Dangerous liaisons...
QUESTION Which royal lover — Piers Gaveston, George Villiers or Lady Churchill — had the most influence on history?
A strong case can be made for each of these royal lovers.
Piers gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall, drove a wedge between Edward II and his barons which ultimately led to the downfall of the king.
the incompetence of george Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, paved the way for the English Civil War.
the closeness of sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, to Queen Anne led to the rapid military promotion of her husband, sir John Churchill, who led victories over Louis XIV of France.
If I had to choose, it would be Villiers. James I’s inclination for male company was well known and he had several lovers, ending with Villiers, who was described as ‘the handsomest bodied in England’.
Villiers became Master of the Horse in 1616, Earl of Buckingham in 1617 and Lord High Admiral in 1619. By the time Charles I came to the throne in 1625, Buckingham practically ruled the country. He proceeded to destabilise it with a series of blunders.
the marriage Buckingham arranged between Charles and French princess Henrietta Maria angered Parliament by raising the threat of a roman Catholic succession. He championed a naval and land expedition against Cadiz in 1625 that was so poorly organised it fell apart before the spanish port could be stormed.
Meanwhile, England was drifting toward war with France. In 1627, Buckingham took command of a force of 8,000 sent to relieve the port of La rochelle, a Huguenot stronghold. After a four-month campaign in which Buckingham showed bravery, but military incompetence, his broken army was withdrawn. the Parliament of 1628 tried to force Charles to dismiss him, but he refused.
Buckingham went to Portsmouth to organise another expedition to La rochelle. Five days later he was stabbed to death by John Felton, a naval lieutenant who had served in his campaigns. Few were saddened as he had irreparably damaged Charles’s relationship with Parliament.
Few liaisons have greater notoriety than that between Edward II and Piers gaveston. It is widely assumed they were lovers and this drove a wedge, ultimately fatal for both men, between Edward and his wife, Isabella of France.
According to the text Vita Edwardi secundi, written by a contemporary of the King, Piers ‘alone found favour in the King’s eyes and lorded it over [the English barons] like a second king, to whom all were subject and none equal. Almost all the land hated him . . . his name was reviled far and wide . . . he was an object of mockery to almost everyone in the kingdom’.
By 1312, the nobility had had enough: gaveston was seized, subjected to a mock trial and executed on the orders of the Earl of Warwick.
Edward’s relationship with his barons never recovered. He found another favourite in Hugh Despenser, but he overstepped the mark when he appropriated Isabella’s lands and took control of her four children. she led a rebellion that resulted in Edward’s death in 1327 and the succession of their son, Edward III.
Queen Anne lived at a time when monarchy gave way to parliamentary authority, so the influence of her favourite, sarah Churchill, was limited.
However, their relationship led to the rise of sarah’s husband, John Churchill, whose decisive defeat of a Franco-Bavarian force at Blenheim in 1704 was one of the Army’s greatest victories.
Elizabeth Hammond, Bristol.
QUESTION What exactly is a Waldorf pudding?
THIS was one of four desserts on the firstclass menu of the titanic on April 14, 1912, the night it hit an iceberg and sank.
no one knows exactly what it was. It’s assumed it contained apples, walnuts and grapes because these are the key ingredients of a Waldorf salad, named after the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in new York, where it was invented.
A vanilla pudding with diced apples, sultanas and nutmeg was served on titanic’s White star Line sister ship rms olympic in 1914, but it wasn’t called Waldorf pudding.
An early 20th-century cookbook by the Calvary Presbyterian Church Ladies’ Aid society in springfield, Missouri, has a Waldorf pudding recipe: ‘Fill a buttered pudding dish with peeled and sliced apples, alternating layers of stale cake or breadcrumbs and allowing two tablespoonfuls of melted butter to each pint of apples. Crumbs should be on top. set in a moderate oven to bake until the apples are tender. Pour over a cup of milk and two eggs beaten with half a cup of sugar and bake to a pretty brown.’
this sounds a little rustic for the gout-inducing ten-course titanic menu that included oysters; poached salmon with mousseline sauce; filet mignons Lili, which was served with truffles and foie gras; lamb; duckling; beef; and roast squab, a baby pigeon.
Emma Rowland, Cirencester, Glos.
QUESTION Why is NAS (no age statement) whisky controversial?
NAS is simply a whisky that doesn’t have an age on the bottle label. By law, scotch can only state the youngest whisky in the bottle. so a blend of 12-year-old, eightyear-old and four-year-old whisky must be classified as a four-year-old.
A master blender might argue that being able to use different batches means he is not confined by the age and can introduce new flavours thanks to the influence of wood and distillation methods. Critics argue it’s simply a way of getting around diminishing stocks.
the increasing popularity of whisky has seen single malts aged more than 11 years old becoming desirable and expensive. And although NAS whiskies have a mixed reputation, manufacturers such as Macallan and Arran produce fine examples.
one of the most desirable is Aberlour A’bunadh (around £80), a cask-strength single malt blended from barrels from five to 25 years old. It has no age statement but is released in limited batches with a unique number on the label.
Euan Milne, North Berwick, East Lothian.
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