Mary Queen of Scots[land]:

Today marks 424 years since the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. You may be wondering why she was executed, and if you were, you'd be in luck, because I have read some books and I can now tell you why (I'm training to become a proper historian, and I believe that all I have to do is read enough books and stroke my beard thoughtfully enough and I'll be there). If you're not wondering why she was executed, you might want to stick around for the less gory bits, or perhaps go and eat a biscuit, or listen to a song that has my name in. Lovely.

Anyway, Mary, Queen of Scots. Born Mary Stuart, she was crowned Queen Mary I of Scotland at the ripe old age of six days (her father had died in battle), and in an episode which didn't really do much for stereotypes, the male courtiers in charge of the ceremony made a right mess of things, trying to get the baby to grasp a three foot sword and a scepter at the same time. Determined to ignore this rather poor start, they quickly arranged for her to become bethrothed to the French Dauphin (sadly, just a Prince and heir to the French throne, not the French Dolphin, as I initially misread, which would have been much more exciting) and packed her off to France.

There, Mary grew up, into an apparently tall and beautiful woman, who was capable of speaking French, English, Latin, Spanish, Greek and Italian. This proved a problem when the Dauphin snuffed it, and eighteen year old Mary headed back to her home country, where she couldn't understand a word her people were saying to her through their thick accents. However, this was soon to become the least of her troubles, as she was a strict Catholic, whereas most of the Scottish were ardent Presbyterians (like the Puritans, but with less general jolliness) which was to have dire consequences in years to come.

Anyway, Mary decided on returning to the country that she would like to get married again, which everyone thought was a splendid idea until they saw her choice of husband - the deeply unpopular sort-of contender for the throne Lord Darnley. Within two years, however, Darnley had managed to become equally unpopular with Mary herself, when he burst into her bedchamber with 20 men and murdered her private secretary in front of her, whilst she was heavily pregnant.

By this point, Mary decided that they were a bit beyond Couples Counseling, and arranged for her new lover to strangle then blow up her second husband, marrying him shortly after. This, ultimately, led to her undoing. There has never been any solid proof that Mary arranged or had any part in Darnley's murder, but there was enough implication there for her marriage to the supposed murderer to disgrace her enough that she had to abdicate and flee south into England and the arms of her cousin, Elizabeth I. 

Mary had thought that Elizabeth would support her in a sort of "we Queens had better stick together, eh?" way, but she was to be sorely disappointed. England and Scotland had been enemies for too long for the Queen of England to suddenly forget all their previous history together and help her cousin, and besides - she was a Catholic. This was quite a headache for Elizabeth. Keeping Mary in the country would make her a very visible rallying point for Catholic assassination plots - here was a ready made Queen just waiting to be stuck on the throne! - but deporting her meant that she would probably use the opportunity to muster an army and invade England. Executing her was not an option initially, as Elizabeth, whose own mother had been killed by her father, was very opposed to the ideas of both regicide and killing a cousin.

Therefore, she did what politicians have done for centuries since, and launched an inquiry. After much faffing and paper pushing, it was concluded that Mary should be kept captive in various different castles around the country. At first, probably at Elizabeth's assistance, her captivity was a fairly enjoyable experience - she was provided with plenty of clothes and comfortable furnishings, daily meals and was even allowed a few servants and ladies in waiting. The English queen's assistants, however, were not happy with this. Aware of the huge wars between Catholics and Protestants that were occurring on the continent, they believed that the only way to be rid of the 'threat' of the Scottish queen was to have her executed on some trumped up charges.

Elizabeth deliberated, for nineteen whole years. Eventually, "evidence" was found that strongly suggested Mary was plotting with other Catholics to have Elizabeth assassinated and replace her on the throne, and Elizabeth had no choice but to have her put to death. Many historians these days believe that much if not all of the evidence was fabricated, but at the time it was deemed substantial enough that Mary was put on trial, convicted of treason, and set to be executed. 

The execution did not go to plan. It took two or three blows for the axeman to completely sever her head; when he finally managed it and held it up by her hair, it dropped out of his grasp and rolled away, as what he was really gripping hold of was a wig, and after all that had taken place, the watching crowds were horrified, then presumably very relieved when her dress started whimpering and moving, and a small lapdog ran out of the clothing. Lovely.

It was not, it has been noted, a very dignified affair.    

A Tax on your Strangeness

So on New Year's Eve, 1695, a window tax was introduced in England. This was, literally, a tax on windows (but not, as I first misread, widows...). In honour of the fact that this was not nearly the weirdest thing to have been taxed, here is a list of 10 very odd taxes.

1) Window Tax:

Now, I am quite a fan of windows. They allow me to, y'know, see stuff that's outside without actually having to go into the outside, which is quite nice, especially when it is snowing or raining. They also are a very good means of keeping bugs and other unwanted objects away from my personage. Of course, being a modern, twenty-first century type, you know this already, and I am sure you are a fan of windows too. In 1695, many of the rich men and women of England also were fans of windows. 

 

However, when their King, William III decided that, under the Act of Making Good the Deficiency of the Clipped Money (yeah...that...uh...), windows should be taxed, the elite of England decided to brick up their windows so they wouldn't have to pay the tax, which is, I suppose, one way of getting around the problem. The tax itself had been introduced because the government was in need of money, but unable to pass a law which allowed them to collect a simple Income Tax, as  it was believed by many that disclosing your personal income to the government was an act of unacceptable intrusiveness into your personal liberties (an excuse I fear wouldn't go down too well today with HM Revenue and Customs).

The rate of tax was 2 shillings per house, with houses with more than ten windows incurring a variable rate of tax, and wasn't repealed until 1851, when 'House Duty' was introduced. 

2) Beard Tax:
In England, in 1535, King Henry VIII introduced a tax on beards. This was actually quite a clever idea to raise money - obviously the King and his government needed money, but it was often hard for them to raise it. However, anything that the King was seen to do or wear suddenly became highly fashionable, as people were keen to show the ruler what an excellent idea His Majesty had had in choosing to play bowls/wear clogs/learn the lute and so on. So naturally, when Henry grew a beard, those of his courtiers who were able to immediately followed suit (imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery). Henry then introduced the tax, knowing that no one would dare shave off their beards in case they were seen as being against something the King believed in - which was a pretty clever way of thinking, actually.

The tax was variable, and those with more income paid more, rather that those with larger beards paying more. However, when Elizabeth I reintroduced the tax a few years down the line, she taxed every beard of more than two week growth, which must have been very hard to measure, though I'd imagine that 18 year old weedy boys managed to get away with not paying it for several years...

3) Beard Tax, the sequel:
The beard tax was introduced again in 1705, but this time by Peter the Great of Russia. All men with beards were required to pay a tax, and carry around a token which stated that they had indeed paid their tax. The token was inscribed with two phrases - "the beard tax has been taken" (fairly self explanatory), and "the beard is a superfluous burden". The tax had been designed to encourage Russian men to get rid of their beards, as Peter believed that their hirsuteness meant that they weren't as forward-thinking as other Western European countries, and Russia could only become truly modern when the men were clean shaven like their clean-shaven fellow Europeans, which is a real shame.

4) Cooking Oil Tax:
Now, anyone who has seen the pyramids or Tutankhamen's death mask knows how much the Pharaohs liked their extravagances, but even though they were considered literal Gods on the Earth, they still had to find the money to pay for all the jewelery, fancy palaces and eyeliner. Possibly the strangest way they thought would allow them to collect this money from their subjects was to tax cooking oil - or rather, force their citizens to buy cooking oil only from the Pharaohs themselves. The scribes (Ancient Egyptian taxmen) would go round to all houses to ensure they were using enough oil and, in possibly the oddest twist, refuse to allow them to recycle the used oil, instead binning it and forcing the people to buy new, Pharaoh-approved oil.

5) Hat Tax:
By 1784, it had become apparent that the Window Tax in Britain was not enough to keep the country afloat, and so new methods of taxation were introduced. The government, led by William Pitt the Younger, once again tried to introduce an Income Tax, but were once again prevented from doing so by a public who believed that this was an outrageous infringement on their right to privacy, and so decided to introduce a tax on hats.

This isn't actually as absurd as is sounds. The theory was that, the richer you were the more hats you would own, and the better quality these hats would be. Whereas a poor person might have just the one hat, which wasn't of a very good quality (and so wouldn't have to pay very much tax at all), a member of the aristocracy would have a lot of very expensive hats, and so would have to pay a lot of tax. The problem with this, though, was that it was very unpopular, and apparently led to people insisting that what they were wearing on their head wasn't actually a hat at all, so they wouldn't have to pay the tax ("Oh, this? It's not a hat, no not at all...it's er...a kilt! Yes, a kilt. I'm embracing my Scottish heritage! Och aye, and all..."). 

6) The 'anything-but-Income-Tax' Tax:
As people were so very unwilling to admit their income to the taxman, the government of the eighteenth century introduced many taxes on various household items, in an attempt to raise revenue this way. Some of the items they taxed included taxes on building materials such as wallpaper and bricks; taxes on leisure items, including dice and almanacs and taxes on clothing and make-up, such as glove tax, perfume tax and hair-powder tax (though the Royal Family and their servants, and clergymen were exempt from paying this particular tax). The British people responded to this by not purchasing any more hair-powder, and walking around with very greasy hair for a good number of years, until someone worked out how to invent shampoo.

7) Urine Tax:
Not a tax on those who produced it, but on those who sold it on (er, of course...). In ancient Rome, it became very easy for the owners of public toilets to sell on the urine they collected to tanners and cleaners, who used the ammonia in it (yum...). Officials noticed how rich the toilet owners were becoming, and, on discovering why, introduced a tax on urine.  

8) Salt Tax:
As salt has so many uses in our lives, it has always been taxed, in India as much as anywhere. However, when the British took over India as part of their Empire they raised the tax extortionately. From 1858, the Indian people were forced to pay an incredibly high rate of tax on their salt - something which continued for another 80 years. During March 1930, Gandhi led the first Salt March to Dandi. This was his very first non-violent protest against British rule of India, and though it didn't actually do anything about the Salt Tax, it did help to increase the levels of awareness of the Indians' plight, and gave them international support for their campaign for independence.


9) Artistic Exemption:
This, in fact, is the opposite of tax - in 1969, Ireland brought in a rule which stated that income derived from the sale of art (books, music, paintings, sculpture, film and so on) was exempt from taxation, allowing us to perpetuate the image of a starving artist. The act was introduced to allow artists who had fallen on hard times to recover more easily, but ended up being a bit of a problem when it became apparent in the mid 2000s that Irish rock group U2 were paying no tax on their millions. The law was modified so that only those artists with an income of less than 250,000 euros were exempt, and Bono and co. moved their savings to the Netherlands, so they ensure that they still didn't have to pay tax. Huh. 

10) Poll Tax:
A Poll Tax is very popular with governments because it can be implemented at any time, very easily, and is very unpopular with the public because it can be implemented at any time, very easily. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher tried to introduce the tax, but was thwarted by the rioting and protesting of the public who were outraged at it's unfairness. (Anyone who doesn't think it's fair should imagine that I have 100 gold coins and am asked to pay just 1 in tax; whereas you, who have only 2 gold coins, are also asked to pay 1 in tax, and then consider its fairness...) Though they may have gotten their History a little bit confused ("Yeah! We're rioting in the spirit of the revolting peasants of thirteen-something who didn't want a Poll Tax either so they forced Queen Victoria to sign the Magna Carta and that's why Henry VIII broke with Rome!") but I can't fault them for their passion, and they did help strongly contribute to the ousting of Thatcher as PM, so it definitely wasn't a bad thing.                     

Queen Mags

On 18 November, 1541, Margaret Tudor died. Um, possibly. Some of the sources I've read suggest she died on 18 November and some suggest 18 October, but as I'd like to write about her today and not a battle or the second congress of the Senegalese Socialist Party, we'll say that she died on 18 November. 

Maybe we can ignore the specifics and just congratulate her on living to the ripe old age of 51 which is pretty impressive in a time when the average life expectancy was only 35. (This would mean that I, at 18, would have passed the halfway mark in my life, which is a terrifying thing, as so far I have only achieved a bunch of GCSEs and the ability to do circular breathing for 10 seconds at a time. I should have children by now, if I was a sixteenth century girl. What a horrible thought.) 
 

Anyway, I don't want to end her life before I begin it, so to speak, because Margaret actually had quite an interesting one. She was born on 29 November, 1489 to Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth, their second child and first daughter, and grew up in the royal childrens' household (which also included Prince Arthur, who was supposed to take the throne until he died at the age of 18 and the future king Henry VIII) at Eltham. She and her siblings would have had their every whim catered to, though this did not prevent two of her younger siblings dying as infants, or her older brother dying of what some believe to be consumption, others diabetes. 

Despite this tragedy, Margaret's upbringing would have been mostly enjoyable. In order to make her a suitable royal consort, she was taught French, Latin, the clavichord, the lute and archery (so she could shoot prospective husbands who behaved inappropriately? I don't know...) Clearly, she was seen as a quick learner, though, as her husband had been picked out for her by the time she was six years old. She was to marry James VI of Scotland - 16 years her senior - in an attempt to end reunite the Scottish and English royal houses and end the 170 years of warfare between the two countries. In order for the two to marry however, a papal dispensation was required as Margaret and James were fourth cousins, and therefore too closely related to be marrying each other without special permission. However, after several years of negotiations, treaties and proxy weddings, the couple were married in Edinburgh on 8 August 1503, when Margaret was 13 and James 30. Though it was hardly the most romantic of matches, by all accounts the two came to, if not love each other, at least hold each other in great affection.

The first years of her marriage were not happy ones for Margaret. The year before she traveled to Scotland, both her mother and oldest brother died. Between 1506 and 1509, she fell pregnant 3 times, but all of the babies died in infancy. A letter to her father survives: 

 

The different writing at the bottom is Margaret's own - she wrote of her homesickness and unhappiness in Scotland, and her feelings can only have be exacerbated in 1509 when she learned of her father's death. A few years later, however, in 1512, things took a turn for the better when she gave birth to a healthy baby, whom she christened James, after his father. (James was the father of Mary, Queen of Scots and grandfather of another James, who became James I of England in 1603.) 

Things weren't so good for long. Tensions had been mounting between James and Henry, newly crowned King of England and they reached a peak in 1513, when the English Army marched northwards to meet the Scottish. The met at Flodden Field on 9th September and fought, with heavy losses - including Margaret's husband, leaving her pregnant and regent until their baby son was old enough to rule by himself.

This marked the start of an even more troubled period of Margaret's life. Though James IV's will stated that she may only remain regent as long as she also remained unmarried, she ignored this and remarried the powerful and fabulously named Archibald Douglass, Earl of Angus. He had many equally powerful enemies amongst the Scottish lords, however, and they decided to remove Margaret from the regency, deny her access to her children (the baby she was carrying at the time of the King's death survived, and was christened Alexander) and not pay her the income she was entitled to. 

She and her husband fled to England in September 1515, where they remained in her brother James' (yeah yeah, I know, they just weren't very imaginative back then, okay?) castle over the winter as Margaret fell very ill. Come the summer, she traveled further down south to London to see her brother Henry, the King, whilst Angus went back to Scotland.

There, he took a mistress, leaving Margaret with no money, no power, almost no contact with her son, and a terrible marriage. In March 1527, after nearly 10 years, the Pope granted her an annulment and her son James, aged 16, sent his regents away and began ruling the country in his own right. The last few years of Margaret's life were relatively peaceful and happy, though they did have their ups and downs. Despite having a fairly good relationship with her son, they disagreed on who he should marry, with James ignoring his mother's pleas for an English match, preferring to marry a French Princess, who bore him a daughter and heir, Mary, Queen of Scots. James could be forgiven, however, for taking his mother's romantic advice with a pinch of salt - she married a third time to one Henry Stewart, who took a mistress and her money, exactly like her second husband had done.

Eventually, she died (probably of a stroke) at a castle in Edinburgh, on 18 November 1541. Or maybe 18 October... But she was definitely buried in St John's Abbey in Perth, so if you're ever there and want to rant about your ex-husband, I'm sure her ghost would be very sympathetic. 

We really shouldn't talk about this

Never talk about politics or religion with your friends, unless you know that they also voted for Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership elections want to discover that they're secretly Tory they are pretty much unoffendable.

But, even though this is about religion, it's such an amusing story that I wanted to share it with you anyway, because I highly doubt that I could offend you anymore than I usually do with it. Today, in 1537, the first English language Bible (called the Matthew Bible) was published, by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale. This was happening at around the same time as Henry VIII's money grabbing scheme religious epiphany, where he decided to break with Rome and form the Church of England. Initially, however, the Church of England only differed from the Catholic Church in Rome by having the King, rather than the Pope, as head of the Church, so all services were conducted in Latin, and all Bibles were published in Latin. 

William Tyndale c. 1494 - 1536

A few years down the line, however, Henry wanted to bring the country more in line with other Protestant countries, and therefore decided that English language Bibles should be present in all churches. (This was, sadly, all a little bit too late for poor old William Tyndale, who had been put to death in 1536 for his work translating.) A royal decree was passed, and English Bibles were sent to all churches in the land. Obviously, this didn't go down too well with the Catholics, but even some Protestants weren't too happy with the arrangements - particularly those in Devon and Cornwall.

In 1547, they began the Western Rebellion, which was a protest against the new religious order, as well as various other socio-economic problems in the counties. One of the items on their list of grievances, though, was that they absolutely did not want the English language Bibles in their churches. When asked why, they explained that, as they spoke in a Gaelic dialect, they couldn't understand the English translation. It was pointed out to them that all most all of them couldn't understand the Latin Bible, either. "Yes," they replied. "But that's the one we know but don't understand. We'd much rather have that than one we don't know and don't understand."


I guess, in a weird way, they did have a point. And the Cornish always have been a bit strange (in a nice way, you understand). Why else would they have such an inexplicable love for fudge?!

A Tsar is Born

2nd October 1552 - conquest of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible

Ivan the Terrible, 25.08.1530 - 28.03.1584

So, Ivan the Terrible did some pretty terrible things, clearly. (It was after the victory in Kazan on this day in 1552 that he was given the name 'Grozny', or 'the Terrible'.) He was a Bad Person. The conquest of Kazan, which involved amongst other things, decimating the Muslim population and laying siege to the city for five months, took place in what is commonly known as his 'Good Reign'. At the age of 13, he had someone who had annoyed him thrown to a pit of ravenous hunting dogs. There wasn't much left of him, at the end of that debacle... As they say (probably. I've never actually heard anyone say this) "he's not the sort of man you'd want to meet down a dark alley in the dodgy part of town".

But that's not what I want to get into today. Today, I want to talk some more about this whole good versus evil thing that I touched on yesterday. Again, as with Hitler, I'm not going to try and excuse the bad things that Mr. Terrible (and I do hope someone called him that...) did. I would instead like to explore why he did those things, and show that things aren't always as straightforward as they first seem in History, as with everything else in life.

Ivan didn't exactly have what you'd call an easy childhood. By the age of seven, he and his deaf-mute brother were orphaned, and the nature of their parents' deaths had been suspicious to say the least. After their mother died, they were placed in the care of regents - the Russian Boyars, or rich, land-owning nobles. Though these men (of course, this was the sixteenth century. They were all men.) treated the princes with respect in public, in private they were treated horrifically, often roaming through the palace with no shoes or clothes, and had to beg for food. Frequent displays of power by the Boyars meant Ivan would have thought nothing of armed men bursting into his chambers in the night and removing whatever they could of value. Aged 13, one of his closest confidants was skinned alive and his remains left for public viewing in a Moscow square. 

Ivan wasn't perfect, by any means. This incident lead to the perpetrators being thrown to the dogs, as mentioned above, and Ivan had already started taking his frustrations out on animals. Still, he wasn't all bad. Aged 17, he was crowned Grand Prince of Russia, though he insisted upon taking the title of Tsar (Russian for Caesar) and thus became the first in a long line of rulers of the same name. The Russia he inherited was a messy, desolate place, with no roads, no banks and no infrastructure, and he set about introducing reforms where he could to try to make it a better place. 

He selected a bride from an untitled Boyar family - Anastasia Romanovna. By almost all accounts, theirs was a very happy, if somewhat short-lived marriage. It was Anastasia's death that brought upon the 'Bad Reign'. She had had a long, painful illness which lasted a good few years before she died, which according to most accounts, devastated Ivan. He believed that she, like his mother, had been poisoned by the noblemen at court. Interestingly, a twentieth century excavation by scientists showed that the bodies of both Ivan's wife and mother contained ten times the normal amount of mercury, even after allowing for the popular mercury based foundations worn by noblewomen (I'm not sure if you'd call the British Elizabethan's lead based products better or worse...).

Is it such a surprise that, with such a turbulent, dangerous and, to be frank, upsetting early life, Ivan did the terrible things that earned him his infamous nickname? Well, maybe, maybe not - these things are always subjective, after all. But it remains true that, early on in his reign, Ivan set in place a lot of reforms to make Russia a better place, even though many of his loved ones were killed by noblemen seeking to further their own ambitions. And okay, he did start sieges and wars which killed a lot of people. But this doesn't necessarily make him different from most sixteenth century rulers, most of whom don't have 'the Terrible' or a similar moniker attached to their name. Sometimes, History is unfair on you, and it's only those who look further who find out the whole story.

Oh, and here's something I came across which you might find useful in a pub quiz one day: Ivan's wife was called Anastasia Romanovna. Her family eventually became known as the Romanovs, and this dynasty ruled Russia in their own right as Tsars for many, many years - in fact, the last Tsar, Nicolas II, was a Romanov. So in that way, the first Tsar of Russia and the last Tsar of Russia were related to each other! Cool, no? No? Well, maybe it's just me then...