Context 162 - November 2019

60 C O N T E X T 1 6 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 Dynasties and defences A conversation. R: ‘We need to get away for a few days.’ J: ‘How about Berwick-upon-Tweed?’ R: ‘Sell it to me.’ J: ‘Pevsner says “Berwick is one of the most exciting towns in England”.’ So off we went. The Elizabethan ramparts at Berwick are (Pevsner again) ‘of immense historical importance for the whole of northern Europe… moreover, wonderful to look at and walk around.’ And their story bulges with incident. The late 1550s were eventful times in Europe. In December 1557 Mary Queen of Scots reached 15. Her long engagement to the French Dauphin, Francis, was nearing wedding day. His father, Henry II, shared the widespread Catholic view that England’s Edward VI and Princess Elizabeth were illegitimate and, therefore, that his intended daughter-in-law was the rightful heir to the English throne. So by January 1558, what with the sudden loss of Calais and an obvious Valois takeover bid, Mary Tudor, Queen of England, was pretty jumpy. Regardless of the exact question, the answer was the fortification of Berwick. (I apologise for the number of queens called Mary in this story.) We are all aware of the rules of public sector procurement. Exaggerate the need; overestimate the efficacy of the ensuing proposal; underestimate the cost; and make your successors decide between wasteful abandonment and throwing good money after bad. Enter Sir Richard Lee, a military engineer who had overseen eye- watering expenditure on the defences at Calais in the 1540s. Lee’s proposals for Berwick were styled on the practice of Michele Sanmicheli for the Venetian Republic, notably at Verona, and of Flemish engineers at Lucca.Work started. Sure enough, the royal nuptials occurred in April 1558. To ram the point home, the happy couple adopted the French coat- of-arms, quartered with those of both Scotland and England. Conveniently ignoring the fact that her own arms were quartered with those of France, Mary Tudor was most put out; but in November she died and Elizabeth succeeded to both the throne and the works at Berwick. Five months later came the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis which, you will instantly recall, generally tidied up dynastic and political hotspots all over Europe. The French got to keep Calais, which had been English for 212 years, with Lee’s costly fortifications not two decades old. However, at the post-Peace party Henry II came a cropper while jousting, and Francis and Mary assumed (and presumed) the thrones of France, Scotland, England and Ireland. (For the sake of editorial balance, English monarchs styled themselves as Kings of France until 1800, eight years after France became a republic.) But the government was wobbly about the Berwick project and called in Sir Giovanni Portinari to fill a perceived skills gap and review it. Portinari was pretty critical because Lee had not kept pace with European military theory or artillery development. At first the two men were at each other’s throats but, after a series of stand- offs and other incidents, the project was resumed with Portinari’s amendments. All was helped along by Mary’s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, which had been designed to end hostilities. In December Francis died, and by mid-1561 Mary was back in Scotland, an 18-year-old widow queen in a febrile political and religious landscape. Mary and Elizabeth were both determined women, each wanting to cut a dash in a man’s world and, incidentally, to prove that John Knox’s ‘regiment of women’ (that is, rule by) was far from ‘monstrous’. Both queens were hunting for husbands, and fished for a while in the pool of continental royalty while hoping for love-matches. Mary was a bad picker but at least she produced an heir: James. Elizabeth’s pick was black balled by her ministers and she didn’t. So by 1569 the smart money for the next king of England was on the infant James who was, by now, with the abdication of his mother, already King of Scotland. Unification of the crowns would make the Berwick ramparts a white elephant, so work stopped; and so it proved. In just 11 years the most expensive project of Elizabeth’s reign was redundant, except as a most evocative slice of heritage. James Caird The Ramparts, Berwick-upon-Tweed (Photo: Jhsteel, Wikimedia)