A Very Merrie Tudor Christmas! with Time Tunneller Matthew Wainwright

People all over the world celebrate Christmas in different ways. From the enormous Yule Goat constructed of straw in Sweden, to the Pastorelas (Shepherd’s Plays) of Mexico, to a game of Trivial Pursuit alongside a box of Quality Streets in the UK, people have created their own traditions around this major Christian festival.

But what about people in the past? How different were their Christmas celebrations from our own? To find out a little bit about what might have changed, let’s go back five hundred years to Tudor England under the reign of King Henry VIII …

The Twelve Days of Christmas

You’ve probably heard the carol that begins, “On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me …” and ends with the unfortunate recipient of the gifts having their house overrun by poultry and leaping lords.

In Tudor times Christmas really was twelve days long! Starting on December 25th and ending on January 5th, people downed tools and took part in a number of traditions, one for each of the twelve days.

On Christmas Eve (December 24th) people would decorate their spinning wheels with greenery brought in from outside, signifying that work was stopping for the duration of Christmas. Christmas trees came a lot later - in Tudor times people would ‘deck the halls with boughs of holly’, and festoon their houses with ‘the holly and the ivy’.

On Christmas Day itself people would eat! The Tudors knew how to throw a party, and they would have feasted in the best style they could afford.

Roast meats featured prominently (including Turkeys, which were a new delicacy and could be seen being driven in huge flocks from London to Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire) as well as pies that contained two or three different kinds of bird meat alongside fruit and spices.

Mince pies were originally filled with actual minced meat, spiced and mixed with fruit - until later the meat was taken out, and all that remained was the spiced fruit with the rather confusing name of ‘mincemeat’!

One famous tradition is that of the Boar’s Head, commemorated in the Boar’s Head Carol. In a spectacle echoing back to ancient pagan origins, a boar’s head would be cooked and garlanded with fruits and herbs, and brought into the feasting hall on a magnificent platter. The Boar’s Head Feast is still celebrated in Oxford University’s Queen’s College to this day!

The Feast of St. Stephen was on what we now call Boxing Day. It was a day for charity and giving to the poor, and it’s immortalised in the carol ‘Good King Wenceslas’ who looked out on the Feast of Stephen to see a poor man struggling through the snow, and was moved to bring him ‘flesh and wine’.

Child Bishops were appointed in churches from 6th December until Childermas on 28th December. A young boy, usually a member of the choir, would be adorned with all the regalia of a bishop for this time, and would take services and preach sermons!

Childermas commemorated the children that were killed on the orders of King Herod, as depicted in the moving Coventry Carol:

O sisters too, how may we do For to preserve this day This poor youngling for whom we sing, “Bye bye, lully, lullay?”

New Year’s Day was the traditional day for giving gifts. People gave gifts to show their appreciation to those in authority over them, and those at court were expected to give presents to the king.

Tudor Christmas presents could be expensive - but they were an excellent way to make sure you stayed in favour in the coming year! Just think about that next time you’re doing your Christmas shopping …

Father Christmas

One of the most endearing and bizarre Tudor Christmas traditions was the appointment of a Lord of Misrule to preside over the twelve days of festivities.

Revived by Henry VII, the post of Lord of Misrule was a way to upset the normal order of things. Someone would be chosen to direct all the Christmas celebrations, and would preside over them in a mock court, receiving mock homage from the revellers.

In Scotland, the same position was held by the Abbot of Unreason - although with the progression of the Reformation across Britain these traditions slowly faded away.

The idea of a Lord of Misrule does persist today, however, in the unlikely form of Father Christmas! Lords of Misrule were sometimes given names like ‘Captain Christmas’, ‘The Christmas Lord’ or ‘Prince Christmas’.

In 1616, the playwright Ben Johnson put on a Christmas play featuring an old man called ‘Christmas’ or ‘Old Gregorie Christmas’. He had sons and daughters called ‘Mince Pie’, ‘Misrule’, ‘Carol’ and others, and he had a long beard.

So the idea continued through the 1600s, the character appearing in numerous Christmas plays. He always personified Christmas parties and games, however, and had less to do with the idea of bringing presents. And as you can see in the picture above, he sometimes rode a goat!

Another tradition had been around in Europe for a long time - that of St. Nicholas, based on the real-life figure of a Bishop from Turkey. On St. Nicholas’ day (6th December) children were given presents to commemorate his gold-giving exploits.

According to tradition, St. Nicholas (or ‘Sinterklaas’) would deliver presents by passing through locked doors or descending chimneys. In Dutch markets, Sinterklaas impersonators could be found wearing his distinctive red and white robes …

It’s possible that the legend of Sinterklaas crossed the Atlantic to the North American Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, which later became New York.

However it happened, Santa Claus born, and eventually immortalised in Clement Clark Moore’s poem, ‘The Night Before Christmas’, where we find many of the features of our familiar Santa, including a huge belly, red costume and reindeer.

For a while Santa Claus and Father Christmas existed side-by-side, even appearing together in an 1864 story by Susanna Warner. But eventually the two merged, although in the UK the character has traditionally kept the name Father Christmas, harking back to the Lord of Misrule and providing us with a fascinating link to the Tudors!

And Christmas traditions are still evolving, with Elf on the Shelf and other festive celebrations taking their place in the hearts and lives of British people.

Writing challenge

For your writing challenge this week, become a Lord of Misrule! Come up with your own crazy Christmas tradition, and make it as weird and wonderful as you like, to rival the things you've read in this post. Perhaps you decide that everyone should bow to cats on the Thursday before Christmas, or that presents are brought to good children by flying ants ...? Go wild!

About the author

Matthew Wainwright is an author of children's historical fiction, and a member of the Time Tunnellers. His first book, 'Out of the Smoke' is set in Victorian London and was inspired by the work of Lord Shaftesbury with chimney sweeps and street gangs. His second book, 'Through Water and Fire', is set in Tudor England and features Anne Boleyn and the English Reformation.

For more information on Matthew and his books, visit his website: matthewwainwright.co.uk

You can buy 'Through Water and Fire' online, or from your local bookshop. Buy here.

Sources https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/A-Tudor-Christmas/
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/members-area/kids/kids-tudors/twelve-days-of-christmas/
https://kriii.com/news/2022/medieval-christmas-the-boar-s-head-festival/
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/occasions/christmas/coventry-carol-lyrics-meaning-history/
https://www.britannica.com/art/Lord-of-Misrule-English-medieval-official
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/christmas/the-history-of-father-christmas/

Taking a Tour of a Tudor Hall with Matthew Wainwright

This week is a very special one for me, because my new book, ‘Through Water and Fire’, was released on 31st October. It’s always exciting to have a new book out, and to watch it find its way into the hands of readers.

The reason I’m telling you this is because I want to talk a bit about the setting for the story. It takes place in the Tudor period – during the reign of King Henry VIII – and it’s mostly set in a grand manor house or hall, which I’ve called Lockwood Hall.

Lockwood Hall is fictional – I made it up – but it’s based on a very real place called Haddon Hall in Derbyshire. It’s quite a famous Tudor manor house, and brilliantly preserved. If you go there today you’ll find parts of it looking much as they would have 500 years ago - and I definitely recommend you visit if you can!

Haddon Hall, near Bakewell, Derbyshire (Image: Rene Cortin, Wikimedia Commons)

When I was researching the book I looked at a lot of photographs of Haddon Hall, and planned out where various parts of the story would happen (in my version, Lockwood Hall). My main character, Grace, is a visitor to the hall, so there was plenty of opportunity for her to find her way around and explore the various nooks and crannies along with the reader.

Here’s how I describe Lockwood Hall the first time Grace sees it:

“The Hall was vast; hardly a house at all, but more like a small village, with a dozen halls and buildings sprawled over half an acre and a high wall running all the way around. Tall roofs bristled with chimneys, red brick shone ruddy in the sunlight, and rows of glazed windows flashed and gleamed.”

You’ll notice I’ve picked out three distinctive features of these great Tudor houses:

1. Brick walls. Go to any Tudor palace from the time of Henry VIII (such as Hampton Court Palace) and you’ll see they were beginning to be made of bricks rather than stone. Haddon Hall is a mixture of the two, as it was built in the late medieval period, just before the Tudor period.

Hampton Court Palace (Image: DiscoA340, Wikimedia Commons)

2. Chimneys. Tudor palaces were famous for the number of fireplaces, each one served by a chimney. Fireplaces replaced the open hearth, and were more efficient and safer. Again, look at Hampton Court palace and you’ll see just how it ‘bristles’ with chimneys!

3. Glazed windows. Glass windows were still very much for the rich, and tended to be ‘mullioned’ – this means the panes of glass were very small, and joined together with strips of lead, often in a diamond shape. Poorer people still had open windows without any glass in them, and would have shutters that could be closed for warmth and privacy. Lockwood Hall also has stained glass windows in its main hall, which you would usually find in churches.

I think I’ve also made Lockwood Hall much larger than the real-life Haddon Hall – but I like to think that this is how it appears to Grace rather than it being the reality! We all know how big and confusing large buildings can seem on our first visit.

Here are some of the places that Grace comes across in the story, and the kinds of things that would have happened there.

Courtyard

Haddon Hall lower courtyard and front door. (Image: Rob Bendall, Wikimedia Commons)

In Lockwood Hall, the courtyard is the hub of all outdoor activity. It’s where visitors are received and groups of people prepare to ride out to hunt or visit local towns. Only the wealthiest Tudor families had enclosed courtyards – many manor houses were built in an E or H shape, with open spaces to the front or back.

Houses would have been self-sufficient, with everything the family needed provided on-site. This meant not just cooks and kitchens, but a blacksmith, a carpenter (or two), farriers (who took care of the horses’ feet specifically), dairy workers, launderers and more, all amounting to a small army of servants who kept the house and the family going.

In Lockwood Hall I’ve placed these trades around what is called the Lower Courtyard. This is probably a bit unrealistic, as the family wouldn’t want important visitors to be confronted by the sight of chickens being plucked! But it gives the house a real sense of life, so I’ve used some artistic licence.

Great Hall

Christmas revels in Haddon Hall (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Through the huge front door is a small antechamber (literally a ‘before-room’) where guests might wait to see the lord of the manor. Just off the antechamber is the Great Hall.

Coming out of the medieval period, the hall was still the absolute heart of any great Tudor home. This was where most of the life of the house took place: servants ate and even slept here, visitors were received and entertained, and the enormous room was filled with people and activity from dawn until dusk.

Haddon Hall Great Hall today (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In smaller houses floors were of packed earth; in the case of Lockwood Hall it is stone. Rush mats were laid down for warmth and cleanliness, like a huge, stiff carpet laid down in sections. Trestle tables could be put out and cleared away quickly, along with benches and stools for guests to sit on and eat. Tapestries hung from the walls provided insulation and a riot of colour. An enormous fireplace would have provided warmth (along with a considerable fire hazard!)

Haddon Hall Great Hall fireplace (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Much of the action in the book takes place in the Great Hall – there are feasts, celebrations, homecomings, and even some hostage-holding!

Parlour

Haddon Hall parlour (Image: Elliott Brown, Wikimedia Commons)

Just off the Great Hall is a smaller room called the parlour. This is where the family would have received visitors more privately, and sometimes have eaten their meals together away from the noise and bustle of the hall.

The parlour in Lockwood Hall (as in Haddon Hall) is wood-panelled, with a generous fireplace. It would have been a warm and comfortable place to sit in the long winter evenings!

Haddon Hall, two carved figures in the parlour (Image: Michael Garlick, Wikimedia Commons)

It’s in this parlour that Grace first meets the Lockwood family – her aunt and cousins. She returns later in the book for two more important confrontations, where she is faced with a choice each time: betray someone else to save her skin, or stay loyal and end up in trouble or worse!

Chapel

Haddon Hall chapel (Image: John Salmon, Wikimedia Commons)

Back out the front door and across the courtyard is the chapel. Religion was the lifeblood of Tudor existence – everyone believed in God (to a greater or lesser extent) and everyone went to church. Rich families would have their own chapel for private worship, and for their staff and servants to use to take the mass – bread and wine that represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ (and which most people believed became the actual flesh and blood of Jesus by a miracle called ‘transubstantiation’ – try saying that seven times fast!)

At the time my book is set – 1527 — religion was undergoing enormous upheavals all across Europe. A movement that became known as the Reformation was underway, in which people were beginning to question the absolute authority of the Roman Catholic church, and instead turning to their own reading of the Bible to understand how God wanted them to lead their lives.

Martin Luther protesting against Catholic teaching, 1517 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

This was a monumental change, and it was enabled by the translation of the Bible into the common languages that people read at the time: German, French, English and others. Until that time, in England, people had only ever had access to the Bible in Latin, and had relied on the priests and other church officials to explain it to them. Some people had translated the Bible into English around a hundred years before, but the practice had been outlawed and many of those Bibles burned.

Bibles being burned, from 'Foxe's Book of Martyrs' (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In 1527, owning an English Bible – or even just reading one – was still illegal, and people who did were at risk of being arrested and executed for heresy and treason. The Lockwood family in my book are Reformation supporters, and so (to the surprise of Grace) they hold their worship services in English rather than Latin – that is, until a certain guest turns up …

Those are just some of the locations that feature in ‘Through Water and Fire’. There’s also a tense confrontation in a garden, a shocking slap in a bedroom, and a secret tunnel leading to a very mysterious location – but I don’t have time to go into that now. You’ll just have to read the book!

Writing challenge

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about some of the places in a Tudor house. I really enjoyed travelling through the hall in my mind and deciding what would happen where.

For your writing challenge this week I want you to do the same! You have two choices:

1. Download the map of Lockwood Hall, and plan out your own story of someone arriving at the house and discovering a thrilling secret. Maybe someone has got their hands on an illegal English Bible and is on the run from the law! Think what the purpose of each of the locations was, and plan your story around that.

Lockwood Hall. Right-click on the image to download and print it. (Image: Noami Berry, Wakeman Trust)

2. Draw a map of a building you know well. It could be your home, or your school. Plan out a story that takes place in every room. Think about what is in each room that you could use as part of the story. Maybe even add a secret passage of your own …!

Enjoy your writing challenge, and happy Time Tunnelling!

About the author

Matthew Wainwright is an author of children's historical fiction, and a member of the Time Tunnellers. His first book, 'Out of the Smoke' is set in Victorian London and was inspired by the work of Lord Shaftesbury with chimney sweeps and street gangs. His second book, 'Through Water and Fire', is set in Tudor England and features Anne Boleyn and the English Reformation.

For more information on Matthew and his books, visit his website: matthewwainwright.co.uk

You can buy 'Through Water and Fire' online, or from your local bookshop. Buy here.

The Mary Rose: Ship of Stories

In my Tudor-set adventure, The Queen’s Fool, my heroes, young orphan girl, Cat Sparrow and her new-found friend, French boy, Jacques Bonhomme find themselves voyaging across the English Channel to Calais as part of King Henry VIII’s entourage bound for the grand Anglo-French peace celebrations at the Field of Cloth of Gold in June 1520.

Contemporary painting of Henry VIII's flagship, 'The Mary Rose'

The sea journey presented a brilliant opportunity to include an exciting chase scene with the villain which results in poor Jacques falling overboard and which leads on to a dramatic ‘reveal’ that hopefully young readers won’t see coming.

To write these shipboard scenes meant that I needed to understand the layout and construction of Tudor ships, how you might have boarded them – by small boats and a set of ropes, ladders and nets as it turns out – and what life both above and below deck was like for passengers and crew.

A key primary resource proved to be an ‘old friend’ – the wreck of King Henry’s favourite warship and flagship, The Mary Rose, which had been part of the king’s escort of ships that day on the journey across to France.  I’m fortunate enough to live within an hour’s drive of Portsmouth Harbour where, over four centuries after her dramatic sinking at the end of Henry’s reign, the remains of The Mary Rose were discovered and, in 1982, brought to the surface in an event broadcast across the world.

A miraculous resurrection 

In fact it was as a teenager that I paid my first ever visit to see what was left of The Mary Rose, not long after she first went on public display in the mid 1980s in a covered dry dock

at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard – though at the time the surviving timbers of the wreck were heavily veiled in plastic and being sprayed with water to keep them from drying out. I returned several times over the years as they were further treated with preserving chemicals and then, finally, air-dried. 

'The Mary Rose' as she looks today on display at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

I was also keen to see the amazing artefacts which had been excavated from the wreck and put on display after conservation, in a new, purpose-built museum on the site. So in a small way I got personally caught up, like so many other visitors over the years, in the story of the exciting discovery, ground-breaking excavation and conservation of the ship.  

But the wreck of The Mary Rose harbours other, equally fascinating stories. These include the part the ship played in the history of the early English navy, how she came to sink on that fateful day back in 1545 and the lives – and deaths – of the men who formed her crew.

Pride of a king

For 34 years after her construction and launch in Portsmouth in 1511, The Mary Rose was the pride of King Henry VIII’s navy. A 600 ton carrack and one of the earliest known examples of a purpose-built sailing warship, she was reputedly built to the young king’s own design. She saw a number of actions over the years in battles and skirmishes against the French navy and in the defence against King James IV of Scotland’s attempted invasion of England. And records also show that she underwent a substantial refit during the 1530s with the addition of a number of extra, heavy guns.

 Portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein

Her final action took place on 19^th July 1545, when she was part of an English fleet of 80 vessels involved in a face-off against over 200 ships of the French navy gathered in the Solent – the stretch of water between Portsmouth Harbour and the Isle of Wight. The French were on a mission of revenge for Henry VIII’s capture of the French town of Boulogne the previous year, and Henry himself came down to watch the action from nearby Southsea Castle.

But what actually caused The Mary Rose to sink? A surviving eye-witness reported that, seeking to engage the enemy, she fired first from her starboard side, then turned about to fire from her port side. But as she made the turn, her sails were caught by a gust of wind and she was blown over. This resulted in her still-open starboard gun-ports taking on water as they dipped below the waterline.

The sinking of the Mary Rose in the Solent (detail from The Cowdray Engraving)

Alternative theories emerged over time including that there had been too many guns and soldiers on board, or that the earlier refit of the vessel had resulted in some fundamental design flaws. There was even the suggestion that the officers or crew might not have been up to the job. The French themselves maintained they had holed the ship with a cannonball, though none of these claims has ever been convincingly substantiated.

Whatever the full story, it took no more than a handful of minutes for The Mary Rose to disappear beneath the waves with the loss of almost the entire crew. Estimates vary but it is believed over 450 men drowned that day with around only 35 survivors. 

A porthole into the past

For me the most intriguing stories are to be found in the huge haul of archaeological treasures painstakingly excavated from the mud of the seabed. These represent a sort of Tudor time-capsule, illuminating both the operation of a ship of Henry VIII’s navy and the day-to-day lives of the mariners, soldiers, gunners and servants on board. Stand-out items include the ship’s bell; the cannon bearing the King’s personal Tudor rose symbol; the chests of Yew longbows and thousands of arrows for use by the archers in battle; the two great brick ovens and cauldrons and the eating utensils used to serve the crew their food, not forgetting the detachable mast-top which crowned the ship’s main mast.

Just some  of the archery bows, arrows and other weapons salvaged from the wreck

Other highlights are the more personal items belonging to individual crew members, all of them male, most young adults and some just boys. These range from leather shoes, jerkins and hats to dice, gaming boards and musical instruments including something called a shawm – an early type of oboe. Also writing materials including ink pots, quill pens and even leather book covers, though the pages have long since rotted away. 

A leather jerkin (left), and a home-made gaming board, fiddle and bundle of needles and thread (right)

                                                             

 Leather book cover 

And then there are tools of the trade belonging to men of the ship’s company such as the carpenter – including his mallet, planes and rulers – and the surgeon, whose belongings – his canisters  of ointments, metal syringes and a bowl to collect the patient’s blood during blood-letting – I found particularly intriguing because of a crucial scene I set in the surgeon’s cabin on board ship in The Queen’s Fool. 

 Items from the surgeon's chest     

Finally, there are the remains – human and animal – which tell their own tales. For example the bones of men believed to have been archers, which show the stress caused to arm and shoulder muscles and joints by the regular shooting of many arrows. And the isotope analysis of teeth which has allowed historians to demonstrate that the crew were not only of English origin but that some of them came from places as far afield as the Mediterranean and North Africa.

'Hatch', the ship's dog

And perhaps my favourite find of all – the skeleton of a small dog discovered outside the carpenter’s cabin.  Nicknamed Hatch by the museum team and identified from his bones as a sort of terrier, similar to a modern day Jack Russell, he is believed to have been the ship’s ratter. And as relatively few rat bones were found in the wreck, the museum staff reckon he must have been pretty good at his job!

Scarcely any personal information is known about the individuals who went down with King Henry VIII’s great flagship that day nearly 500 years ago. But through the treasure-trove of objects rescued from the deep, we are part way at least to bringing them and their stories back to life.

 More information about the fascinating and inspirational artefacts and stories connected with The Mary Rose is available from the museum website here.

View Ally’s video on The Mary Rose on YouTube Kids here.

Ally Sherrick is the award-winning author of stories full of history, mystery and adventure.

BLACK  POWDER, her debut novel about a boy caught up in the Gunpowder Plot, won the  Historical Association’s Young Quills Award. Other titles include THE BURIED CROWN, a wartime tale with a whiff of Anglo-Saxon myth and magic and THE QUEEN’S FOOL, a story of treachery and treason set at the court of King Henry VIII. Ally’s latest book, published in February 2023 with Chicken House Books, is VITA AND THE GLADIATOR, the story of a young girl’s fight for justice in the high-stakes world of London’s gladiatorial arena.

Ally’s books are available from bookshop.org.uk and all good high street bookshops

For more information visit Ally's website. You can also follow her on Twitter @ally_sherrick