Skirting Heresy: an introduction to Margery Kempe

FOR LIZ MACDONALD

Hear the song here 

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:

'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

'Born before your time

It would take an eternity

To redress their abyss,

Skirting heresy.

'They would fetter your soul

With wedlock-maternity,

Apron and stain,

Skirting heresy.

'You fore-saw what the spirit

Of a woman could be

And clothed your flesh in it,

Skirting heresy.'

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:

'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

'In the arms of your soul

You may take me as boldly

As a good wife her spouse,'

Skirting heresy.

The sun of love in your heart

Burns so hot and fiercely

It scares you to life,

Skirting heresy.

'This vestment of heat 

Is the heat of the Holy.

It will burn away your sins,'

Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:

'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

Magic water, magic sky,

What land appears to be,

Shift across your vision -

Skirting heresy.

On Lynn's ebb and flow,

Dock and dreaming friary

Unravel like wool -

Skirting heresy,

As England revolts

In Plague and Lollardy,

Old habits cleave -              

Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to her like a Song in her heart:

'Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

Your unsung fishwife Word,

Your un-nun livery,

Your Magdalene hair-shirts,

Skirting heresy,

Chat to God without a priest;

As His Mother in Galilee,

Nurse and feed Him like a Babe,

Skirting heresy,

In the dance of the Hansa,

Out of step, off the quay,

Walk on water like the sun,

Skirting heresy.

Margery of Lynn - author, pilgrim, mystic -

Saw things that weren't there, spoke heresy

But the Heresy She Spoke and the Things That Weren't There

Were a vision of a future reality.

The Lord Jesus spoke to me like a Song in my heart:

Though a menace to churchmen, you’re a mystic to me,

There is none so pure as the mother who gives

This world to so many and her soul to me.

New York playwright Liz Macdonald's play about Margery Kempe of Lynn plays Lynn Minster, Margery's own beloved parish church, on Sep 22 2018. It has 54 roles including a young Margery, an older one, England's first proto-Protestant martyr (William Sawtrey late of this parish) and King Henry IV (part 1). This is such an exciting prospect.

It also has a suite of songs for which I'm delighted to have written the lyrics. An album of these and several others about Margery's life and times has been recorded by the Penland Phezants. The lyrics of the title track of the album (which is not in the show but has a special place on the album as a tribute to the author, her title and her subject) are printed below, along with a typically captivating extract from Margery's Book and some notes about her. This song will have its premiere at a special fund-raising concert for the project as part of Heritage Day at Hanse House on Sep 16 2018.

"Our Lord also gave her another token that lasted about 16 more years and increased ever more and more, and that was a flame of fire of love - marvellously hot and delectable and very comforting, never diminishing but ever increasing, for though the weather were never so cold she felt the heart burning in her breast and at her heart, as veritably as a man would feel the material fire if he put his hand or finger into it. 

When she first felt the fire of love burning in her breast she was afraid of it, and then Our Lord answered in her mind and said, "Daughter, don’t be afraid because this heat is the heat of the Holy Ghost, which will burn away all your sins, for the fire of love quenches all sins."  (Ch. 35)…

"At last the Archbishop (of York) came into the chapel with his clerics, and he said to her abruptly "Why do you go about in white clothes? Are you a virgin?

She, kneeling before him, said, "No, sir, I am no virgin. I am a married woman."

He ordered his household to fetch a pair of fetters and said she would be fettered, for she was a false heretic, and then she said, "I am no heretic, nor shall you prove me one."

The Archbishop went away and left her standing alone. Then for a long time she said her prayers to Lord God Almighty to help her and succour her against all her enemies both spiritual and bodily, and her flesh trembled and quaked amazingly, so that she was glad to put her hands under her clothes so that it should not be noticed." (ch 52)

from "The Book of Margery Kempe", the first autobiography in English. c 1441

The Dean of Norwich Cathedral asked in 1996 was Margery Kempe mystic or menace and, like the Archbishop in 1417, concluded (with perceived Norwich bias) menace. She was born in 1373 - the year Julian of Norwich was offering her visions of certainty and comfort amidst a crisis of Faith - into a England riven with the Black Death and about to experience the Peasants' Revolt. Her birthplace Lynn had been a thriving port only since Brandon Creek re-routed the Ouse to flow out there a hundred years before but was now one of the premier ports of Hanseatic Europe. Her father John Brunham, 5 times Lynn mayor and twice MP, was its leading merchant, exporting cloth (& importing pitch, wax, timber, fish and wine) but in the 1390s, as Margery married a Lynn burgess and began her family of 14 children, the English wool industry slumped. Her traumatic first pregnancy and birth caused a mental breakdown and lifelong visions of heaven and hell. She was a great frequenter of monks and clerics, holy men and women and anchorites like the one in the cell at All Saints Church, Lynn and Mother Julian in Norwich and was much attracted to such world-renouncing people but did not join them. She had grown up as a merchant's daughter on the teeming Lynn waterfront - as a young married woman had run four Lynn (ale) pubs. After raising her family, she spent years travelling and pilgrimaging out in the world, often without the required husband's written permission or confessor's licence, incurring the wrath of archbishops and others for her holy shrieking through sermons and Masses at any mention of Jesus' suffering and for loud and sustained criticism of the church patriarchy's spiritual shortcomings. Yet she was also very soft-hearted, weeping at the sight of lepers (whom she embraced) and easily hurt by gossip and criticism, so the frequent risk she ran of being burned on a heretic's bonfire is testament to a faith well beyond her personal disposition. 

Vardy up front for England v France?

Fenland storytelling combo the Penland Phezants are conjuring up the spirit of '66 as their Hereward the Wake tour comes to All Saints Church Fring (9 July) and the Ely Folk Festival (July 14) next week.

That's 1066 and the English defeat at Hastings, folks, not the 1966 victory at Wembley, but there are hopeful parallels across (almost) a thousand years.

The title song - https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/for-the-soul-of-england-by-the-penland-phezants

Herwardi Saxonis (Hereward the Saxon)  - 'Vardy' for short - is the original English underdog who won his day, in the wake of a crushing English defeat that seemed like the end of the world at the time. 

As every English schoolchild knows, after an exhausting victory at Stamford Bridge in 1066, King Harold, the last Saxon king of England, fought bravely and his defenders were well on top at Hastings until tactically outwitted.  Harold's Saxons thought they had won the game when the Norman French dropped deep into their own half only to be caught by a devastating counter attack. A speculative arrow through the air into the penalty area hit Harold in the eye and the rest (including Saxon England as we knew it) is history.

Hereward (of Bourne in Lincolnshire) was in Belgium at the time - adding to his international reputation as a brilliant mercenary general - but returned in September 1067 to join and swiftly to lead the growing English resistance to William the Conqueror's harrowing invasion. Hereward did so most famously at Ely, leading a solid defensive formation of mighty Saxon warriors and monks and Danish diehards, all secure in local knowledge and the impregnable native fen and forest, soaking up wave after wave of attack on a waterlogged fenland pitch, then catching those offensive Normans napping on the break. Not even the services of a French witch deployed on a wooden tower could shift Hereward and his men from their fastness and the Conqueror was losing heavily and on the verge of giving up when, alas, the Abbot of Ely betrayed the secret paths through the fens to the invaders.

One loyal monk warned Hereward just in time and the great Saxon hero escaped with his men to fight (and win) many another day - in a series of madcap adventures in the greenwoods of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Warwickshire, and at Peterborough Abbey, many of which are the real originals of Robin Hood legend.

The 'overdog' Norman conquerors brought many positives into English culture but love of the underdog was not one of them. Our  enduring love of an underdog defying the odds plus the sturdy survival of English rather than Norman French as our national language can both be traced to Hereward's timely resistance.

The Penland Phezants  90 minute musical show "A Very English Resistance: The True Story of Hereward the Wake" words written and narrated by poet Gareth Calway, music by Andy Wall and Vanessa Wood Davies, the whole performed by the trio on guitar, harp and drum, plays Fring and Ely Folk Festival as the World Cup enters its Final week. If France and England are still contenders by then, it might make an interesting replay!  

Advance tickets for Fring here http://www.wegottickets.com/event/443249

 or on the door. £10 incl. glass of wine/ light refreshments.

Ely Folk Festival bookings -http://elyfolkfestival.co.uk/tickets/

1966 and all that - https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/1966-england-win-the-world-cup

Phezants tour off to a Phlyer!

The Lynn News spreading the good news

We chronicled everything and now he is gone we keep his story alive like a robin singing i' the woods...

Sedgeford-Ely folk-storytelling combo The Penland Phezants got their Hereward The Wake tour off to a flying start with a sell out show at the Bury St Edmunds Arts Festival last week.

The show, whose full name is "As Free As The Waters That Flow Through The Fen; A Very English Resistance; The True Story of Hereward the Wake"  had to be moved to a bigger venue when the original venue provided by the Milkmaid Folk Club passed its capacity. 

There was more good news for the Phezants as Fring Church booked the folk trio for a performance of Hereward's adventures on July 9, just before their performance at Ely Folk Festival on July 14. All of the words and half of the music of the 90 minute extravaganza have been written in Sedgeford and the show has had all of its rehearsals there. West Norfolk Phezant spotters now have an opportunity to see the show performed in the idyllic setting of Fring's 13C church, near the band's home ground. 

Further local interest may be piqued  by the working up of the one key incident in Hereward's story which actually happened in Norfolk, which writer Gareth Calway has plausibly set in a historically researched 11th century Lynn, then a tiny new development on the south eastern corner of the Wash.

Hereward's story is told through the eyes of the Green Monk, played by the author, who fights at Hereward's side during the underdoggéd English resistance of Norman cruelty and arrogance, and through the stirring folk ballads of  Sweyn Freeborn, the Viking, played by gifted folksinger and guitarist Andy Wall. The spirit of the Greenwood is evoked by the harp melodies and harmonies of Wood, a Fairy harper played by Vanessa Wood-Davies.

1068 and All That - first stop Bury Saint Edmunds Arts Festival May 23

The Penland Phezants bring you "As Free As The Waters That Flow Through The Fen; A Very English Resistance: The True Story of Hereward The Wake."

950 years ago, Hereward the Wake came home (from outlawry, exile and a gallery of bold and magical adventures in Cornwall, Ireland and Flanders) as a famous warrior and the leading military genius of his age. He was no Little Englander, speaking several European languages and with experience of leading several foreign armies, and as at home with Danes as with Saxons: his name means 'Head of the army' in both Danish and English. But he did not come home to rest on his laurels. He came home to lead the growing English Resistance against the Norman Conquest. Hereward first avenged the Norman murder of his brother and theft of his manor in his home town of Bourne in Lincolnshire, then established himself in the Isle of Ely alongside the Earl of Morcar (the dead King Harold's brother) and King Sweyn of Denmark, repeatedly outwitting a desperate siege of the Isle personally led by William the Conqueror himself. 

So successful was Hereward's defence that William, incredibly, was on the point of offering peace terms when Hereward was betrayed by his erstwhile military allies, the Abbot and monks of Ely Abbey. The ever-elusive Hereward escaped to further historic triumphs against William's armies at Burgh (Peterborough) and the later rearguard victories against all odds in Fenland, Lincolnshire Greenwood and the ancient Saxon forests of Northamptonshire.

Gareth Calway's 90 minute narrative tells the full story, from the magical folk tales of Hereward's early continental career to his historic defence of Saxon England. Based closely on the honest Latin chronicles compiled by 12C monks, this historically-based narrative gives full rein to the Freeborn English humour and derring do of a real life Robin Hood. (The Robin Hood legend borrows much of the spirit and many of Hereward's real-life adventures.) 

The compelling narrative is given a period flavour by harp music composed and performed by Welsh Romany-influenced harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies and a folk perspective by a sequence of new ballads written by poet Gareth Calway and folk musician Andy Wall.  The Penland Phezants' stirring performance of these is a particular highlight of and perfect fit for this great English folk tale.

Starts: 8pm
Tickets: £10, £2 discount off top price band for Festival Friends, purchase ten or more tickets in one transaction and save £1 per ticket 
Venue: Station Hill Social Club, Bury St Edmunds

Viking tailer    Celtic trailer

The Ballad of John Kempe Part 1

Hear this ballad set to music and played by the Penland Phezants (and with explanatory notes) here

"Upon the Ouse's stinking beach
I stand and look across,
Amid the waste, and West Lynn seems
The Eden that we've lost.

"I take the ferry there, now Lynn's
Jerusalem or Rome,
Those Walsinghams she'll chase to find
She's just as far from home.

"The grass is always greener on
The other side," I say.
She says, "in heaven it really is
This green hill far away."

With a bump, I bring her back to Earth,
"You’re a mother not that maid
Who sang the Song of Songs to kings,
Our class must toil and trade."

"You great lump, John, in lechery,
You waste my church-spire dreams;
Trade children, chores and chamber pots
For heaven's shining greens."

"The grass is always greener on
The other side," I say.
She says, "in heaven it really is
This green hill far away."

Lyric © Gareth Calway 2017

Remarkable women in a man's world
http://garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/julian-and-margery.html

http://garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/margery-kempe-wife-of-lynns-tale-part-2.html


Margery of Lynn and the Lollards
http://garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/short-panel-lollardy-began-in-14th.html

http://garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/margery-kempe-wife-of-lynns-tale-lynn.html

The Full Phezants Phirst Phlight! - photo gallery (part of the Cambridgeshire Libraries Presents Arts Alive project)

THE PENLAND PHEZANTS AT WISBECH LIBRARY SAT. 24 FEBRUARY 2018

TELLING THE STORY OF THE 1816 LITTLEPORT AND ELY RIOTS

(OUR FIRST GIG AS A THREE PIECE)

Foisting the Hezant! Pholk tales and music.



Phirst night! Looks like a phull house!



Show them the instruments!



Once upon a time, when people might as well be hanged as starved...

Our mime section. Upwardly mobile farmer's daughter Mary Martin plays bad harpsichord.

There's a riot going on around here. (But I don't think it's going to end well, Jack...)

Told you!


That's all pholks!

Birth Of A Human Being

My snow soul is slowly taking shape,

Falling from heaven to inherit the earth

And the family features of God and ape,

Angel out of my element from birth.

And this is me, this helpless drop of man,

This perfect mould of bud and mental,

Crawling, fight and every earthly thing.

All if it - nothing.

                               Yet I'll assert I AM

In time by striving upright endlessly,

Inherit here a kiss to milk, like grist,

The love that made me and by which I'm born;

The word that speaks its perfect mind, the fist

That grasps its imaged God, the whole torn

And bleeding web of human history.

This sonnet was written - the author's masculine mind still slightly traumatised with witnessing the full visceral glory of it - to celebrate the birth of our daughter Emma on December 28 1986.  (pictured above, 31 years and 2 months later)

It is now posted in thankful celebration of the birth of her daughter with Tony - Isla Grace Rafferty, 6.4 pounds - at 7.19 am on 21 February 2018. 

Just call me Grandpa.

JINGLE JINGLE THE PENLAND PHEZANTS CHRISTMAS SINGLE!

The recently formed East Anglian folk trio the Penland Phezants have released an online Christmas single inspired by the Lynn mystic Margery Kempe. The song,  'A Lynn Carol' has a happy Christmas message and a strong local connection.

Margery Kempe of Lynn was not your average mediaeval woman. She wrote the first autobiography in English, 'The Book of Margery Kempe.' It begins with an account of her traumatic first pregnancy (she went on to have 14 children) and what we would call a 'post-partum psychosis' during which she received visions of heaven and hell. Her 'Book' describes visions of devils, Jesus, God, the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary and how her spiritual experiences were regarded by the authorities of the time. In a revolutionary (and at the time heretical) direct personal address to God, she requested that the Holy Spirit she heard like thunder in her right ear be changed to something more homely, merry and English: a robin singing. God obliged! 

 
The idea behind the lyric is that while 'Mystic Margery' and a young modern Lynn shopgirl would probably gape at each other's lives in astonishment, they would both understand and share the experience of love. The moment in the song where the girl falls in love is as much a vision as Margery's.

Now starry angels on the tree
Grow larger in the dusk
To heaven-blue and Eden-green
And gold and reindeer-musk.

And what was heard by Margery,
The Visionary of Lynn,
Rings out on tills for checkout girls
Who hear that robin sing. 

The only gift left on the shelf
That nothing else can rise above
Includes all treasure, lasts forever,
And grows when shared with others: love. 

The Penland Phezants are a combination of Ely folk musician Andy Wall and Waywood, the Sedgeford storytelling duo made up of harpist Vanessa Wood Davies and poet Gareth Calway. They are currently seeking to add further engagements to their Hereward the Wake tour next year, which already includes two nationally acclaimed folk festivals.  The Phezants' Christmas single may be heard via the trio's Bandcamp site, from which listeners can add it to their Christmas playlists or purchase a digital download. https://thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com

And a little robin also tells us that Margery Kempe's extraordinary story may be coming home to Lynn in 2018, 600 years after she wrote her Book there, with some musical assistance from The Phezants. Watch this space.

The Phezants' next appearance is at Wisbech Library in February, where they will perform "Bread or Blood" the story of the Littleport and Ely Riots of 1816.  (part of the Cambridgeshire Library Presents series) Album sampler here  
Phezant photoshoot by Bhas Allan

A Very English Resistance - The True Story of Hereward The Wake

As Free As The Waters That Flow Through The Fen - The True Story of Hereward The Wake

(Composed, written and performed by the Penland Phezants)

This is a new project being developed by a new combination - a poet, a folk musician and a harpist. The Penland Phezants. We are seeking dates to add to our existing 2018 festival, folk club, library, theatre and arts centre engagements.

Video clip here

Audio clip here

950 years ago, in 1067, Hereward the Wake returned from outlawry, exile and a gallery of bold and magical adventures in Cornwall, Ireland and Flanders which had established him as a famous warrior and the leading military genius of his age. But he did not come home to rest on his laurels. He came home to join, and quickly to lead, the growing English Resistance against the Norman Conquest, which then was at a critical stage. Hereward first avenged the Norman murder of his brother and theft of his manor in his home town of Bourne in Lincolnshire, then established himself in the Isle of Ely alongside the Earl of Morcar (the dead King Harold's brother) and King Sweyn of Denmark, repeatedly outwitting a desperate siege of the Isle personally led by William the Conqueror himself. So successful was Hereward's defence that William, incredibly, was on the point of offering peace terms when Hereward was betrayed by his erstwhile military allies, the fighting Abbot and monks of Ely Abbey. Thanks to the early warning of one brave monk, the ever-elusive Hereward escaped to further historic triumphs against William's armies in Fenland, at Burgh (Peterborough) and the Bruneswald and Saxon greenwoods of Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire.

Gareth Calway's 90 minute narrative tells the full story, from the magical folk tales of Hereward's early career, to the historic defence of Ely and the glittering later rearguard victories against all odds in fenland and greenwood. Based closely on the honest Latin chronicles compiled by 12C monks, this historically-based narrative gives full rein to the Freeborn English humour and derring do of a real life Robin Hood. (The Robin Hood legend borrows much of the spirit and many of Hereward's real-life adventures.) The compelling narrative is given a period flavour by harp music composed and performed by Welsh Romany-influenced harpist Vanessa Wood-Davies and a folk perspective by interweaving a sequence of new real life Robin Hood ballads (written by Bread and Blood team Gareth Calway and Andy Wall.)  Andy Wall's classic and authentic folk performance of these is a particular highlight of and perfect fit for this great English folk tale. A  30 minute showcase will also be available.

The Penland Phezants are:

Gareth Calway (narrative, backing vocals, drum)
Andy Wall (acoustic guitar, lead vocals)
Vanessa Wood-Davies (harp, harmony vocals)

http://www.elystandard.co.uk/what-s-on/music/fen-trio-form-new-folk-band-1-5297836

http://www.wisbechstandard.co.uk/what-s-on/music/fen-trio-form-new-folk-band-1-5297836

https://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/hereward-the-wake-is-brought-back-to-life-1-8271354

https://www.musicglue.com/the-penland-phezants/

www.facebook.com/The-Penland-Phezants-451818025213031/ 

Phezant photoshoot (above) by Bhas Allan

The picture at the top of this blog has been described as follows: "The fen, the belligerent battered tree, the Robin Hood, the elf, the stubborn Freeborn Dane, the moat, the sublime light, the understated majesty: it is the complete realisation of the title of our project: A Very English Resistance, the True Story of Hereward The Wake. Genius."

Screen grab

Is Hereward Awake - the outdoor clip

The following two didn't make the official photographer's cut but I like 'em!

Ely Cathedral through train window by Bhas. 
"Hereward led a wolfish defence of an England before the Normans sank their giant Cathedral-Castles like ring of steel in our land, when that magnificent Norman power bloc of holy terror (pictured) holding a previously unconquerable native fen and first in thrall, was a thinner-walled but better founded Saxon Abbey." 

Fenland photoshoot of the late 1060s Norman-Saxon front line (below) by A Mateur.  Pic 2 is an Ouse bank shot along the old Littleport Road; the rest are just above Ely itself (with a new invader - pennywort!)

This Book Wot I Wrote Wiv Shakespeare

Buy the book here

Lynn News story here

Hunstanton Town and Around story here

A new Caribbean edition of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" published by Harper Collins this month (December 2017) has revealed a surprise connection between two West Norfolk enthusiasts. Heacham shopkeeper John Wallis and Sedgeford author Gareth Calway were discussing Gareth's latest publication when they realised they had a common interest in a sea-storm not only made famous by Shakespeare but which is also the story behind the Heacham village sign. 

It is a story even Shakespeare might have struggled to invent, a true story of true love between a man from Tudor Norfolk and a native American - Pocahontas. It ends with  the arrival in England of the famous Pocahontas. But it begins with that storm.

Here is John Wallis's take on the tale. 'John Rolfe was born in Heacham in 1585. In his early 20s he set out with his wife on a journey that has rippled through history.  In May 1609 they boarded the Sea Venture the flagship of a convoy of 500 settlers bound for new lands to help establish, ultimately, as William Kelso writes  "where the British Empire began"  the first successful English colonisation of Jamestown, Virginia in America, where the first ships had arrived just two years earlier.  It was  a journey that almost ended in total disaster, in July the Sea Venture  encountered a massive hurricane that scattered the fleet and saw her run aground just off the islands of Bermuda. It was the story of this shipwreck that inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest in 1610/11. 

All of the Sea Venture's 150 passengers and crew safely reached shore and salvaged much of the ship’s supplies for what would be a 10-month stay. While on Bermuda, Rolfe’s wife gave birth to a daughter who was christened Bermuda, but the child died there. Rolfe’s wife also died. By the spring of 1610 the survivors had made two smaller ships from cedar trees and salvage from the shipwreck naming  them  Patience and the Deliverance and continued their journey reaching the Chesapeake Bay after 10 days sailing.

John Rolfe and his fellow survivors founded a colony struggling to make profits for the Virginia Company.  By 1612 Rolfe hit upon the solution - Virginia tobacco! The future of the colony was secured.

In 1613 Pocahontas, “dearest daughter” of Chief Powhatan, was kidnapped and brought to Jamestown to be traded for English prisoners and weapons that Powhatan held. That exchange never took place. 

Pocahontas learned English and Christianity—and came to the attention of John Rolfe, a pious man who agonized for many weeks over his wish to marry a “heathen.” He composed a long, laborious letter to Governor Dale asking for permission to marry Pocahontas. Pocahontas ultimately converted to Christianity and took the name Rebecca, and the wedding took place in April 1614. It resulted in peace with the Indians long enough for the settlers to develop and expand their colony on the strength of their new cash crop, tobacco.' 

John Wallis concludes his account. 'In 1616 Rolfe took his wife and infant son, Thomas, to England. The couple spent months in the highest circles of London society, but Pocahontas died at Gravesend, England seven months later on the return journey to Virginia.'

Shakespeare died the year Pocahontas arrived in England and had retired from the theatre by 1613 but he had by then made a magical story of the already quite fabulous real events of 1609. Here (without any previous consultation) is how Gareth approaches the same events in his study guide for the new edition of the Tempest.

'Many strange and wonderful stories of the wreck were published: at first of the crew’s drowning and later of their 'miraculous' survival and what happened to them ashore. Shakespeare would have heard these among the many stories that were always being brought back by sailors and travellers to the bustling city of London. For Shakespeare's audiences, sailing to the New World would seem as exciting and unknown as space travel is today.

His play The Tempest was staged for the first time one afternoon in 1610 (or 1611) in a former monastery called Blackfriars) His audience would have looked at the ship suggested on stage and thought "Ah, yes, that ship The Sea Venture! That story with the terrifying start but a happy ending – eventually!” And lots of magic, make-believe and scary monsters thrown in to make the story more exciting.”

Heacham is the largest village in England and, in its incorporation of a native American figure at its centre, may also claim to have one of its most unusual and cosmopolitan village signs. 

John Wallis is an informed enthusiast of Heacham's history and heritage and especially on the Pochanontas story. His family business AE Wallis Cycles and Electrics was established by his father in 1939.

Gareth Calway, a former Head of Department at KES in Lynn and  Smtithdon High School in Hunstanton, taught the Tempest at 'A' Level and later examined it for the Cambridge Examinations Board. His aim with the new edition was to provide a clearer guide than the ones that made his own study of it at A level more like surviving a shipwreck than plain sailing!