Early British Demographics

In Britain before the 18^th century, the government was wholly ignorant of the number of people living in the country, and estimates of, for instance, how much revenue a tax would bring, were founded on mere guesswork. This condition of ignorance continued even longer in other countries. Nevertheless, we can be certain that up to 90% of the population in all countries were peasant farmers: independent freeholders, slaves, and all conditions in between. (Many words of abuse, like villainous, churlish or boorish, only mean to behave like a farmer!). Cities like Athens, Rome, Constantinople and Paris were, as Marx said, “parasitic on the countryside”. The reason was that agriculture was not very productive (perhaps only 3 grains were harvested for every one sown), and a single bad harvest could bring famine. Also, many non-farmers were in economically unproductive roles: priests, soldiers etc.

It has been suggested that the Roman Empire had a population of around 70 million at peak, around 150 A.D. This enabled Rome to sustain an army of half a million. (By comparison, 18^th century France had a wartime army of comparable size with half the population, suggesting that France was twice as economically productive). The population of the Roman Empire had probably fallen to 50 million by 400 A.D., as a result of plague, devastating civil wars and barbarian invasions. The population of Britain in Roman times was perhaps 1 to 2 million.

   The European population probably reached its lowest around 540, as a result of these same problems plus serious climate change. There were at least one, perhaps two, major volcanic eruptions at this time (Krakatoa or Tambora perhaps?), bringing cold and wet conditions which might have persisted for many years. The climate may not have recovered till the mid-7^th century.

The climate was warmer in Viking and Norman times: grapes were grown in Yorkshire, and the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” records droughts rather than freezing winters. The milder climate enabled the Viking voyages to Iceland, Greenland and North America, and down the great rivers of Russia to Constantinople. The next generation of Viking descendants went from their settlement in Normandy (“The land of the Norsemen”) to Britain and to Sicily, and the generation after that to the Crusades!

   Our main source for the population of England at this time is, of course, the Domesday Book, compiled in 1085. It did not cover all of England (for example, not Yorkshire or London), and it recorded only the number of households in each village, with no indication of the size of families. It is guessed that the population of England at the time might have been perhaps 1 ½ million.  From here, the population grew steadily, to reach perhaps 4 million before the demographic disaster of the 14^th century.

Everyone has heard of the Black Death, which struck in mid-century, but it seems clear that trouble had begun well before then, as once again the climate changed and the “little ice age” set in. Probably Britain already had as high a population as could be sustained, even in good years, by the primitive economic conditions of the time; very marginal land was being cultivated, and there are reports of disastrous famines. Then bubonic plague reached the south coast of England in 1348, and had spread to the extremes of Scotland and Ireland by 1350. Death-rates probably varied between 20% and 60%, the highest being in London. Perhaps 1 ½ million died in four years. The population total did not recover till Elizabethan times, and the sown area was not equalled till the reign of Victoria.

   Bubonic plague remained endemic until the late 17^th century, with outbreaks every few years. Population levels only began to rise sharply after its disappearance.

In 1500 the population of England and Wales was about 3 ½ million. It was thus a small, thinly-populated country. By comparison, France had 12 million, Spain 6 ½ million, the Holy Roman Empire (effectively Germany, consisting of many small states) 13 million, Northern Italy (several small states) 6 million, Poland 8 million, and the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, which included the Balkans, 12 million.

   There were no cities with a population of over 120,000 in Europe or the Mediterranean area. The largest, with populations of 80,000 or more, were Constantinople, Cairo, Naples, Venice, Milan and Paris. The largest cities in the world were in China.

     There were in operation by this time a number of inventions unknown to the Romans: windmills, the blast furnace, the printing press, gunpowder, and (a lesser but really useful piece of simple technology) the spinning wheel; but probably economic productivity hadn’t improved very much since Roman times. Central and Eastern Europe was now integrated with the west. The Ottoman Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent was a serious threat to Europe: in 1526 the Turks destroyed the kingdom of Hungary at the battle of Mohacs and swept northwards to attack as far as Vienna. The Venetian-held islands in the eastern Mediterranean fell to the Turks one by one, and pirates from the Algerian coast, in alliance with the Turks, terrorised the coasts. From 1520 the Holy Roman Empire was to be split by the Reformation, and permanently weakened. For the next century, Europe would be engulfed by religious wars.

    If a Martian had observed Earth around 1500, it is most unlikely that he would have predicted that over the next few centuries European civilisation would come to dominate the world. If he was looking for a future world leader, he would probably have picked the Ottomans, or perhaps Ming China or Mughal India. But he would have been wrong!

   Consider also the geographical situation. Until this time, the world as known to Europeans consisted only of Europe itself, the North African coast and the Near East, with vague stories derived from Marco Polo concerning a land called “Cathay” somewhere far to the east. Britain was only an insignificant collection of islands on the extreme fringe of the known world; thinly populated and of small concern to the greater powers.

   But then look what happened! As ships started to cross the Atlantic to America, and round the Cape to the Far East, suddenly Britain was more at the centre of things! The same applied to Holland, which only became an independent nation at the end of the 16^th century. Spain and Portugal were the first states to profit from the new discoveries, but after 1600 were to be supplanted by England, Holland and France.

At the end of the 17^th century, Gregory King conducted his own survey of the population of England and Wales. I have outlined his findings in an earlier Blog entry.

   King estimated the population of England and Wales at 5 ½ million. He did not investigate the rest of the British Isles; but it is guessed that Ireland had about 2 ½ million and Scotland 1 million.

By comparison: France had 19 million, Spain 9 million, the Holy Roman Empire 13 million, the Austrian Empire 11 million, northern Italy 8 million, Poland 9 million, and Russia, which was now expanding into Siberia, 15 million. The biggest state by far was the Ottoman Empire, which now included the Balkans, Iraq and Egypt, 25 million.

   The total population of Europe was about 100 million. This was still small-scale by comparison with Mughal India’s 130 million and China’s 170 million. Japan had about 20 million.

The Ottoman Empire was in fact on the verge of its long decline, though at the time few people realised this. Even with the acquisition of Scotland and Ireland by England, Britain was still a small nation next to a much larger one; namely France. How then did Britain survive and prosper? Partly it was simply by being an island: after 1700 the navy was much the strongest in Europe, and the country was only rarely faced serious threats of invasion. This also meant Britain could get away with only having a small army (which had important constitutional consequences, as will be discussed later) despite which, between 1689 and 1713 Britain fought two victorious wars against vastly superior French forces. How was this done?

   This will be covered in a later Blog entry!

The Master of the Angels

(This story is based on a dream I had. It appears to be set in Italy in the early days of the Renaissance)

When Lorenzo di Prato heard the rumour that his only daughter considered herself betrothed to the young painter Tancredi, he was not pleased. He considered it entirely unfitting that he, a respected and prosperous cloth-merchant, should have his family linked by common gossip to a struggling and penniless artist. This was not the future he envisaged for his child. So when he confronted Gianetta and she could not deny her friendship with the young man,he had the girl shut away in a convent till she should come to her senses.

Tancredi was saddened, and also felt insulted. Admittedly he was as yet unknown, but he was sure his prospects were good. Had he not been comissioned to work on the altarpiece for the new church? It would depict the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and he was to paint one of the side-panels. He was certain this would establish his reputation as an artist, and quickly lead to fame and wealth. But also he truly loved Gianetta, and now he missed her greatly. As the days and weeks passed withou her, he became more and more depressed. He began to neglect his work; which increasingly he became aware was dull and uninspired, yet he was unable to do anything to improve it. He took to hanging around the gates of the convent for hours at a time, hoping for a sight of his beloved; but the walls were high and windowless, and no man could enter without permission.

Gianetta was also lonely and unhappy. To ease her grief, she took to praying in quiet places away from the nuns. Especially she liked to climb to the top of the campanile, where there was a small platform: the only place in the convent from which it was possible to catch a glimpse of the city outside. Here she would pray fervently for help and deliverance. And here one day her prayers were answered, as two winged Beings descended in majesty from the skies and took her hands, and then in an overwhelming miracle glittering wings grew from her own shoulders, and together the three of them rose beyond the prosaic earth and soared upwards into the cloudless blue.

The only person who saw them was Tancredi, from his lonely vigil outside the convent gates. As soon as they had risen beyond his sight he rushed back to the church and seized his brushes, and he painted his panel before the vision could fade from his memory. It showed three angels in brilliant colours. It was much the best part of the altarpiece, and its fame spread far and wide, so that his reputation was established and he was known ever afterwards as the Master of the Angels. But he never married Gianetta, for the poor girl was now incurably insane and was never again able to leave the security of the convent. Most of the time she was quiet, but occasionally she would escape the vigilance of the nuns, and then she would climb the tower of the campanile and would be found on the platform at the top, wildly invoking the heavens whilst uncontrolled tears filled her eyes.

"Fly!" she would call, "Oh, fly! Please, fly!"

Riots in Shrewsbury

Shrewsbury, like many other Midlands towns, was the scene of severe rioting in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. Although the motivation of the rioters may have been partly economic, their slogans and impact were political and religious. This is the story of the 1715 Shrewsbury riot.

The German prince, George, Elector of Hanover, was proclaimed King of England immediately following the death of Queen Anne in August 1714. His succession to the throne had been guaranteed by the Act of Settlement, passed in 1701. Many, however, did not accept this, believing that the true king should be the exiled James Stuart (known to his opponents as “the Pretender”), whose father, King James II, had been driven from the throne in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688. The situation was complicated by international politics: George was a good Protestant and had been Britain’s ally against France in the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13), whereas James was a Catholic and backed by France. James’s supporters were known as Jacobites; from the French “Jacques”, Latin “Jacobus”.

   Politics at the time was dominated by two parties, the Whigs and the Tories. The Whigs were entirely Hanoverian, but some Tories were Jacobites. A Tory government had brought the war to an end in 1713, but had then disintegrated and collapsed, just days before the death of Queen Anne, largely because of the Jacobite split, and the Whigs had returned to power and summoned George to England. He was crowned in October; Tories and Jacobites being too disorganised and demoralised to take any action. The Whigs cemented their position by winning a large majority in the election held in 1715; remaining Tories were purged from the administration and several of the party leaders were arrested or fled abroad.

   The other great division between the parties was on the issue of religion. The Whigs favoured religious toleration, but the Tories were strongly identified with the Church of England. Until 1689 non-Anglicans were excluded from public life and occasionally persecuted. In 1689 an Act of Toleration allowed freedom of worship to Protestant non-Anglicans (known as dissenters or non-conformists), though they were still officially excluded from public life. In fact this exclusion was often ignored, and to many Anglicans things had gone too far, and they demanded a proper clampdown. Following the Toleration Act, Shrewsbury dissenters purchased land in what is now the High Street and opened a meeting-house there in 1691, with John Bryan as Minister.

In the West Midlands and the west country the coronation of George I brought widespread disturbances. Meeting-houses were attacked by mobs in several towns, and in Bristol a Quaker was killed when he tried to prevent this. Trouble in Shrewsbury was limited to demonstrators shouting “High Church and Sacheverell for ever!” a reference to an extreme Tory clergyman. Those involved were mostly craftsmen and shopkeepers of the town, including a draper, a butcher, a baker, two tailors and five cordwainers: only one was described as a “labourer”, and another was a Justice of the Peace! No farmworkers from the countryside were involved. The Whig press blamed local landowners and Anglican clergy for stirring up trouble.

   Things turned much more serious in July 1715. Meeting-houses were attacked by mobs in towns all over the west midlands, leading to about 500 people being arrested for rioting in Staffordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, including several landowning gentry. In Shropshire, there were disturbances and attacks on Dissenting chapels in Whitchurch, Wem and Cleobury Mortimer. In Shrewsbury on the night of July 6^th 1715 a mob swept down the street to attack the meeting-house, crying, “The Church for ever!”, and, for the Dissenters, “Down with them! Down with them!” The building was almost completely demolished. The Mayor and the town magistrates were unable, or unwilling, to intervene to stop the carnage. The mob was said to have been headed by one “Captain Ragg”; otherwise Harry Webb, a skinner. As before, no country people were involved. A paper was posted around Shrewsbury, carrying these words:-

   “We gentlemen of the Loyal Mob of Shrewsbury do issue this Proclamation to all Dissenters from the Church of England, of what kind or denomination soever, whether Independents, Baptists or Quakers: if you, or any of you, do suffer any of that damnable faction called Presbyterians to assemble themselves amongst you, in any of your conventicles, at the time of Divine Worship, you may expect to meet with the same that they have been treated with. Given under our hands and seals the 11^th day of July 1715. God save the King”.

   The fact that the King was not named indicates that it was the so-called “James III” who was meant, known to Hanoverians as “the Pretender”.

   Soon after this, as the meeting-house in Whitchurch was being rebuilt, a local carpenter named Samuel Ratcliffe, who had participated in its demolition, was heard to damn all Presbyterians and to vow that “all the Dissenters in a little time will be flying for their lives”. However, after this the Shropshire towns were generally quiet; in contrast with the situation in Staffordshire, where endemic disturbances and riots continued in many towns.

   The government responded to these events by passing the Riot Act, which brought in the death penalty for rioters who refused to disperse when ordered to by a magistrate. Magistrates could also authorise troops to open fire on rioters. This Act has never been repealed.

   Neither of the two great Jacobite revolts of 1715 and 1745 got anywhere near Shrewsbury, though some of the Jacobite leaders did plan to advance into north Wales, where the great landowner and M.P. Sir Watkin Williams Wynn was believed to be a staunch supporter. All the Shrewsbury Jacobites contributed was a tradition of holding celebrations to drink James’s health on his birthday: June 10^th. In 1750 this led to clashes with the authorities, and the posting of a notice by Jacobite sympathisers the next day:-

“Honest lads of Shrewsbury, do not be frightened at the insult you received last night it was base and cruel it was contrary to the Laws of God and Nature therefore stand on your own defence you have as great a right to wear a broadsword as any man whatever wear your swords and use them as men as Englishmen as men of courage ….”

Despite this grammatically erratic proclamation, nothing much followed, and after this things fizzled out.

Why did all this trouble occur? It was probably in part economic in origin. Riots were very common in the 18^th century, usually linked with a sudden rise in food prices, caused by shortages. British rioters seldom killed anyone, though they did enormous damage to property. The end of the War of the Spanish Succession caused widespread unemployment, as munitions works closed and thousands of soldiers were demobilised; but understanding of economic forces was in its infancy, there was as yet no concept of social class, and the very word “unemployment” had yet to be invented. All the demonstrators had to shout were political and religious slogans. Most of Shropshire had been strongly Royalist in the Civil War, and was thereafter Tory. The most likely explanation of the riots is that discontented men of the West Midlands towns were supplied with slogans by the local landowning elites, angry at the Tory eviction from political power. But, as was shown in the two Jacobite revolts, these elites had no intention of risking their lives and property by outright rebellion. As Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the romantic leader of the 1745 revolt, said of the English Jacobites who had completely failed to rise in his support, “I will do for them what they did for me: I will drink their health”.

    

As for the Shrewsbury meeting-house; a later minister wrote, “By the care and contribution of the government, the chapel was soon rebuilt and our liberties confirmed and fixed on a solid foundation”. The new building is still there in the High Street, and is now the Unitarian meeting-house; its loyalty to the Hanoverian regime still proclaimed by the painting of the royal coat of arms of King George I on the wall.

(Note: Much of the information here is taken from “Jacobitism and the English People”, by Paul Monod)

Haughmond Abbey

Haughmond Abbey is a few miles to the east of Shrewsbury. There seems to have been a small religious community from the late 11th century, though the formal foundation dates from 1135. It grew to a very large complex of buildings, deriving its considerable wealth from rents of farms over a wide area of local villages, as well as from the opeartion of fulling mills in the burgeoning Shropshire wool industry. The powerful local Fitzalan and Mortimer families patronised the Abbey.
    When you enter the abbey complex today, which is from the south, the first thing you notice is the unusual windows of the abbot's private rooms.

These must have been inserted long after the rest of the building had bee completed, probably in the 15th century. To the left of this is the abbot's hall, at the western end of which is an enormous window in the Decorated style.

These features suggest that the abbots of Haughmond enjoyed a very lavish lifestyle. Not all of them were personally admirable, however; and one of the last of them, Christopher Hunt, was disciplined in 1522 for administrative slackness and fornication!
   Very little remains of the great abbey church apart from the foundations, but there is a fine processional doorway leading from the cloister to the church. The arch is Romanesque, but with tall, slender stautes of saints carved on the shafts in the 14th century.

The best-preserved part of the abbey is the chapter house, where the monks would assemble every day to be addressed by the abbot. It is strange to find it has massive rectangular windows, which must have been inserted in the Tudor period.

The entrance to the chapter house has three magnificent Romanesque arches, again featuring statues of saints, including Thomas a'Becket and the locally-venerated Saint Winifred.

  All the English abbeys were closed by Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell in the 1530s. The last abbot of Haughmond surrendered his abbey to the crown in 1539, and he and his ten canons were pensioned off. This was a wise decision, since some abbots who reisted the dissolution were hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason!
   The wealth of the abbey, with an income estimated at almost £250 a year, was seized by the crown. The spoilation of the site probably began soon after; stripping lead from the roof and demolishing the buildings to reuse the stone. The dissolution of the monasteries brought Henry VIII such riches that he and his successors could have ruled despotically, without recourse to Parliament; but fortunately for the constitutional future of England Henry needed immediate cash to fight his wars, and most of the monasteries were sold off to his supporters. Haughmond was sold to Sir Edward Littleton, who rebuilt the abbot's lodgings as a residence. A whole new class of landowners was being created, grown rich on the plunder of the monasteries.

Caernarfon Castle

Caernarfon, with its strategic position guarding the south-western entry to the Menai Strait separating Anlesey from the mainland, had been an important base even in Roman times, and later was the centre of the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd. Its capture by King Edward I in 1283 was the culminating point of his campaign to subdue north Wales, and he paid his viceroy, Otto de Grandson, over £1,000 a year for holding the town and "keeping the land of Wales".
   Edward's master castle architect, James of St. George, was summoned to build a suitably splendid and powerful castle in Caernarfon. It provides an immediately unusual appearance to the visitor, in that the towers are polygonal rather than round, and there are bands of pale limestone in the walls.

The castle thus resembles the famous land walls defending Constantinople. King Edward had been on crusade as a prince, and although he never visited Constantinople, it is likely that some of his entourage did, and reported on what they saw. 
     In its plan, the castle is shaped like an hourglass, with a narrow waist. There is a very elaborate gatehouse, which, however, was built in the early 14th century, after James's death.

   
The most spectacular part of the castle is the massive south-western Eagle Tower, which has its own watergate.

The three small towers upon it are said to be a reference to the coat of arms of Edward's beloved wife Eleanor of Castile.
   On the northern side of the castle, outside the main gate, Edward built a walled town for English settlers,

 the Welsh only being permitted to enter on market days; though this did not save the incomplete castle from being stormed by the Welsh in 1294.
   The completed castle was so strong that it defied Owain Glyndwr's attempts to capture it at the start of the 15th century. In 1403 it was successfully defended by a garrison of just 28 men!

Everyone knows the story of how in 1284 Edward caused his son, later King Edward II, to be born in Caernarfon, in order that he should keep his promise to the Welsh chieftains to give them "A prince who was born in Wales and does not speak a word of English". In fact, the castle was far from complete at the time, and Queen Eleanor probably had to endure an uncomfortable delivery in a local wooden house. She was 42 at the time, and can hardly have enjoyed the experience very much. It is worth pointing out that the King himself could speak little or no English, the language of the court still being Norman French. The other interesting fact about this episode is that baby Edward was not at this stage the heir to the throne. The King had an older son, called Alfonso, who, however, died four months later in circumstances which remain unknown. Very few people realise that England could have had a King Alfonso!
   Many strange tales became attached to the castle. One was that Edward had found a legionary Eagle from the nearby Roman base of Segontium and placed it atop the Eagle Tower. Another said that the builders had uncovered the body of Magnus Maximus, a late-Roman commander in Britain who had tried and failed to make himself Emperor in the 380s, and who figured in Welsh legends. Owain Glyndwr boosted the chances of his rebellion by invoking prophesies of Merlin.

   In 1911 the future King Edward VIII was formally invested as Prince of Wales in the castle, and in 1969 the ceremony was repeated for Prince Charles. Charles made a speech in Welsh for the occasion, which would undoubtedly have surprised King Edward I! 

Paedophilia: Several details you probably didn't know

In the ancient world and the middle ages, it was common amongst the nobility for very young boys and girls to be formally betrothed, and even married.
    The man who was to become King Henry VII of England was born when his mother (Margaret Beaufort, the daughter of the Duke of Somerset, through whom Henry derived his very sketchy claim to the throne) was certainly no older than 14. There is a famous scene in Shakespeare's "Richard III", where Richard successfully woos Anne Neville, having killed her husband, Edward, Prince of Wales. In fact, Anne would have been about 16 when she met Richard: she had married Edward when she was 14 and he was 17. (He was almost certainly killed in the battle of Tewkesbury, aged 18; not murdered by Richard). Although very little is known about Anne personally, there is no reason to believe that she resented being passed like a trophy between the houses of Lancaster and York. As a daughter of the mighty Earl of Warwick, "Warwick the Kingmaker", she would have known what was expected of girls of her class.
   When Henry VIII married his fifth wife, Katharine Howard, in 1540, he was 49 and in poor health, and she was probably no older than 16 (her exact age is not known). She had previously been betrothed to Francis Dereham, and, it transpired, was not a virgin. She had even experienced sexual games with her music teacher when she was only 13. Her later flirtations with Dereham and with Thomas Culpepper led to all three being executed for treason in early 1542. She seems to have been a rather stupid girl, behaving so recklessly, but nowadays we would regard it as intolerable that someone so young should be placed under such pressure.

Before the Victorian period, there was no legal definition of the age of consent. It was generally assumed to be about 10 or 12, and Victorian London was reported as crawling with child prostitutes of both sexes. The campaigning journalist W. T. Stead drew the public's attention to the situation by a stunt in which he purchased a young girl from her mother and took the child with him to Paris; subsequently publicizing it in a series of sensational articles entitled "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon". It seems that there was some knowing collusion from the girl's mother in the stunt, but it succeeded in attracting great attention. Shortly afterwards, the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act raised the age of consent to 16; and the radical M.P. Henry Labouchere inserted an amendment to make "gross indecency" between men a criminal offence. Up to this point, it was unclear whether such behaviour was illegal.

   In the USA the age of consent varied considerably between different states. When Jerry Lee Lewis, one of the great original rock-n-rollers, came to tour Britain in 1958,he brought with him his wife, who was said to be 15, but, it transpired, was really only 13. There was an outcry in the press and the tour was called off after a couple of concerts. 

   It was under the 1885 Act that Oscar Wilde was convicted, though since he was accused of indecency with teenage youths he would nowadays be branded a paedophile and would receive a much longer sentence and no sympathy from anyone. The same would apply to Sir Roger Casement; hanged as a traitor after the Easter Rising in Dublin, and now regarded as a patriotic hero and martyr in Ireland; but whose sexual proclivities were revealed in his diaries, which were deliberately leaked to the press before his trial.
   In any case, the word "paedophile" is misused by the media. It only means someone who likes, or is attracted to children; analogies being a bibliophile, who loves books, a philosopher, who loves knowledge, and a philatelist, who loves postage stamps. There is a different word, "pederast", for someone who has sex with children. As far as I know it was first used by the 17th century writer John Aubrey, where he applied it to Francis Bacon, the Lord Chancellor and philosopher (and according to some, the true author of Shakespeare's plays). Aubrey wrote the word in the original Greek, and called Bacon's harem of boys his "Ganymedes", after the beautiful boy beloved by the god Zeus - which, of course, is why one of the satellites of Jupiter bears this name.

   Is it too much to hope that a clear distinction between paedophiles and pederasts might be drawn by the media? 

Elagabalus

Elagabalus (reigned 218-222) is perhaps the most bizarre of all the Roman Emperors. He was just fourteen when he took the throne after a brief civil war. His success was organized by his maternal grandmother, Julia Maesa, the sister-in-law of the earlier Emperor Septimius Severus (reigned 193-211; the only emperor in a period of half a century to die in his bed). Julia's family were Syrians, and from his late father, Varius Avitus Bassianus, the boy inherited the hereditary priesthood of El Gabal, the Syrian sun god, at Emesa: hence the name by which he is usually known.
   The young Emperor's dedication to his god was such that he brought the sun-god's symbol, a black phallic-shaped meteorite, to Rome, to be housed in a vast new temple on the Palatine hill. The stone was carried into the city on a richly decorated chariot, with Elagabalus ahead of it, walking backward to face the god. The senators were obliged to stand and watch. 
   Elagabalus was married at least three times during his brief reign, including once to a Vestal Virgin, but he showed little interest in any of his wives. He seems to have been entirely homosexual. He is described as flouncing about in women's clothes and makeup, and his most elaborately celebrated marriage was as "bride" to the charioteer Hierocles. He headed an expensive court, with exotic banquets, where he enjoyed playing practical jokes on the senators.
   After four years of this, his grandmother decided things had gone too far, and she arranged that Elagabalus should be murdered by the Praetorian Guards. His body was thrown in the Tiber, and he was replaced as Emperor by his 14-year-old cousin Alexander Severus (another of Julia Maesa's grandsons), who was more sober in his habits. Alexander reigned till 235, before he in his turn was murdered by the soldiers. The sacred black stone of El Gabal was returned to its home in Emesa, where its worship continued undiminished after its brief sojourn in Rome.

Edward Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", was at his most magisterial on the subject of Elagabalus (whom he called "Heliogabalus", after the Roman sun-god):- "The grave senators confessed with a sigh that, after having long experienced the stern tyranny of their own countrymen, Rome was at length humbled beneath the effeminate luxury of Oriental despotism"; and again:- "The corrupt and opulent nobles of Rome gratified every vice that could be collected from the mighty conflux of nations and manners. Secure of impunity, careless of censure, they lived without restraint in the patient and humble society of their slaves and parasites. The emperor, in his turn, viewing every rank of his subjects with the same contemptuous indifference, asserted without control his sovereign privilege of lust and luxury". How about that for rolling eighteenth century prose? (It has been said that "Gibbon's description of the vices of Elagabalus beats a hasty retreat behind a decent veil of Latin footnotes"!)

I first learnt about Elagabalus in an entertaining historical novel called "Family Favourites" by Alfred Duggan. This is probably out of print, but it should be possible to find it.

Footnote: Elagabalus's official name as Emperor was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. It was put about that his real father was Septimius Severus's son Caracalla (reigned 211-217), who had been popular with the soldiers.