INTRODUCTION

This rare financial document itemises the payments made by the burgh of Dundee for executing a witch in about 1591. From it we can learn about the practicalities of executions. The context of the document may also shed light on the notorious North Berwick witchcraft panic of 1590–2.

There are many things that this document does not tell us. It does not tell us the witch's name or even gender. And it does not give the exact date of the execution. The financial accounts cover the terms of Martinmas 1590 and Whitsun 1591 – the financial year 16 May 1590 to 15 May 1591 – and the text gives no more precise date. As we shall see, a date towards the end of this period seems likely. Another significant point that the document omits is the nature of the court that tried and convicted the witch.

It may, however, be possible to reconstruct some of this contextual information. Here we may begin with a consideration of four hypothetically possible types of court that might have tried the witch. Hypothetically, it could have been the burgh court, or the sheriff court, or a justice court held under royal authority (a commission of justiciary), either in Dundee or in Edinburgh. These options might overlap if (for instance) the magistrates of the burgh were granted a commission of justiciary. Unfortunately, the keeping of the records of a court held under a commission of justiciary did not form part of the responsibilities of any local officials, and the survival rate for such courts’ records is very low. Before 1608, there is no surviving central record of the granting of commissions of justiciary either. So it would not be surprising if gaps in the record evidence were to limit what could be said. Nevertheless, some probable conclusions can be drawn.

This report is in the form of imaginary conversations, centred on a report of the concert itself.

The Scene is the rue Bergère at 1.45 p.m.

Dramatis personae: An Old Man, a Young Violinist, Me

THE OLD MAN (calling out to me): Sir! Sir!

ME: Good day to you, sir!

THE OLD MAN: Well, we’ve got a top-notch programme today!

ME: No need to tell me! I fancy it's the most magnificent one the Société des concerts has ever given its subscribers.

THE OLD MAN: Very likely: The Fourth Symphony, the Euryanthe overture, extracts from La Vestale, the O Filii, it's all marvellous! Oh! What a treat for me to hear La Vestale! (turning to the young violinist). That’ll leave you in a terrible state, my dear young sir, if you’re as sensitive to music as I was at your age!

THE YOUNG VIOLINIST: Yes, I’m told there are pretty things in La Vestale.

THE OLD MAN: Pretty things! No, the whole work is beautiful; there's not a weak note, not a note that doesn't strike home; it's a sublime score, my young friend, a work that flashes and burns, and which you don't describe as having ‘pretty things’. That sort of talk is blasphemy.

THE YOUNG VIOLINIST: Forgive me, I don't know it.

ME: You don't know La Vestale?

THE YOUNG VIOLINIST: No, sir.

ME: Are you a pupil at the Conservatoire?

THE YOUNG VIOLINIST: Yes, sir.

ME: And a violin teacher?

THE YOUNG VIOLINIST: Yes, sir.

ME: And you’re what – twenty-eight, thirty?

THE YOUNG VIOLINIST: I’m twenty-nine.

ME: I congratulate your pupils.

These three queens – Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth of York – operated as economic players in a world where their gender and marital status would ordinarily render them legally invisible. They were able to benefit from the possession and availability of economic resources, and they used them to assert their power, authority and influence in the economic arena of queenship. Moreover, they did so against a backdrop of conflict and political upheaval that effected changes in the dynastic bloodlines of the monarchy. The circumstances of the periods during which each individual became queen were not the same and neither were their backgrounds and loyalties. All these factors form a part of the framework for this study and, in the process of completing it, several themes encapsulating the discussions have emerged: change, continuity, gender and power/agency.

Changes related to the queens’ economic resources can be perceived in various ways. As in the fourteenth century, later fifteenth-century queens could be given a wide variety of different grants and their dower grants still formed the basis of their economic resources. The main types available to them remained, as for the queens of the previous century, the traditional entitlement of queen's gold, non-landed grants and landed resources. What changed was the monetary importance and measurable benefits of these different types to each queen in this study. One of the major alterations was in the importance of landed versus non-landed resources, an obvious modification that occurred in the transition from Margaret of Anjou to her successors, the two queens Elizabeth. Like the fourteenth-century queens Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile, Margaret's most financially important resources were her non-landed grants, which were meant to contribute more than two-thirds of her dower revenues.

This two-part investigation arose from questions that have been raised about the headwear of Henry VIII's Black trumpeter, John Blanke, as depicted in the Westminster Tournament Roll of 1513. In particular there has been a suggestion, popularised by some contributors to the John Blanke Project, that his hat marks him out as having a distinctively Moorish, and probably Islamic, identity. Part One, in the previous volume of this journal, asked how much the court of Henry VIII knew about contemporary Islamic dress and whether they would have recognised a turban when they saw one. The answer to the first question appears to be ‘Quite a lot’, both because many of them had seen it themselves, or in illustrations, and also because they dressed up as Turks and Moors for their entertainments in what seem to be remarkably authentic versions of the costume – including turbans and other forms of headgear. It also examined the traditional ‘Saracenic’ headgear shown on helmet crests in church monuments and heraldry, and actually worn in jousts and tournaments, and suggested that what an heraldic artist shows John Blanke as wearing, in the Westminster Tournament Roll, is unlikely to have been meant as an Islamic turban, from North Africa or anywhere else. This concluding section attempts to find out what John Blanke is really shown as wearing. It turns out to come from a completely different part of the then-known world.

Lead actors of Asian descent were rare exceptions in the early days of German-language cinema. Examples include Henry Sze—German film's first Chinese actor—who debuted in the initial installment of the eight-part adventure series Die Herrin der Welt. Die Freundin des gelben Mannes (The Mistress of the World. The Girlfriend of the Yellow Man, Joe May, 1919); Himansu Rai and Seeta Devi, the couple in the first Indo-German co-production Die Leuchte Asiens (The Light of Asia, Franz Osten, 1925) about Buddha, shot on location in present-day Pakistan; and Chinese American icon Anna May Wong, who came to Europe for the opportunity to star in three consecutive films by Richard Eichberg. Although early German filmmakers typically counted on the star power of well-known white actors, who would perform a different race through costuming and makeup, a select few Asian actors graced Western European silver screens and potentially challenged dominant regimes of spectatorship, simply by being protagonists with physical appearances and names that differed from conventions. This chapter follows this line of occasional Asian leads into the 1930s when the National Socialists took over Germany, including its film production.

Within the first two years of Nazi rule, two German-language films featuring Asian leads in romantic roles were released in pre-annexation Austria: Taifun (Typhoon, Robert Wiene, 1933), starring Valery Inkijinoff, and Letzte Liebe (Last Love, Fritz Schulz, 1935), starring Michiko Tanaka.

INTRODUCTION

Francis Stewart (1562–1612), fifth earl of Bothwell, was the highest-status person ever to be formally accused of witchcraft in Scotland. The so-called North Berwick witchcraft panic, beginning in 1590, rapidly developed into a perceived conspiracy against the king. In early 1591, Bothwell, the king’s cousin, began to be suspected as the ringleader of the conspiracy. However, he was not brought to trial until 1593, by which time the panic had abated, and he was acquitted. The document edited below relates to this acquittal.

The circumstances and even the date on which Bothwell's name was first brought into the North Berwick panic remain obscure, but the main accused witch to name him was Richard Graham. Graham was a magical practitioner and alleged necromancer with an aristocratic clientele, and his testimony was crucial in incriminating Bothwell. Bothwell admitted that he knew Graham, but denied involvement in witchcraft.

Bothwell was arrested on 15 April 1591 and imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. Rather than face trial at the height of the panic, he escaped in June. He remained on the run for most of the next two years, carrying out various colourful exploits. In July 1593 he engineered a reconciliation with the king, though it would turn out to be only temporary. As part of this process, he agreed to undergo a trial on the charge of witchcraft, evidently hoping for an acquittal that would aid his rehabilitation.

Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts identified and printed three important documents relating to Bothwell's trial. There is a narrative of Richard Graham's evidence against Bothwell; a list of assizers at the trial; and the minutes of the trial itself, on 10 August 1593, with a dittay that closely follows the previous record of Graham's evidence, underlining its importance for the prosecution.

Although Middle English lyrics recur throughout Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Brogyntyn ii.1, Quire 25 – now its penultimate quire – provides a valuable case study not only for considering the manuscript's approach to the lyric form, but also for reflecting on its complex nexus of scribal relations. Spanning folios 195r–202v, Quire 25 comprises seven Middle English lyrics (items that are the work of three scribes, designated by Daniel Huws as R, S, and O). The three scribes work in sequence: Scribe R records two poems at the quire's opening on folios 195r–198r; Scribe S, also recording two poems, follows on folios 198r–199v; and Scribe O records three poems on folios 200r–202v, completing the quire. The variation in the layout and appearance of texts suggests the scribes were working independently, or at least without any agreement as to consistencies in presentation. In this respect, it is worth noting that the hands of R and S occur only in Quire 25 and, in the words of Huws, they appear not ‘to have played a decisive part in the making of the book’. Although Scribes R and S remain rather opaque figures, the features of their respective hands, such as an unevenness of script and, as is particularly the case for S, a failure to maintain a consistent stanza format, may suggest that neither was an experienced scribe. The limited contributions of R and S stand in contrast to the work of O who, along with Scribe J, wrote the majority of items in the manuscript.

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Gregory the Great to early medieval England in cultural, religious and historical terms. As famously related in the anonymous Whitby Life of Gregory, Pope Gregory I – who would become known as ‘the Great’ in the late ninth century – was considered by all who were aware of his instigation of the mission from Rome as ‘the Apostle of the English’, or ‘pater Anglorum, doctor et apostolus’. As such, a study devoted to an important text attributed to Gregory is appropriate for this volume which takes as its central theme the influence of the Continent on early English literature. The direct influence of the Old English translation of Gregory's Dialogi on other Old English texts is difficult to demonstrate, though the number of extant manuscripts of the Latin original suggests that it was popular and influential.

In addition to being a collection of stories illustrating the holy deeds of some of Italy's most pious priests, bishops and saints, Pope Gregory the Great's Dialogues would in the centuries following its publication prove valuable – especially, though not exclusively, in translation – as a conversion text, with its myriad illustrations of the basic tenets of the faith, from the importance of baptism and the Creed, to the efficacy of inter cessory prayer and descriptions of the fate of the soul after death.

Introduction

At Justice Hall in the Old Bailey in mid-October 1685, eight men and four women were sentenced to death. Samuel Smith, chaplain of Newgate prison, urged them to repent and use their few remaining days to be reconciled to God. His sermon to them assumed that crime was a moral failing and focused on the importance of obedience as an antidote to sin. He told his audience of convicted felons that it was:

impossible to be set free from the Law of Sin and Death, but only by the infinite Righteousness of Christ's Active and Passive Obedience, imputed to Sinners, by Gods free Grace upon timely Repentance, and a sincere Faith, deriving strength from the influences of Christ's Spirit, for the renovation of their Hearts, and universal Obedience to God's Commandments.

To be saved, individuals had to be regenerated, and the latter was based on “Faith, Repentance, and new Obedience.” Smith stressed that “obedience to his Laws” was essential to gain God's pardon. Not all the prisoners were as remorseful as the ordinary would have liked. Matthew Morgan, though, convicted of housebreaking, was a model penitent. He confessed that he “had been a Sinner many ways, but he was convinced now of his evil course of Life.” He “earnestly beg’d of God” the ability to repent, hate his sins, and to build “an obedient frame of heart unto his Laws.”

The director of the Opéra pilloried in this article was Henri Duponchel (1794–1868), director between November 1847 and November 1849. He was an architect and stage designer and seems to have had no musical training. After Louis-Philippe's departure, the Académie royale de musique was renamed ‘Théatre de la Nation’ on 26 February 1848, then ‘Opéra-Théâtre de la Nation’ on 29 March. Berlioz had recently returned from London.

I always get in a muddle when it's a question of using their new title to mean the Opéra and the hitherto third opera house founded by M. Adam. I dare say other people will have the same problem. It seems to me difficult to work out in what sense ‘The Theatre of the Nation’ is not ‘national’, and how ‘The National Theatre’ can't be the theatre of the nation. Happily, the question is no more serious than knowing whether one should say ‘the shape’ or ‘the form’ of a hat; the great thing, at the moment, is to have both a hat and a head; because many people, in theatre and elsewhere, don't have a hat to put on their head, while heads, even in certain places where they’re of ultimate necessity, seem to be rarer than hats. As for the Opéra, we shall refrain from deciding whether it's in the same category as those places. We were there at its ‘opening’. One unimpressed wit claimed this word should be understood in the sense of ‘autopsy’. After the corpse's innards had been examined, the doctors unanimously attributed the cause of death far less to the wounds, dislocations, and contusions it received in the recent catastrophe which is still making Paris tremble, and more to an organic failure that had become incurable through its longevity.

The idea that England was blessed by the goodness of its monarch, the truth of its church, and the happiness of its condition proved unsustainable by the end of Charles I's personal rule. Stresses had become cracks, and cracks had become fissures, as the polity sought to contain its contradictions. Social leaders and consumers of news developed sharp opinions about the wisdom and direction of the king's foreign policy, his raising and spending of revenue, and his policies and patronage in religion. Though consensual constitutional arrangements underpinned a hereditary monarchy and a national protestant church, political and religious disagreements made enemies of neighbours, and spilled over into civil war.

The people featured in this book were caught up in these troubles. Their stories reflect and augment the well-known history of the reign of Charles I. They demonstrate, too, the possibility of exploring relationships between individual lives and the constraints and opportunities of larger historical forces. Chance and circumstances created and preserved unique documents, including revealing but neglected material in the National Archives. Creative enquiry yields fresh insights and connections, with many questions remaining. How limiting, how empowering, for example, were the social, economic, and demographic conditions of a person's origins and environment? What choices could people make that would relieve or exacerbate the tensions of their time? To what degree were the subjects of this study, and those connected to them, complicit in, or innocent of, the disruptions that eventuated in revolution?

The vast majority of the king's subjects conceived themselves as dutiful, orderly, and devout, and coped as best they could with the challenges of their age. Most, like their countrymen today, lived in the shadow of great events, and operated with local expectations.

The Welsh revivalist poet and forger Iolo Morganwg styled himself the ‘Bard of Liberty’, and a not insignificant part of the liberty he espoused was a vociferous opposition to slavery. From c.1790, Iolo wove together his ancient bardic and contemporary abolitionist identities as though they were natural complements to one another, just as he inserted elements of French Revolutionary politics into his recreated bardo-druidism. In various poems, his bardic mouthpieces ‘weep for AFRIC's injured race’, sing the praises of ‘Great WILBERFORCE’ (PLP, ii, pp. 209–10), and inveigh against ‘Vile Britons!’ (PLP, i, p. 145) and ‘lovers of blood’ who prop up the systems of enslavement. Iolo also took some practical steps to divest himself from the proceeds of slavery, vowing to refuse book subscriptions from Bristol enslavers, engaging in the boycott of West Indian sugar, and apparently refusing some of the proceeds of enslavement he could have received from his brothers in Jamaica. Though recognized in recent scholarship as a flawed adherent to his own abolitionist principles – particularly thanks to his eventual acceptance of an inheritance from his brothers’ Jamaican holdings – his bardic anti-slavery has become a foundational aspect of his modern reputation.

Some might interpret this neo-bardic abolitionism as a foretaste of the subsequent union between the Welsh national idea and the abolitionist cause. As Daniel G. Williams has argued, ‘an ethnic conception of Welshness developed in the nineteenth century, rooted in Nonconformity and temperance, with abolitionism also appearing as a fundamental political belief’. Still others might see Iolo's abolitionism as evidence of a Welsh tradition of identification with/as colonial victims (also explored in the previous chapter, pp. 171–2).

Introduction

Kano has been a cosmopolitan hub of commerce for centuries. It has hosted a diverse array of populations, including Tuaregs, Arabs, Nupe, Bariba, Kanuri, and Yoruba, who established vibrant diasporic settlements long before British colonial rule. This chapter delves into the economic development of Kano and the different waves of Yoruba migration. It explores their entrepreneurship and the politics of identity. In Kano, the Yoruba community forged a strong work identity, which became integral to their self-conception as both individuals and a community. Many Yoruba migrants maintained a strong connection with their homeland and its aspirations. This chapter provides insights into the locations of Yoruba migrant settlements in Sabon Gari and other parts of the Kano Emirate. We also examine the profiles of prominent Yoruba migrants, both men and women, to gain a deeper understanding of the intricate processes of citizenship, a sense of belonging, the influence of homeland politics, political integration and participation, transculturation, and their resilience in inter-group relations. Additionally, we explore the impact of the Northernization policy and labor market segmentation on the Yoruba community. Notably, after the conclusion of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970, Yoruba men and women played pivotal roles in the Committee on Abandoned Properties, contributing to the reintegration of Igbo migrants.

Colonialism and Yoruba Migration to Kano

Similar to the Yoruba migration to Ghana, the presence of Yoruba communities in Kano, northern Nigeria, dates back to the pre-colonial period. Before 1900, Kano, much like Yorubaland, was characterized by extensive commercial networks and the movement of people, typical of the western and central Sudan regions of Nigeria and certain Savanna and forest states.