not be safely reached. Worcester was one of the few cathedrals still in royal hands and available for a royal funeral.

In 1228 Henry wrote to Pope Gregory IX to ask for permission to move his father’s remains from Worcester to Beaulieu Abbey. It is unclear whether Gregory refused or failed to reply, but John was not moved. Instead, Henry commissioned building work to repair Worcester Cathedral, which had been damaged by fire in 1202, incorporating his father’s tomb and giving King John the oldest-known effigy of a king in England, which is believed to be a true likeness. Above the tomb is a series of five carvings on the subject of kingship, with John at one end, Henry at the other and Edward the Confessor, King David and another king playing a harp in between.

This demonstrates that Henry’s father was on his mind, as was the idea of what made a good and bad king. Edward the Confessor was a saint-king who Henry obsessed about and wanted to emulate, but whose death had brought about the Norman Conquest. King David is a biblical example of a generally good king who makes mistakes and is a bad father. Was Henry concerned for his father’s lasting reputation, his own, or perhaps both?

Effigy of King John, Worcester Cathedral. (Photo by Robert Harding/Alamy Stock Photo)

Henry was a family man

Henry III married Eleanor of Provence in 1236, when he was 28 years old. Eleanor’s exact date of birth is unknown, but the chronicler Matthew Paris describes her as being 12 at the time of the wedding in January. Over the years that followed, the couple had five children and, in a sharp contrast to his father, there is no record of Henry keeping a mistress before or during his marriage. Furthermore, there is evidence that Henry doted on his wife and children. He and Eleanor travelled together whenever possible.

Particularly touching is Henry’s relationship with his eldest son, the future Edward I. Prince Edward, at the age of 15, is recorded as having wept when his father left on campaign to France in 1253. And Henry was heartbroken to hear his son later briefly sided with Simon de Montfort’s rebellion in 1260. Edward was on crusade when his father died in 1272, the news reaching him from Charles of Anjou as he returned. Charles told Edward of the deaths of his uncle Richard, Earl of Cornwall, his eldest son John and his father only to be shocked that Edward grieved more for his father than his son. Edward reportedly explained that he could have more sons, but a man only had one father. It was a powerful testament to the family unit Henry had constructed.

Henry had a sense of humour

In 1242, Henry was returning from France where he had sealed a peace with his brother-in-law King Louis IX. The Fine Rolls, which were Chancery records of money owed to the crown for the purchase of a concession, record that on the voyage back from France, King Henry III played a practical joke on one of the men in his party.

Peter the Poitevin had been in Henry’s service since at least 1229 and during the journey home a note was entered in the Fine Rolls recording that Peter owed Henry a list of debts, including “five dozen capons for a trespass onboard ship” and “34 tuns of wine”. The roll was left out for Peter to see and, as was intended, he was panicked by the sight of so many debts for so much offence caused.

Henry had the entries struck through as soon as Peter had seen them, ensuring that the debts weren’t later collected to Peter’s ruin, but the joke seems to have been kept up for some time, with concerned men asking Peter what he intended to do about the great debt he owed the king. It is a rare insight into the sense of humour of a medieval king.

Henry was a great Gothic builder

Henry expressed a lifelong interest in building. Much of what constitutes the Tower of London today is a result of Henry’s work: he added several towers and a curtain wall to expand the White Tower, beginning in 1238. He also built the almost impregnable fortifications at Kenilworth that proved hugely problematic for Henry when seized by rebels during the Second Barons’ War in 1265. Even after Simon de Montfort had been defeated, his son Simon the Younger and a garrison refused to surrender Kenilworth to the king. A long siege ultimately failed and a negotiated settlement, known as the Dictum of Kenilworth, was published in 1266, offering the rebels a route back to royal favour by the payment of fines.

But Henry would probably have considered Westminster Abbey to be his life’s great work. The project began in 1245, when Henry sent his architect Henry de Reynes to visit the French cities of Rheims, Chartres, Bourges and Amiens and Paris’s royal chapel Sainte-Chapelle to learn the Gothic technique that he so admired.

The Westminster Abbey that stood previously was erected by Edward the Confessor who began work to rebuild St Peter’s Abbey on the site in 1042. Edward was a hero of Henry’s, and he probably named his son after him. The foundations and crypt are still those of Edward the Confessor’s Abbey, but everything above ground today is the building begun by Henry III. The tomb of Edward the Confessor was moved to a new position of honour in 1269 at the very centre of the new abbey, and when Henry died in 1272 he was buried beside Edward’s shrine in the exact position the bones of his saint-king hero had lain for 200 years.

Westminster Abbey. (Photo by Geowynn Teoh/Dreamstime.com)

Henry kept an interesting menagerie at the Tower of London

As part of his building work to extend and improve the Tower of London, Henry added buildings to house the royal menagerie. Kings of England had kept exotic animals there before but Henry created a specially built home for them and collected some spectacular additions.

The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II sent Henry three leopards and King Louis IX of France sent Henry the first elephant ever to be seen in England – perhaps, even, seen north of the Alps. In 1252, Henry issued an order relating to the polar bear that he had been sent by King Haakon IV of Norway. The order required a muzzle and iron chain be given to the polar bear’s keeper in order to help him control it while it fished in the Thames outside the tower’s walls. The sight of the great white bear wading and fishing in the Thames became a novel attraction to the people of London, though it is questionable how much control his handler really had at the other end of the iron chain.

Henry III was frightened of thunderstorms, but more scared of his brother-in-law

The chronicler Matthew Paris recorded an ominous exchange between Henry III and his most infamous brother-in-law Simon de Montfort in 1258 that was a portent of the trouble to come between them. Henry had made good marriages for his sisters and daughters so that he could count the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, the king of France Louis IX and the king of Scotland Alexander II as brothers-in-law and the next king of Scotland, Alexander III, and John II, Duke of Brittany, as sons-in-law.

Henry’s sister Eleanor, after being widowed on the death of William Marshal the Younger in 1231, took a vow of chastity only to marry Simon de Montfort, a Frenchman with a dubious claim to the earldom of Leicester who had come to England seeking his fortune, in 1238. According to reports, Simon had seduced Eleanor and when Henry found out he was outraged and forced them to marry.

In 1258, Matthew Paris noted that Henry was rowing down the Thames when a thunderstorm started. Putting in at the nearest dock, Henry found himself at the Bishop of Durham’s palace, Simon de Montfort’s residence. When Simon asked why Henry was still afraid when the storm was passing, the king replied, “I fear thunder and lightning greatly, but by God’s head I fear you more than all the thunder and lightning in the world”.

Remember, Henry had been brought nothing but trouble by Simon’s time in charge of Gascony, where his heavy hand had drawn a stream of complaints to the king’s court. Simon reportedly replied “My lord, it is unjust and incredible that you should fear me your firm friend, who am ever faithful to you and yours, and to the kingdom of England; it is your enemies, your destroyers, and false flatterers that you ought to fear”. Yet Simon would later lead opposition to Henry into the Second Barons’ War, when de Montfort seized the king and took control of the kingdom for a year.

Seal of Simon de Montfort, from ‘The Short History of the English People’ by JR Green, published in London in 1893. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

Henry III was immune to excommunication by anyone but the pope

One benefit that Henry enjoyed from his position as a feudal liegeman of the pope was that both he and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, could not be excommunicated unless on the express orders of the pope. Excommunication was meant to be the ultimate sanction of the church, effectively excluding the recipient from the community of the church. It was prescribed as the penalty for breaching the Great Charters, the joint name given to Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest [a separate set of rights aimed at improving the lot of those living within the king’s forest, which covered vast swathes of England at the time], but it had also become an over-used sanction that risked losing its sting.

For example, King John had spent years excommunicated, between 1209 and 1213 following a dispute with the Pope over the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury. John had claimed the right to appoint his candidate while the Pope believed the prerogative was his. Yet, despite being excommunicated, John had enjoyed the income of the church by seizing church lands for himself in the wake of the dispute. Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II spent years in opposition to the Pope and in a state of excommunication, having had the sanction imposed four times between 1227 and 1250.

Nevertheless, to Henry, excommunication was a terrifying thought. He was deeply pious and therefore greatly feared excommunication, so the protection afforded to him [from his position as a feudal liegeman of the Pope] and his brother was invaluable, not least because he could breach the Charters with virtual impunity. The penalty for a breach of the terms of the Great Charters was excommunication, but in effect no one in England had the power to excommunicate Henry, giving him a free hand to break their terms at will.

The longest reign for 600 years is almost forgotten

King Henry III ruled England from 1216 until his death in 1272. His 56-year reign is longer than that of any other English monarch, be it Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Angevin, Plantagenet, Tudor or Stuart, and would remain a record until George III reached 56 years on the throne in 1816. In spite of this, Henry III is often overlooked. Traditionally viewed as a weak king whose untrustworthiness led to the Second Barons’ War from 1264 to 1265, the achievement of ruling for 56 years should suggest that there is more to Henry than this.

Henry inherited a kingdom in 1216 that belonged to the pope and vast swathes of which were controlled by the French prince Louis (later King Louis VIII). Yet, in 1272, Henry bequeathed his son Edward I a kingdom so stable that the new king could embark confidently on expansion and consolidation. To add to the context of this achievement, Simon de Montfort – a man erroneously believed for centuries to be the father of parliamentary democracy but a strong and charismatic leader – could hold onto power for just a year compared to Henry’s 56 years.

Edward I, c1272. (Photo by Kean Collection/Getty Images)

Henry’s reign is also largely the reason Magna Carta is remembered today, as the Great Charter became a bargain between king and barons that taxation would be granted for the upholding of liberties and correction of bad government. Throughout Henry’s reign the role of parliament grew as a body entitled to grant or withhold taxation based on the power of Magna Carta, and which could insist on alterations to unpopular policies in return for allowing the king to collect funds. It might not have been easy, but in the end Henry was able to pass a secure crown to his son, which is perhaps the greatest testament to his long and troubled reign.

Matthew Lewis is the author of Henry III: The Son of Magna Carta (Amberley Publishing, 2016).

This article was first published on History Extra in October 2016