In the meeting of the court of the common council of London, held on the Feast of St Hilary (13 January) 1387, one William Hughlot, a servant of the king and citizen of London, was asked to make answer for a trespass committed against the city. Hughlot was accused of making his way to the house of John Elyngham, a barber of the parish of St Dunstan in the West, and assaulting him with a knife. The cause of this disturbance is not recorded; however, we are told that Elyngham's wife called upon John Rote, skinner, alderman and former sheriff (1381–82) to intervene. In order to maintain the peace, Rote attempted to break up the quarrel between Hughlot and Elyngham. After notifying Hughlot that he was both an alderman of the city and an officer of the king, Rote was attacked and forced to ‘manfully’ defend himself and disarm the perpetrator. A constable was wounded in the scuffle.

Remanded in custody in Newgate prison, Hughlot evidently did not know when to stop. Still raving, he made specific threats against Rote as well as the mayor, Nicholas Exton, before declaring that the court of the Guildhall of London was the ‘worst and most false court in the whole of England’ for condemning him without trial. Two days later, Hughlot was brought before Exton and representative aldermen in the court of the common council to answer this charge. At the beginning of his trial, a deposition against Hughlot was read explaining the severity of his crime. The mayor and aldermen, it was declared, had a precept, vested in the king's authority, to maintain the peace in their city. In London especially, more so than any other city in England, this was to be maintained judiciously. For London was ‘the capital city and mirror of the whole realm and this same place [sets] an example for the business of government with respect of the cities and other important places in the realm’.

The circumstances of this deposition must be approached with caution. The clerk of the court may simply have been exhibiting the rhetoric of civic pride. In addition, the scribe recording this trial may have exercised a certain creative licence – we cannot say for certain if the trial unfolded in the manner precisely described.

On 17 August 2015, the annual Ruth First Memorial Lecture was held at the Great Hall of the University of the Witwatersrand. Themed around ‘Race: Lived Experiences and Contemporary Conversations’, it was made up of two presentations which marked a generational break with the speakers of previous years. The first was by Panashe Chigumadzi, a student, activist and novelist who dealt with the experience of so-called ‘Coconuts’: young, relatively privileged black South Africans who are (so the self-mocking, semi-endearing term implies) white on the inside as a result of having attended schools that were either state-funded ‘former Model C’ (i.e. once whites-only) or private.

‘We all know what a Coconut is, don't we? It's a person who speaks like this’, she remarked, drawing laughter from the audience at the start of an address that spliced together autobiography, personal interviews and critical theory from Du Bois to Malcolm X to chart a psychic journey from accommodation and assimilation to militancy and activism (‘Of Coconuts’, online). As members of the ‘born free’ generation onto which a fantasy of a colour-blind, post-race South Africa had been projected, ‘we were’, she continued, ‘a conduit for the country's absolution from the real work of reconciliation’; but instead of becoming ‘the trusted go-betweens between black and white, we are turning to conceptions of blackness and mobilising anger at the very concept of the Rainbow Nation.’

The second half of the event began with Sisonke Msimang, a versatile social commentator, essayist and (as of 2017) the author of the widely praised memoir Always Another Country. She delivered her reflections on the politics and possibilities of inter-racial friendship in South Africa in collaboration with poet, actor and theatre-maker Lebogang Mashile, who performed extracts from a range of literary works, many of them drawn from the archive of South African non-fiction. These included the prison memories of Helen Joseph and Lilian Ngoyi (leaders of the 1956 Women's March against the pass laws); memoir, autofiction and essays by Rian Malan, Sindiwe Magona and Nadine Gordimer; Njabulo Ndebele's reflections on race and intimacy in Fine Lines from the Box; Xolela Mangcu's media columns about the University of Cape Town as it debated what to do with a statue of Cecil Rhodes.

Questions of autobiography and the truth of the self have occupied many writers and thinkers across the South African transition. The previous chapters addressed just a few entries in the outpouring of memoir and personal testimony that, from the late 1980s onwards, makes this country's literature a rich case study in the construction of the non-fictional ‘I’ and the limits of the confessional mode. Yet the question of biography remains curiously under-theorised in comparison, both locally and internationally, despite its high sales and strong cultural presence as a genre of trade non-fiction. Often the most far-reaching reflections on the form tend to be by practitioners: Hermione Lee's life of Virginia Woolf is often cited as a conceptually rich account of literary biography, especially given that its subject had herself thought so carefully about the form. A good biography, Woolf wrote, ‘is the record of the things that change rather than of the things that happen’ – a line that the biographers I consider in this chapter and the next will keep circling back to.

The phrase ‘life writing’, which Lee uses throughout her scholarship and has done much to popularise, was coined by Woolf to suggest a more liberated way of writing about people, one that the novelist set up in opposition to the dully informational, commoditised or pompous ‘shilling lives’ of nineteenthcentury great men. The modernist impulse of Bloomsbury and ‘the New Biography’ – to access psychological complexity, to deal ironically with selfmythologisation and to puncture biographical heroism – this finds a South African echo in William Plomer's Cecil Rhodes (1933). As a slim and bitingly satirical work modelled on Lytton Strachey's irreverent Eminent Victorians (1918), it takes aim at the hagiographic tomes that had begun to appear on the now departed imperialist. ‘As a character put faithfully into a novel, Rhodes might impress but would no doubt fail to “convince” the reviewers’, Plomer remarked, playing within the literariness of literary biography: ‘They would complain that a character must develop and it is perhaps difficult to find traces of real development in Rhodes's nature’ (46).

Introduction

Mineral revenues have become increasingly important in Tanzania but questions have been asked about the extent to which they contribute to the development of the areas in which the minerals are located and to the wider economy. This chapter reviews some of the issues relating to the contribution of mineral wealth to the Tanzanian economy by investigating the case of the gold service levy in Geita District and its impact on the local community.

Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in Tanzania play a critical role in delivering governance and social and economic services directly to the people. Such services include infrastructure of all kinds, education, health, water, security and sanitation. According to the Local Government Act No. 9 of 1982 and the Policy on Local Government Reform of 1998, LGAs are supposed to identify and improve local revenue mobilization and to identify potential areas for investment to promote sustainable economic and social development activities in their respective jurisdictions.

Resource-rich LGAs usually expect local economies to benefit from the extraction of resources including oil, gas and mineral investments. Unfortunately, this has not always been the case. These LGAs have either been denied the fiscal space to collect revenues or do not always know how to take advantage of extractive activities to enhance sustainable economic development. Local investments in natural resources such as minerals and gas should in principle provide opportunities for LGAs to strengthen their revenues and to use the same for provision of public goods and services. It is in the context of the above that this chapter was prepared, partly based on a study by Ngowi (2015).

Minerals and Development

Mineral wealth has been viewed as a mixed blessing in relation to development. While the income and foreign exchange generated contributes to the national balance of payments as well as to government revenue and to employment, the extent of positive impact depends critically on who gets the revenue and how it is used to strengthen both the local and national economy. Very often the mineral extraction process is managed by a large foreign company, and the share of the benefits that remains in the country depends on the agreements made. There is significant potential for corruption that may affect both the share that remains within the country and the share of the remainder that accrues to the local population.

In 1649 Massachusetts minister Thomas Shepard published his Theses Sabbaticae, a work which reflected the importance of the Sabbath in New England Puritan religiosity. Yet in his opening remarks, Shepard complained that the ‘refined mystical divinity of the old Monks’ had been used to attack not only the Sabbath, but most of the doctrines of the New Testament, to the point they had been ‘allegorized and spiritualized out of the world’. Men now spoke of an inward Sabbath in Christ, the working of the ‘Inward word’ and an ‘inward Baptisme by the Holy Ghost’. They had been taught that a Christian must be ‘plunged, lost and swallowed up’ by those of ‘Monkish imaginations’, including Jacob Boehme, Nicholas of Cusa, Sebastian Franck, Raymond of Sebund, the Theologia Mystica of Pseudo-Dionysius and the anonymous Theologia Germanica. The influence of such ‘monk Admirers’ had also been felt in England. The third edition of John Wilkin's Ecclesiastes (1651), a work intended to furnish ministers with the skills of preaching, included a new list on mysticism. He warned of those ‘stiled Mysticall Divines’ who ‘pretend to some higher illuminations… for a more intimate and comfortable communion with God’. The writings of Teresa of Avila, Boehme, John Tauler, Francis de Sales, and John of Ruysbroeck had been ‘much cryed up and followed’ in previous years, but contained ‘little of substance… more plainly and intelligibly delivered by others’. In 1659 the Church of England apologist John Gauden complained of the variety of dangerous doctrines espoused by ‘mysterious Mountebanks’ who had drawn on the doctrines of Teresa of Avila, the Theologia Germanica, Hendrik Niclaes, Boehme and Pseudo-Dionysius. These men had plagued England by leaving the ‘fruitfull valleys and plain paths’ of simple Christianity, and had instead ‘turned Chymist in Divinity, & Allegorist in Religion’.

In Chapter 1 we explored the influence of many of these ‘monkish’ authors in the writings and doctrines of the Benedictine Augustine Baker. Even in a monastic setting, where we might expect a more ‘traditional’ enthusiasm for mysticism to be fostered, the pressure placed on Baker and his followers revealed a growing scepticism towards mystical experience and the threat to orthodoxy some believed it posed. This chapter moves on to explore enthusiasm towards mysticism in Protestant England in the mid-seventeenth century.

The origins of the Keiths are obscure. All that is known for certain is that they took their name from the lands of Keith in East Lothian and that the oldest traceable ancestor is Hervey de Keith in the reign of David I in the twelfth century. Hervey was in possession of lands at Keith by 1159, the previous owner there having been Gilbert de Umfraville. The current theory is that Hervey was of Norman or French origin. Regardless, George Keith, fifth Earl Marischal, had no doubts about his ancestry: he believed he was descended from the Germanic Chatti described by Tacitus, who, having been conquered by the Romans, had fled to Scotland and eventually established themselves as noblemen of the Scottish kingdom. Whatever the truth of this, before examining the fifth earl's early career, some account of the history of the Earl Marischals in general is essential, especially the careers of his grandfather (the fourth earl) and father (referred to below as the Master of Marischal).

The Earls Marischal

All extant records indicate that the Keiths always held the office of king's marischal, later great marischal of Scotland, then Earl Marischal. This role initially comprised little more than acting as the king's farrier, but developed during the medieval period into having responsibility for the victualling of the king's hall, military justice and organising tournaments. There is some suggestion that the office entailed command of the royal cavalry and, jointly with the constable (exercised by the Earls of Erroll), had jurisdiction over chivalric courts. By the sixteenth century it had developed into a largely ceremonial role. Contemporary details are frustratingly vague. George, the fifth earl, described the office only as Regii Architriclini, vulgo Marischalli ‘the royal master of feasts, commonly known as Marischal’. The 1699 genealogist of the Keiths is likewise light on detail, saying only that it was ‘an office of great dignity and eminence, and of great power in peace and war, foreby one of the chief ancient offices of the crown’. In the eighteenth century, Alexander Nisbett noted that the marischal was responsible for the maintenance of order within whatever building parliament was being held, ensuring both the safety and dignity of the monarch. It came with high ceremonial importance, processing to the left of the king (or his commissioner) in the riding of parliament.

On 2 April 1593, a month into his frustrating stint as Lieutenant of the North, George Keith, fifth Earl Marischal, signed the foundation charter of what became Marischal College. A little over a year later (20 September 1594) this document, now ratified, was handed to the first principal, Robert Howie, completing the process. Marischal College is the best known of the earl's achievements, and the most visible, its grand Gothic Revival building being the centrepiece of modern Aberdeen. As such, the creation of the college has been relatively well discussed compared to the rest of Marischal's life. Yet the existing interpretations of the college largely fail to understand Marischal's own motivations and especially his motivations as a nobleman. It is within this context, of Scottish lordship and patronage, that the foundation and subsequent history of Marischal College makes the most sense. Marischal College is thus an excellent and well-documented case study of how the Earl Marischal approached matters of lordship.

That said, the work that has been done on the creation of Marischal College is very important. The college's creation was first understood as a reaction to Aberdeen's other university, King's College in Old Aberdeen. The idea that Marischal College was somehow a Protestant tank on the lawn of Catholic King's has been thoroughly debunked – King's was Protestant by the time Marischal College came into being. However, a refinement of this initial idea is that Marischal College was a result of the failure of King's to modernise. First set forward by Robert Sangster Rait in 1895, this interpretation sees the college as a direct response to the failure of King's College to adopt its nova fundatio ‘new foundation’, a series of teaching and administrative reforms inspired by Andrew Melville's successful re-establishment of Glasgow in 1577. This would have rejected Bishop Elphinstone's original ambitious foundation of 1495 and turned King's into a liberal arts college on the Genevan model. The Earl Marischal had been involved with these failed reforms and is therefore seen as seeking to address this failure through founding a new institution.

Others have turned away from this idea and sought to see the founding of Marischal College as the result of the earl's other preoccupations.

With a few exceptions, those listed in this chapter were either members of the Regent's family or well-born dependents such as wards and were of high rank by birth or marriage. Due to the relatively small number of women in the Accounts, the distinction between women and girls “of the court” and others is fairly easy to make.

Unfortunately, the stories of the women and girls below are told largely with reference to the men to whom they were daughters or wives. The Regent was the catalyst for all expenditures via the Accounts, so each recipient's relationship to and with him is important to provide context for the clothing they were granted. In addition, the published peerages that are the best source of biographical information for most people in the Accounts were written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and tended to consider all women in view of their relationships to men.

In a few cases, the Accounts shed additional light, either on those relationships or on other aspects of the lives or personalities of the women and girls who appear in them. In particular, it is possible to discern patterns in the types and quantities of clothing given to certain classes of women. Women and girls “of the court” tended to wear good-quality wool gowns, often trimmed in velvet, with wool or silk kirtles. Some had silk gowns trimmed with strips of silk fabric or passementerie and, for special occasions, long trains. Most of their clothing was black or tawny or gray, but many had a few accents or even whole garments of white, purple, red, yellow, blue, or, in one case, orange. They wore hoods—usually of black velvet—or hats, and had other accessories ranging from sleeves to necklaces to knives. For keeping warm, there were cloaks—usually of wool trimmed in velvet—and petticoats of red wool which were sometimes trimmed in or lined with fur. For riding, there were cloaks and safeguards.

The only other women and girls who dressed in a similar fashion were in service as maidens of the chamber or ladies-in-waiting to the women of rank. They were either wellborn themselves or devoted in part to keeping up the appearances of their mistresses.