Was Queen Bess a man?
QUESTION What’s the story of the Bisley Boy?
When Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, visited Bisley, a village near Stroud in Gloucestershire, he was intrigued by the strange May Day tradition.
Their May Queen was a young boy in elizabethan dress.
When he made inquiries, he was told the story of the Bisley Boy. The young Princess elizabeth had died and there had been a cover-up where she’d been replaced by a boy.
Initially sceptical, he went on to research the story and wrote about it in his 1910 book, Famous Imposters.
The story goes that in 1542, nine-yearold Princess elizabeth had been taken to Bisley by her guardians, Thomas Parry and Lady Kat Ashley, to escape an outbreak of plague in London. They were staying at Over Court, a royal hunting lodge, which is still in Bisley.
The Princess died, perhaps of plague, and fearing the wrath of her father henry VIII, Parry and Lady Ashley attempted the subterfuge.
There wasn’t a girl in Bisley with flame red hair or a slender, aristocratic physique, but they found a boy with similar looks.
The pair remained elizabeth’s closest confidantes: Lady Ashley became First Lady of the Bedchamber and Parry was knighted and made Privy Counsellor and Controller of the household.
The closeness of this relationship was questioned at the time. In a letter to Lord Somerset from Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, he wrote: ‘I do verily believe that there hath been some secret promise between my Lady, Mistress Ashley and the Cofferer [Thomas Parry, the principal officer of the court] never to confess to death, and if it be so, it will be never gotten of her, unless by the King’s Majesty or else by Your Grace.’
The tale has been used to explain why the Queen never married or had children and why she proclaimed ‘I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of england, too,’ when the Spanish Armada threatened invasion in 1588.
Stoker recounts the story of a coffin discovered in Bisley, close to Over Court, containing the remains of a young girl in rich clothing and jewellery. however, the factual evidence is overwhelming that elizabeth I was a woman. She is known to have had periods and she wore dresses that clearly emphasised her femininity.
Rachel Shirley, Dursley, Glos.
QUESTION Do all cultures have swear words?
In HIS 1990 book Mother Tongue, travel author Bill Bryson famously proclaimed: ‘Some cultures don’t swear at all . . .
‘The Finns, lacking the sort of words you need to describe your feelings when you stub your toe getting up to answer a phone at 2am, rather oddly adopted the word ravintolassa.’
This perfectly polite word simply means ‘in the restaurant’. It seems someone was pulling Bryson’s leg because there are a host of Finnish swear words.
It’s been suggested the Japanese don’t have swear words because they are too polite, but once again this is untrue.
The only languages in which you can’t swear are artificial ones, such as esperanto, and reconstructed ones such as Modern hebrew, which has a strong religious element.
Henry Luther, Camborne, Cornwall.
QUESTION What was the difference between Navy and Army Colt revolvers?
The Colt navy was .36 calibre while the Colt Army was .44 calibre. Both were cap and ball. The charge of black powder (gunpowder) was tipped from a flask in a measured amount. A lead ball was placed on to the charge and pushed into place by the integral ramrod.
Tallow applied on the front of the cylinder ensured that sparks from the fired chamber would not detonate the other five chambers.
The final stage was to put a percussion cap on to a nipple — a small, protruding hollow tube — at the rear of the cylinder. The cap was primed with fulminate of mercury, a highly volatile contact explosive. The hammer strike ignited the main charge in the cylinder.
In the late 1860s, Colt graduated to a centre-fire, self- contained cartridge. Charged with 44 grains of black powder, it was called the .44/40. The revolver was designated the Single Action Army and nicknamed The Peacemaker. The same round was used in a lever-actioned rifle.
Black powder is slow-burning, so when used in a longer barrel, it had longer to burn, hence higher velocities. Jim Munday, The Handgunner magazine,
Shotley, Suffolk. The Colt revolver’s ignition system was a development between the flint lock and modern- day centre-fire cartridges. It consisted of a revolving cylinder with five or six chambers loaded with loose powder, soft lead balls pressed into the front and percussion caps on to nipples, one for each chamber, at the back.
Pulling the trigger meant the hammer struck the cap and a spark went down the nipple into the powder, exploding it and propelling the ball out through the barrel. It would take up to three minutes to load all the cylinders, so soldiers would keep a loaded spare in a pouch.
The navy required a revolver for very close quarters fighting, boarding enemy ships and defending gunners being overrun by boarding parties. Seamen and gunners needed to be able to wear them without impeding their normal duties.
The navy 1851 version was of .36 calibre, weighing just over 2 lb.
The Army’s requirements differed from the navy’s, having to engage at longer distances and often having to fire from horseback. The .44 Army model came along in 1860 and was slightly heavier.
having used both weapons on a firing range, I found the Army version to be more accurate. It also fitted the hand better and was better balanced.
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