Tag / history

by Carol J Forrester

Searching For Cartimandua – The Lost, Celtic Queen

I love a history podcast. Especially ones by historians deterimed to write women back into history. ‘Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics’ has an episode titled ‘Roman British Women: Claudia Severa’, where she tried to do just this. The episode is twenty-seven minutes long, and one of those women is (besides Claudia Severa) is Cartimandua, the Celtic Queen. It’s a tiny segment, in a short podcast. Enough to spark interest, but creating a whole host of questions about who this forgotten queen was.

When I found a book in Waterstones titled ‘Celtic Queen, The World of Cartimandua’ (by Jill Armitage) I thought I’d found a more detailed account of her life. Despite the book bearing Cartimandua in the title, she doesn’t appear in it for very long..The book goes into amazing detail when it comes to the minutiae of ancient British society. There are chapters on settlements, pottery making, clothing, religion, and everything else that might one might need if one wished to imagine oneself in the Celtic world. However, Cartimandua herself appears in the first chapter, before vanishing until chapter eleven, and then stepping in and out of chapters until we get to chapter twenty-one “What Happened to Cartimandua”.

Spoilers: no one is sure.

Most of what is known about Cartimandua is pulled from Tacitus, the Roman historian. It’s safe to say, that Tacitus was not a fan of the Celtic Queen. This is despite Cartimandua being an ally of Rome.

She handed over one of Rome’s enemies in chains, yet is painted as a devious woman.

Tacitus wrote about her because there was no way to write her out of the events taking place in Britain. He was forced to acknowledge her existance, but he made his opinions on women in power very, very clear.

Various Celtic leaders rose up against Roman rule, perhaps most famously the Celtic Queen Boudica. While I would love to write a blog post entirely around two British Queens standing on opposite sides of the Roman Invasion of Britain, I’m afraid this is the only mention Boudica will be receiving. Instead, we’ve got to discuss Caratacus.

Defeated by the Romans, and with his wife and children captured, Caratacus was one of those Celtic leaders who rose up against Roman rule. He asked Cartimandua to side with him against Rome. She declined, clapped him in chains, and presented him to the Romans.

It’s suggested that her husband was not on board with this decision, but Cartimandua inherited her crown. It’s was her’s, not her husband’s.

While Tacitus (the Roman historian who was forced to write about celtic queens) doesn’t like Cartimandua, he loved Caratacus. The defeated King was dragged to Rome where he was forgiven for his uprising and allowed to live on with his family. He was unable to convince Cartimandua to turn against Rome, but his silver tongue won over the Emperor.

Tacitus, who is our main source of first-hand accounts for this period and these individuals, never visited Britain. He never met Cartimandua, but most modern accounts of her are based on his writings. He was writing about a person he only knew through gossip. Accounts that were likely influenced, if not directly pulled from a man who had found himself trussed up and tossed to the wolves by the person he was telling tales about. Caractus benefited from Rome believing Cartimandua was the bully, and he the victim. Tacitus was more than happy to paint Cartimandua as a foolish woman who made bad decisions. This is despite her technically being Rome’s ally, and Caractus being Rome’s enemy.

After the Caractus incident, Cartimandua divorced her husband Venutius. (The one who didn’t want to send Caractus off to the Romans). The accounts I’ve read by female historians are quick to point out that there is no evidence to suggest that Cartimandua divorced Venutius in favour of her second husband Vellocatus, or that she had started a relationship with Vellocatus before ending her marriage to Venutius.

The rumours that she cuckolded Venutius seem to originate purely from the fact that Vellocatus was Venutius’s shield bearer at one point. The easiest way to discredit a woman in power has always been to accuse her of sexual impropriety, despite the fact that a similar charge against a king would do nothing to sway public opinion on his rule.

At this point, Rome had started to pull back from Britain. Celtic histories were oral rather than written, and Tactitus’ interest waned alongside the Roman Empire, so if there was a record of what happened to Cartimandua it’s been lost. After her divorce and subsequent remarriage, Cartimandua continued to rule as Queen of Brigante. Venutius (husband number one) made two attempts at unseating his ex-wife from her throne.

The first failed due to Rome’s intervention. As a client queen, she was able to call for their aid, and they stepped in to help deflect Venutius’ attack. However, Venutius survived to try again and when Rome’s resources in Britain waned, he attacked a second time, forcing Cartimandua and Vellocatus to flee.

It’s assumed the pair fled to Chester, but there is no record of them arriving or living there. There is also no record of Cartimandua trying to reclaim her crown. However, a lack of record doesn’t warrant the dismissive tone Graham Robb takes in his book ‘The Ancient Paths, Discovering The Lost Map of Celtic Europe’. He only briefly mentions Cartimandua and when it does, it’s frankly patronising.

Robb almost seems to forget that women existed in Celtic Europe outside the role of damsel or daughter in tragic mythologies. On p.131 he mentions philosophers stepping forward between two opposing armies to negotiate peace before the battle can start, followed by a footnote that “this may have been a function of female Druids” as “Plutarch and Polyaenus attributed the power to stop battles to ‘Celtic women’.

‘The Ancient Paths’ is a fascinating book to read, but Robb’s ability to write 298 pages with barely a woman in sight (unless she’s dying tragically) is a little galling. Especially when taunted with footnotes such as the one above.

Cartimandua is enticing partly because she is mysterious. She seems fiercely independent, and Tactius’ treatment of her in his history makes me like her all the more. If there is one thing most modern women can understand, it is the male gaze painting women with power as villains. I don’t think that her losing her crown makes her weak. Venutius spent years plotting his coup and picked his timing well (the second time around at least). If Cartimandua had been a King, would her alliance with Rome have been seen as duplicitous, or as tactically astute? If she had been a man, would her divorce and remarriage have opened her up for attacks against her fidelity? Would her fidelity have mattered if she was a King? Would she have even been notable for comment by Tactitus if she had not been female? Why do we still need to ask these questions when looking at women in history?

Writing Cartimandua into my new poetry collection ‘Stone Tongued’ feels like a small step towards balancing the scales when it comes to how she has been treated by history. I haven’t tried to give her a happy ending where she vanishes into the sunset to live out her years with Velloctus, and I haven’t rewritten history to have her raise an army to vanquish her ex-husband, but I have tried to give her a moment where her voice can be heard. Cartimandua isn’t the woman in Tacitus’ history or the villain in whatever tales Caratacus spun for the Roman Emperor. She was a Celtic Queen who ruled the Brigante and disappeared somewhere in Northern England during the 1st century alongside her second husband. She was able to keep her crown despite the Roman invasion, maintaining a kingdom. This was not a weak person. She does not deserve to be dismissed because of her gender.

Cartimandua Fleeing For Chester by Carol J Forrester

Perhaps I should not have wreathed Caratacus in chains.

But his mouth was trouble
and his words licked like flames around my husband’s ears
until they spoke with matching tongues of smoke
and ember.

Maybe I should have doused them both.

Now all fire is forbidden for fear of discovery
and cold scuttles up my spine
sharp as any reminder.

Sleep is brief and when I dream
it is of Rome, and Caratacus with his burning laughter.

It is of Venutius, and his kin
how I might break them and retake
all that is mine.

Let them call me treacherous, or cunning
or any other word reserved for women.
I am no less a queen.

Vintage sketch of a witch on her broomstick, with a black cat riding behind her.
by Carol J Forrester

Shropshire Women, Witches, And Myths – Writing Poems For Stone Tongued

When I started writing my second collection, I thought I was writing a pamphlet of poems about Shropshire folklore, and the way that water weaves through so much of it. That assumption made sense at the time, as the idea stemmed from my poem ‘Trickle Down’, but as I kept writing, different pieces of history and myth started to work their way into the manuscript. I realised I was working on something bigger than a pamphlet, and Shropshire was only part of the puzzle. The pamphlet that I’d been calling ‘Water, Witches, and Women’ started to become ‘Stone Tongued’.

The collection isn’t finished, but since it’s International Women’s History Month, I wanted to to talk about some of the Shropshire women (and women linked with Shropshire) that have inspired poems. The collection pulls from history and myth, so in places the line between those two gets a little blurred. There are stories I couldn’t have included if I was writing a traditional history, because I cannot reference the source material. Writing poems about these poem allows me to focus on finding their voices, rather than double checking my footnotes.

In this post I’m going to be going voice to five women (ten if you count carefully). Kathryn Garner who was tried for witchcraft, Placida who was a Roman woman living in Britain, Mary Jones who was a resident in the Oswestry House of Industry, Hafren an ancient British princess, and Ginny Greenteeth the water hag. I will hand you over to them:

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by Carol J Forrester

#NaPoWriMo 2021 Early Bird Prompt – Weaving Time

When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?

John Ball 1381

There are less of us these days,
the ones with the time to weave history
into cloth.
Once upon, they called this women’s work.
We stitched their names
just the same,
cut their threads to the lengths
they needed to be,
did not cry over the fraying ends
they left behind,
but moved on to the next row
of coloured strands waiting,
to be fixed in place.
Our baskets always bursting
with material for the making,
some scraps we took to our graves
though that tradition is gone as well,
with no one to keep the patchwork growing
so much is lost and moth eaten.

Tiraz Textile Fragmentlate 9th–early 10th century

by Carol J Forrester

Mrs Macaulay – The Historian In Petticoats – Britain’s First Female Historian

Today’s history blog is about the fantastic Mrs Macaulay, Britain’s First Female Historian, and an advocate of Women’s rights and education.

Born Catherine Sawbridge on the 23rd March 1731, she gained an informal education in her father’s library alongside her brother at their family home in Kent. She moved to London in 1760, upon her marriage to Dr George Macaulay and three years later published the first of her extensive eight volume History of England that spanned from the succession of James I to the Revolution. Part way through the third volume of her history, her husband passed away, leaving her widowed with a single daughter (Catherine Sophia) from the marriage. She remained in London for a while, before moving to Bath in 1774 where she met her second husband William Graham. The marriage caused scandal. As the brother of her physician, son of a saddle maker, and only a mere Surgeon’s Mate1, William was considered beneath Mrs Macaulay. They remained together until her death on the 22nd June 1791 at the age of sixty at their home in Binfield on the Thames, near Windsor. In her memory, William dedicated a memorial to her in the local parish church nearby.

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by Carol J Forrester

Shropshire Witches – Witchcraft In The Early Modern Era

Researching witchcraft in Shropshire is similar to panning for gold when the river has run dry. These days, there is a wealth of information regarding the ‘European Witch Crazes’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but Shropshire is rarely mentioned. Even when Shropshire does come up, it’s for no more than a sentence or two. This lack of history can perhaps be accredited to the narrowness of the field of study. Between 1563 and 1736, less than 500 executions were carried out for the crime of witchcraft in England.1 Europe on the other hand saw 100,000 individuals tried and less than 50,000 put to death.2 Accusations of witchcraft also rarely saw just one person implicated, resulting in numerous ‘suspects’ popping up once once the accused was questions. This resulted in localised pockets of witches being discovered in certain towns and villages, rather than nationwide witch hunts.

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