SWEETHEART ABBEY

Early in my novel, ‘Elizabeth’s Daughter’, I use Sweetheart Abbey as the setting for Elizabeth’s burial. I was surprised recently when I  was offered a rather sarcastic comment by an editor about the name I ‘chose’ for the abbey. I agree that perhaps not many people have  heard of it, but in fact it is a real Abbey, named by its founders, the Cistercian monks, in 1273. It’s proper name is St Mary the Virgin of Sweetheart .

Sweetheart Abbey is in New Abbey, so called so as to distinguish it from the ‘old’ abbey at Dundrennan.

Actually, it was given the rather unlikely and non-religious title of ‘Sweetheart’ because  Lady Dervorgilla [Dervorguilla] founded the Abbey in honour of her husband, Lord John Balliol, who died in battle 1268. {The 750 year old Balliol College in Oxford was founded by this Lord Balliol as an act of penance – apparently he offended a bishop – but its future  was secured by his wife.}

 Lady Dervogilla had her husband’s heart embalmed and preserved in an ivory casket. She had this casket buried with her in the Abbey when she died in 1289.

Lady Dervogilla is probably not really here anymore

 

Like many Catholic monasteries  it suffered the vicissitudes of wars. The Abbey was attacked by the English before it was even finished during the Wars of Independence between Scotland and England. The battles, at one point, were between Edward 1 of England and John 1 of Scotland  (the sweethearts’ son).  Then, of course, much of the Abbey was destroyed during the Reformation.  After the Annexation Act of 1587, the Abbey’s Abbot Gilbert eventually lost his fight to stay and practice his faith and had to flee to France after his Popish books, copes, chalices, pictures, images and other such Popish trash  was found. All but the books were publicly burned. [www.historic-scotland.gov.uk.]

Eventually a lot of the local stone used to build the Abbey was carried away by villagers who were building their homes nearby.



View from the graveyard

I may have been too hasty in condemning that editor who wanted to question me for employing such a unbelievable name for my church. While I was looking for evidence for  the few Catholic churches in Scotland in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, I did read references to this Abbey. I now have to ‘fess’ up to the truth. I didn’t know it was so close to Dumfries. Initially, my Scottish setting was in Dumfries for two reasons. It is close to the English border and its first Catholic Church, St. Andrews, was built in 1815 so it worked well for my context.

While I couldn’t see any references to a graveyard at St. Andrews, I dismissed that as inconsequential. That is, until I went to Dumfries and a helpful librarian at Ewart Library told me that, in fact, St. Andrews didn’t have a graveyard.  Catholics were not allowed to be buried in their own church. Instead, they had to be buried at the Church of Scotland’s St. Michaels. It has a very large graveyard still and, at the time my novel is set, there was a special section set aside for the burial of Catholics. Wow, I thought! What a treasure of information I could use – in one sentence at least.

In almost the next breath the librarian then casually mentioned that Catholics could be buried at Sweetheart Abbey, which was nearby! I drove to New Abbey pronto and, sure enough, there stands the imposing and beautiful ruins of ‘my’ Abbey.  After a long and contemplative stroll through the graveyard I walked through the Church’s once sacred ruins. The enthusiastic custodian told me that only Catholics who lived within one and half square kilometres of the Abbey could be buried there. Out went St. Andrews and Dumfries. Instead, I moved my setting about five miles south to New Abbey. I mean, who wouldn’t use this setting when they genuinely had the excuse? Isn't it beautiful?

 

Inside those imposing ruins

Reading Pickwick Papers

PICKWICK PAPERS

An unusual post, I know, but I was privileged to attend Kate Forsyth’s conference, for aspiring writers of historical fiction, in the Cotswolds last September. One of the many valuable suggestions she made was that we read novels that were published in our  historical era. My MS  is set in 1833 and a young Charles Dickens published Pickwick Papers in serial form from 1836 – 1837. While I have now finished my own manuscript, which I thought I had researched fairly comprehensively, I still learnt a lot from reading this novel.

There are the  characters and plots  and language  (eg. an inn called ‘Eatanswill’!) that we immediately recognise as typifying the great master, and while I have thoroughly enjoyed some of his many epic novels, I can’t admit to finding this particular specimen a page-turner. There is no single narrative that threads through it, rather Dickens weaves in a  series of stories. These include caricatures of rascals and villains, a widowed landlady who sues the eponymous protagonist for breach of promise, as well as a couple of delightful ghost stories. I’m sure ‘A Christmas Carol’ was conceived  here.

I read a free copy on my iPad which shows that in total reading time, it took me 24 hours and 31 minutes and it is 994 pages long, so it is a commitment.

Samuel Pickwick is a compassionate, intelligent, chivalrous, retired bachelor which may go some way to explaining his landlady’s, Mrs Bardle, dreams of a marriage proposal.

Sam Weller

 While the retired Mr. Pickwick is no fool, Sam, his devoted servant,  with his ‘streets smarts’, certainly saves the day many times. Sam’s loyalty takes him so far that he has himself imprisoned with Mr Pickwick, whose pride forces him to choose the Fleet over paying the costs of compensating Mrs Bardle for her disappointed hopes and successful lawsuit; her case is argued by Dickens archetypal, rapacious lawyers .

I wanted to share with you some of ‘Samivel’s’ wisdom. He copies the style of his fond father’s proverbs to illustrate his point continually throughout the novel and I soon found myself  eagerly anticipating  them.

i.                     ‘…I only assisted natur, ma’am; as the doctor said to the boy’s mother, after he’d bled him to death.

ii.                   ‘If you know’d who was near, sir, I raythe think you’d change your note; as the hawk remarked to himself with a cheerful laugh, ven he heered the robin-redbreast a –singin’ round the corner.

And I can’t resist this gem from other characters.

iii.                  ‘They appeared in the form of a copious review of a work on Chinese metaphysics, Sir…He CRAMMED for it …in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.’

                  ‘Indeed!’ said Mr Pickwick: ‘I was not aware that that valuable work contained            any              information respecting Chinese metaphysics.’

‘He read for metaphysics under the letter M. and for China under the letter C. and combined his information, Sir.’

or

iv.                  ‘I have heard of a Glasgow man and a Dundee man drinking against each other for fifteen hours at a sitting. They were both suffocated at the same moment, but with this trifling exception, they were not a bit the worse for it.’

 It was good advice, Kate!  

In my novel I changed ‘my weapon of choice’ for my highwaymen from ‘flintlocks’ to ‘blunderbusses’ as further research revealed they were more commonly used by thieves. I am toying with the notion of changing ‘butt’ - as in the butt of a rifle - to ‘stock’ but I’m still considering this change. 

I was surprised to learn that Mr Pickwick changes his carriage horses after only nineteen miles into his journey. Dickens' used many clichés that I now know where popular in this era, he described sword fights and fisticuffs and wedding ceremonies and I am certainly better informed about the name of the liquor consumed in that era.

 

Not all the troubles were between Protestants and Catholics

Despite what I have written in the past about the Catholic Relief Act, there were a handful of influential and established Catholic families who remained in England at this time. They used their influence and their money, accompanied by a very deep faith, to keep the Church alive, almost literally at times. These families included the Howards and Fitzalans (Earls of Arundel), and the Talbots (Dukes of Shrewsbury).

 It took a few decades for lay and religious Catholics to trust the realities of the freedoms gradually won in the various Catholic Relief Acts. It also took time to establish and build new churches, schools and even congregations. And convents! They really weren’t any convents since the Reformation. I did find the Church of St. Aloysius in Somers Town, London, though and the Convent of St. Aloysius was founded in 1830 by the French noblewoman and widow, Sister Marie Madeliene de Bonault d’Houet. She, with a devoted band of French and English women, established schools for both well off and poor English Catholic children.



Sister Marie Madeliene

To return to the  valuable and valued supporters of the Catholic Church, they had a rather vehement rupture with their clergy when Catholicism was legalised.

Those families who had loyally supported the Catholic Church during the dark years of persecutions felt, perhaps justifiably, that they were owed. They were also concerned, as good Englishmen and women, that their loyalty to the king would be compromised by Rome now that Catholicism in England was legal. Of course, added to this was the fact that, after the Reformation, it was their unwavering adherence to their faith and their support of the clergy, often at grave risks to themselves and certainly at great expense, was the added  notion that without the support of these noblemen there would have been barely a skeleton of a Catholic Church left to free.

Obviously this dispute caused the clergy a lot of distress. However, they couldn’t budge. Now they could come out into the open and take charge of the Church as well as make {clerical} appointments as they saw fit. They wouldn’t defer to those who had supported them for so long, despite their threats to withdraw their support now.

As I have said, there were very few convents or nuns before the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 and it took a while for this to change. Until then the Catholic church in England was called a Mission, the priests were chaplains or rectors. They were not allowed to wear vestments and in fact were very wary of ever wearing any garments that distinguished them as Catholic chaplains or rectors. They certainly didn’t wear the ‘Roman collar’. They were also not allowed to preach their sermons in English – in England! I would imagine that this would be to prohibit anything seen as instructive, even subversive,  to the uneducated parishioners.

Of course, many chaplains/rectors did preach their sermons in English. At this time the practise of Catholicism was easier if one attended a chapel attached to an Embassy, of which there were quite a few in London at this time. Otherwise, in fact Catholics were not supposed to worship in London at all so Masses were held secretly in houses and meeting rooms. If there were Catholic churches they were very plain and very unobtrusive. And there really wasn’t anything inside them that could be considered idolatrous.

I will return to the subject again when I discuss some of my thoughts on what contributed to the relaxing of the laws against the practice of Catholicism in England, especially before the first Catholic Relief Act of 1778.