"In Lone Magnificence a Ruin Stands": Furness

By Nancy Bilyeau

This is the debut of a series devoted to the monastic ruins of England. My two novels, The Crown and The Chalice, are set in the 1530s; the main character is a young Dominican novice at a priory facing destruction.

The novels are thrillers, but the framework is a serious look at Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries. I spent years researching the brutal ending of a way of life for 1,700 nuns, 3,200 monks and 1,800 friars, all expelled from their homes within a five-year period. The stone buildings themselves were confiscated by the king or given to his loyal courtiers. Many were stripped of value and demolished; some were left standing but crumbled over the centuries.  

"You love faded glory," said my husband, who knows me better than anyone in the world. He's right—I feel a strong pull toward grand old houses, pallid churches, neglected cemeteries, seldom-visited  landmarks. To me, few ruins are as poignant as those of an English abbey. 

I chose to launch my series with Furness Abbey, in the county of Cumbria, for several reasons. It has a long and fascinating history, its dissolution marked a pivotal moment in the king's attack on the monasteries, and it is ravishingly beautiful. Oh, and according to legend it houses several ghosts. :) 

                                Furness Abbey

King Stephen

The Founding: Stephen, grandson of William the Conqueror, count of Bologne and Mortain, and later King of England during a time of chaos, established Furness in 1127. In the founding document, Stephen wrote: "That in Furness an order of regular monks be by divine permission established; which gift and offering, I, by supreme authority, appoint to be for ever observed; and, that it may remain firm and inviolate forever, I subscribe this charter with my hand and confirm it with the sign of the holy cross."

The chosen location was a remote, narrow valley in the north of Lancashire near the coast; it was sometimes called "the vale of the deadly nightshade," because of an abundance of atropa belladonna, a beautiful plant with toxic berries. The abbey's buildings were all constructed with the vivid-colored local sandstone.

Cistercian habit

The Order: The Cistercians were founded in 1098 out of a desire to adhere more strictly to the Rules of St. Benedict. Its emphasis was on manual labor and self-sufficiency, with isolation being of great value. By 1154, there were 54 Cistercian monasteries in England, the largest were Fountains and Rievaulx abbeys in North Yorkshire ... and Furness. 

The Glory: In spite of the Cistercian emphasis on austerity and contemplation, Furness grew in wealth and local influence over the next few centuries. It controlled 55,000 acres of land; its holdings included iron mines, tanneries, fisheries and mills.  A close connection sprang up between the abbey and the Isle of Man, and more than one monk became Bishop of Man.

Robert the Bruce

Being so close to Scotland, Furness inevitably got caught up in border tensions. When Robert the Bruce invaded England in 1322, the abbot allowed the Scottish leader to stay overnight at Furness and paid him the enormous bribe of ten thousand pounds so that the abbey would not be harmed. It worked; the marauding army moved through abbey property without laying waste to it.

Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion, from a 1913 painting. Note
the prominence of monks in the fervor.

The Dissolution: Furness was one of the first of the kingdom's larger monasteries to fall. Its destruction is laced with irony. The Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion in the north of England, broke out because a great many people disagreed with the direction of the king's reforms. They wished, among other things, to preserve the monasteries that Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister, was busy closing down. 

Historians agree that the abbot of Furness in 1536, Roger Pyle, was a fearful, nervous man. When the rebellion boiled over, Pyle fled to the stronghold of the Earl of Derby, leaving his monks behind. In his absence, some of the monks contributed money to the rebels and pressured Furness tenants to do the same. 

Although the rebel army outnumbered the forces of Henry VIII, they were defeated. In the mop-up, Henry VIII's anger with the Northern monasteries flipped to rage. Abbots were hanged, monks rounded up. Two of the Furness monks were imprisoned and questioned. In 1537, the king's man, the Earl of Sussex, met with Abbot Roger Pyle, his mission being to find enough wrongdoing to justify closing the abbey. 

But there was a problem: Abbot Pyle had shown no disloyalty. The  Earl of Sussex came up with a solution that turned out to have profound consequences. He summoned the abbot to Wyland, a place where the severed heads of defiant abbots and monks were prominently posted, and then made a suggestion: The Furness abbot could surrender the abbey to the Crown and go willingly, along with the 28 innocent monks. That way, there would be no penalties or prosecutions. Abbot Pyle at once agreed, and he signed a document on April 9, 1537, effectively giving the abbey to Henry VIII. 

This tactic worked so well that it was to be the model of the future.  Frightened abbots were asked to surrender their homes to the king, and most of them agreed.

The Crumbling: In most cases, surrendered abbeys were demolished or converted into private homes. Perhaps because of its isolated location, this did not happen to Furness. The land reverted to the crown, and all precious objects were carted off and valuable lead stripped. But many of the original buildings stand today, although ravished, like sandstone skeletons. Visitors can enjoy the sight of the cloister court, church tower, infirmary, chapter house and other structures. 

A series of families have owned the abbey property, including the Dukes of Devonshire; it is now part of the estate of the Duke of Buccleuch, the largest private landowner in the U.K.

Since the Dissolution, many have fallen in love with Furness. The ruins fired the imagination of William Wordsworth, who wrote a poem dedicated to it in 1888: "See how her ivy clasps the sacred Ruin/Fall to prevent or beautify decay/And, on the moldered walls, how bright, how gay/The flowers in pearly dews their bloom renewing!"

The Spectres: There are stories of three ghosts haunting Furness. One is of a murdered monk climbing a staircase, almost as if he were being dragged up. The second is a White Lady, drifting around the ruins as she searches for the lover who left and never returned. The third, and eeriest, is a headless monk riding a horse under one of the grand sandstone arches--perhaps one of the monks who sided with the rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace and was punished for it.

The Preservation: Furness is an English Heritage site, and efforts are being made to prevent further collapse. Archaeological digs last year revealed the grave of a medieval abbot who, according to a newspaper report, was "a well-fed, little exercised man in his forties who suffered from arthritis and Type 2 Diabetes."

To learn more on Furness and its history, go to http://www.furnessabbey.org.uk/  and http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/furness-abbey/.

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"In Lone Magnificence a Ruin Stands" is contained in The Ruins of Netley Abbey by 18th century poet George Keate.

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Now on sale, The Chalice, the second book in the Joanna Stafford thriller series.

Help Me Write a Short Story!

Hi All,

I’m in the final stages of rewriting the third Bridget Hodgson mystery, tentatively called The Witch-Hunter’s Tale.

 Once that’s done, I’m going to take a few weeks and try my hand at short stories. One of the ideas I have is to use these shorts – which will appear as Kindle Singles – to cast light on other characters or perhaps on Bridget herself.

I have a few ideas rattling around, but I’d love to hear from you as well.

So tell me, is there a particular character you’d like to know more about? Is there some aspect of Bridget’s life that particularly intrigues you?

At bottom, I need to know this: What question do you want this short story to answer?

Feel free to answer in the comments section below, by email, or through the “Contact” page on my website.

Thanks in advance!

Sam

Hey, my bloody good read...

...is finally here!

It's been a really long journey...but I'm pleased and humbled to finally be a published novelist, with today's release of A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (St.Martin's Press/Minotaur Books). 

And to see all those troubling questions which plagued me for so long, finally resolved. Such questions included:

• How did London communities monitor themselves, before the rise of a "real" police force? 
• What kind of evidence could someone use to identify a murderer, before the birth of modern forensics?
• How could an uneducated servant find justice for a murdered friend?  
• And of course, the hardest question of all: Whodunnit! The first draft I wrote, years ago, lacked the murderer. So suffice it to say, over multiple drafts, I hoped it would all be resolved! 

 I'm just thrilled that it worked out, and I'm so happy to see my book in print!
 

As the launch day approaches...advice from two people who know what they're doing!!!

Thank goodness authors no longer have to sing their books

Since my first novel-- A Murder at Rosamund's Gate--will be released next week, I asked my awesome co-bloggers Nancy Bilyeau and Sam Thomas to share some of their experiences and insights into their book launch and that that first week was like, as a published novelist.  

Sam's novel,  The Midwife's Tale: A Mystery, was released in January, while Nancy's SECOND novel, The Chalice, just released a few weeks ago. So, I view both as all-knowing pros.
 
What was the experience like, for each of you, as your release date approached? Were you nervous? Excited?  Worried?  What (if anything!) do you remember about the release day? Did you do anything special? 

Sam: The days leading up to the release were far worse than the release itself. So much seemed to be riding on that one day, yet I felt so powerless to do anything about it. Sure I sent out hundreds of postcards to bookstores, libraries, friends, relatives, etc., flogging the book, but even if I had a 100% purchase rate from those - hard to imagine - it couldn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things. At the outset, at least, your book will sell if the publisher decides to put money into marketing. If not, your sales will be modest. Fact. Of. Life.   As for the release, it was pretty unspectacular. I went to work, home for dinner, and then to my launch. No champagne, dinner out, or anything like that. 

Nancy: I was very nervous for both books, in a daze really as it came upon me. I was blogging as much as I could. For the second book I posted four blogs or interviews on the actual publication day.

Describe your first event as a newly published author (book launch). Where did you hold it?  Who came?  Did it go as you expected?

Sam: My local library was nice enough to host the launch, and the woman in charge did a marvelous job on the publicity side of things. Thanks to her, I landed a ten-minute spot on the local NPR, which really goosed my numbers. In the end we had about eighty people show up, only a handful of whom I actually knew! In the end, it went as I'd hoped and expected. I read a little (maybe eight minutes in all) and talked a lot about the history behind the book, for a total of maybe half an hour. Then we had about an hour of Q & A, which was great.

Nancy:  For both The Crown and The Chalice, I had a book launch event within 2 days of the book’s official drop date. For The Crown it was a reading at a large Barnes & Noble, followed by a party. I invited absolutely everyone I knew in New York City, plus there were posters in the window of BN and the publisher did a few things to publicize. About 80 people came. For The Chalice, the reading was at an indie called The Mysterious Bookshop. Wine was served and I signed books. I would say 60- 70 people came. I think the second event was more successful because I feel so much more comfortable talking about my books.

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What have you learned about doing author talks/book signings? What works well? What works less well?  (I'm eagerly taking notes here! :-)) 

Sam: Be ready for anything. I've been to signings that turned into formal presentations, and book clubs that did the same thing. Other  times, it just becomes a raucous discussion of the book and characters. You can't go in knowing what you want to do. You're just along for the ride.

Nancy: For me, I try to talk about the research and the journey of writing a book, and I keep it positive and anecdote-rich. I actually don’t read more than a few minutes. I remember that I need to enlighten and entertain at a reading. I try not to make it too insiderish to other authors, but interesting to a wide spectrum of people.  I went to one book event where the author went on and on about how hard it was to be published and how her editors tell her she is no Lee Child, and it didn’t make me excited to read her book. I think that sort of thing is for your writers’ group, not potential readers.



What advice about the book release would you offer someone who—say—has her first book coming out next week? 

Nancy:  Blog, post and tweet like crazy the first two weeks. That is key! The first two weeks. And ask friends (like myself) to tweet and post on your book. Because personal recommendations are what counts.

 Sam: Chill. It'll be anticlimactic. Nothing about your life is going to change except you'll be busier.

Thanks, Nancy and Sam! 

An intriguing 17th century theft

This is the kind of little snippet that really intrigues me as a writer, and as a historian. I came across this interesting 17th century advertisement in the Early English Books. Five valuable books had gone missing--"Lost or Stolen"--and a relatively large reward had been offered for their return.

Early English books tract supplement interim guide ; / E4:2[148]  Date 16--?

Clearly, the books were valuable. Four were bound in rough calves leather and had clasps.  One was in smooth's calves leather and lettered on the back.

But it's the glimpse into the content that intrigues me. Three volumes of Monasticon Anglicanum, also known as The history of the ancient abbies, and other monasteries, hospitals, cathedral and collegiate churches in England and Wales. With divers French, Irish, and Scotch monasteries formerly relating to England (1693) (You can actually read all three volumes here if you like!).  Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire. And Camden's Britannia.

All of them could be viewed as sort of refined travel guides, pointing out the interesting facts and histories of important buildings, ruins, castles, private homes, churches and former monasteries (each was also likely informed by key political and religious tensions of the time, but that's another story.)

This fascinates me: who might have taken these books? (I'm sort of discounting the idea they may actually have been lost...what's the fun of that?)  A petty thief who may have wanted to make a few shillings? Maybe. An armchair traveller, sitting in his oak-panelled chair with spindled arms, sipping some Rhenish wine, dreaming of places he'd never been?  Perhaps.

Or perhaps, and here's the fun part to conjecture, the books were lifted from the bookstall by a master thief. To get the lay of the land throughout Warwickshire. To understand the best ways to travel. To study escape routes. To look for hidden entrances and egresses. 

There's no record as to whether the books found their way back to booksellers Bateman and Brown, but I like to imagine they didn't. Maybe some seventeenth century rogue (or moll) pulled off the heist of the century...and it's up to me to write that tale...

**********************************************************************************
It's less than seven weeks till the launch of my first mystery, A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (Minotaur Books/St.Martin's Press) on April 23, 2013!   www.susannacalkins.com

ELLEN MARIE WISEMAN ON 'THE PLUM TREE'

Thank you to Nancy Bilyeau for inviting me to talk about the research I did for my novel, THE PLUM TREE.

When I started working on THE PLUM TREE, a WWII story about a young German women in love with a Jewish man, I knew the setting like the back of my hand—a small village in Germany surrounded by rolling hills, orchards, vineyards and medieval castles. I’d been to Germany numerous times to visit family and could picture the cobblestone streets and stepped alleys because I had walked them myself. I could smell the aroma of pretzels and tortes coming from the village bakery and taste the warm, dark beer being shared at the corner Krone. I could feel the soft cocoon formed by sleeping beneath a deckbed (feather bedcover) and hear the church bells echoing through the narrow streets. I could even get a sense of the fear and claustrophobia caused by wartime air raids, because I’d been inside the bomb shelter where my mother and her family hid in terror for nights on end.

My mother grew up in Nazi Germany, the eldest of five children in a poor, in a working-class family. When I started research for my novel, I asked her to retell the family stories about WWII so I could take notes, going as far as giving her a questionnaire about the details of everyday life. Through her answers, I learned, among other things, how the average German mother kept her children fed and alive during food shortages—domestic practices like making sugar out sugar beets, bartering beechnuts for cooking oil, using vinegar to preserve what little meat they had, keeping chickens safe in the attic, and letting a crock of milk sour on the cellar steps until it was the consistency of pudding, then serving it with boiled potatoes and salt. My mother remembers waking up to find her parents in the kitchen making sausage in the middle of the night because it was illegal to purchase and butcher a pig during the war. They told her they were making tortes and sent her back to bed. Every resource—wood, pigs, flour, church bells, iron gates, scrap metal, paper, bones, rags, empty tubes—was to go towards the war effort. And there were rules about everything, from how often a person was allowed to bathe, to the list of acceptable baby names.

When the war started, my grandfather was drafted and sent to the Russian front. I remember his stories about being captured and sent a POW camp, the deep snow, the freezing cold, the way the prisoners would undress and sleep in a huddle, hoping to freeze the lice off their uniforms. Every morning there would be dead men around the edges of the group, frozen while they slept. Eventually my grandfather escaped, but for two years, my mother and her family had no idea if he was dead or alive until he showed up on their doorstep one day.

During the four years my grandfather was off fighting, my grandmother repaired damaged military uniforms to bring in a small income. She stood in ration lines for hours on end, cooked on a woodstove, made clothes out of cotton sheets, and put blackout paper over the house windows so the enemy wouldn’t see their light. Under the cover of night, she put food out for passing Jewish prisoners and listened to foreign radio broadcasts on an illegal shortwave—both crimes punishable by death.

My uncles told me about seeing planes being built in the forest, beneath the canopy of thick trees, and I even had the chance to talk to an elderly man who was a former SS doctor. He showed me his photo album from the war, pointing out pictures of him standing near Hitler, of him drinking schnapps with other officers in front of a huge Christmas tree. He showed me a letter he’d sent to his wife from the Eastern front, and a hand drawn postcard with the image of a giant officer stepping over mountains into Germany, a bouquet of roses in his arms. I soon realized he was a doctor on the front lines, not in the camps, as I had assumed. He recalled the horrible conditions on the battlefields, operating on the wounded in a tent with mud floors, not having enough bandages and morphine.

In THE PLUM TREE, Lagerkommandant Grünstein is loosely based on Kurt Gerstein, a real SS officer who infiltrated the camps so he could witness first-hand what the Nazis were doing. During my research I found out that Kurt Gerstein tried to tell the world what was happening, but no one would listen. When the war was over, he died in a French prison after giving a detailed account of the camps to the Allies. Twenty days later he was found dead in his cell. Whether he committed suicide or was murdered by the other SS prisoners remains a mystery. His testimony provided the Allies with their most detailed account at Nuremburg.

Along with my family’s history, there were a great many books that were helpful to me while writing THE PLUM TREE. Among the memoirs that mirrored and expanded on my family’s stories were: German Boy by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, The War of our Childhood; Memories of WWII by Wolfgang W.E. Samuel, and Memoirs of a 1000-Year-Old Woman by Gisela R. McBride. I also relied on Frauen: German Woman Recall the Third Reich by Alison Owings. To understand the Allied bombing campaign, which had become a deliberate, explicit policy to destroy all German cities with populations over 100,000 using a technique called “carpet bombing”—a strategy that treated whole cities and their civilian populations as targets for attacks by high explosives and incendiary bombs—I read: To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and its Human Consequences in WWII by Hermann Knell, Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombings of Civilians in Germany and Japan by A.C. Grayling, and The Fire by Jörg Friedrich. Among the many horrific air raid stories in these books were the firebombing of Hamburg in July 1943, dubbed “Operation Gomorrah” which killed 45,000 civilians, and the firebombing of Dresden in February 1945, which killed 135,000 civilians. All of these books include some of the most haunting scenes I’ve ever read about what was like to be a German civilian during the war. These books reinforced my belief that this was a story that needed to be told.

To understand what it was like for civilians and POWs after the war I read: Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation by James Bacque. For information involving persecution of the Jews and the horror of concentrations camps I read: Night by Elie Wiesel, Eyewitness Auschwitz by Filip Müller, and I Will Bear Witness by Victor Klemperer.

Although The Plum Tree is a work of fiction, I strove to be as historically accurate as possible. For the purpose of plot, Dachau was portrayed as an extermination camp, while in reality it was categorized as a work camp. Undoubtedly, tens of thousands of prisoners were murdered, suffered, and died under horrible conditions at Dachau, but the camp was not set up like Auschwitz and other extermination camps, which had a deliberate “euthanasia” system for killing Jews and other undesirables. Also for the purpose of plot, the attempt on Hitler’s life led by Claus von Stauffenburg was moved from July 1944 to the fall of 1944. 

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by Sam Thomas

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