The ancient laws that inspired the Brides of Fortune Trilogy

I’m thrilled that my Brides of Fortune trilogy is being published in the UK starting with Confessions of a Duchess this month. The covers for the US and UK versions of the series are very different but I love both styles.

When I was sorting out some files recently I came across the notes I made before I started writing the series back in 2007. The spark for the whole trilogy idea came from an article I read in a national newspaper. A businessman had bought the title of Lord of the Manor of a village in Kent. Once installed, he discovered that there were various ancient rights and privileges associated with the title. He decided to revive these and put forward the idea, amongst other things, that people should pay to walk their dogs on the village green and to park in front of the village shop. Not surprisingly there was an outcry from the villagers, who objected to this high-handed behaviour on the part of their new “lord”!

This gave me the idea for the “Dames’ Tax” whereby all unmarried women in the village of Fortune’s Folly are obliged to give half of their wealth to the lord of the manor if they do not marry within six months of him coming into the title. Whilst I freely admit that the Dames’ Tax was pure invention on my part, I did research various other real taxes existing at the time. These included the tax on dogs, which was in force until 1882, the tax on male servants, abolished 1852, and the tax on racehorses, which only ceased in 1874. These were all taxes paid on a national basis.

Most local taxes, known as “scots” were abolished in England after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, so in order for Sir Montague Fortune’s revival of local taxes to have any historical authenticity I had to find a way in which his village might be exempt. One way that presented itself was for Fortune’s Folly to have been a church enclave where the abolition did not apply. Thus the series starts with Sir Montague discovering to his glee that the abbey church in Fortune’s Folly had exemption from the 1660 abolition.

Many of the medieval taxes were paid to the church and naturally many others were weighted heavily in favour of the lord. However the Fortune’s Folly villagers, to get their own back for Sir Montague’s greed, in turn revive those taxes that give them the advantage: Pontage, by which they charge a fee to cross the bridge in the village, pannage, the right to let their pigs roam in the lord’s woods, and foldage, sending their sheep to manure Sir Montague’s beautiful rose gardens!

Probably the most well known of the early taxes was the droit de seigneur. In England this was known as the amober, the sum paid to the Lord of the Manor to waive his right to sleep with the bride the night before her wedding. William the Conqueror was famously supposed to have been conceived after the droit de seigneur was invoked.

Book 3 of the series, The Undoing of a Lady, is inspired by this idea, but with a twist. It is the Lady of the Manor who exercises her ancient rights, kidnapping the hero to stop the wedding!
It fascinated me that some of the ancient laws and taxes are still legal in the UK today. Mostly these are laws such as wood penny, which is still applicable where I live: for the payment of a nominal penny a year to the local landowner we have the right to take his wood for our fire. Other laws and taxes serve as great inspiration for story ideas but I would not want to see them revived…

The Scandals of an Innocent on sale!

I am very happy that the second book in my Brides of Fortune Trilogy is now available in US bookshops and from internet booksellers. The Scandals of an Innocent, which I am thrilled is currently at number 10 in the Borders Group bestsellers chart, tells the story of Alice Lister, a former housemaid who inherits her late employer's money and becomes one of the richest heiresses in the village of Fortune's Folly. Courted for her money, despised for her humble lineage, Alice becomes the target of every unscrupulous adventurer in town. I enjoyed writing a romance that crossed the class barriers and exploring what it was like for Alice to have her life eased by a great deal of money yet at the same time to feel uncomfortable and scorned in society. I particularly enjoyed giving Alice a tattoo - the indelible mark of her unsuitability to be a lady!

Here is an extract:

"Alice shifted a little, sighing. In contrast to Lizzie she still felt a little unsure of herself whenever she went out into society. She had had the dancing lessons and she could converse and play cards and do all the things that a real debutante heiress could do, but every day she was conscious of the sideways looks and the whispered comments. She thought that she always would be. Even her gown of rose pink, which both Lizzie and Lydia had admired extremely, could not give her the inner confidence she lacked.
One of Lizzie’s admirers, a young Army captain called John Jerrold, came over to carry her off for a cotillion, and Lowell arrived with two glasses of lemonade, one of which he handed his sister.
“I see I have missed my chance with Lady Elizabeth,” he said in his lazy country drawl, putting the second glass down on a ledge beside them, next to one of the carved marble busts of Grecian goddesses that adorned the alcoves in the ballroom. “Can’t drink this ghastly stuff myself and the Granby never serves beer on evenings like this.”
Alice smothered a snort to think of her brother bringing a tankard in from the taproom.
“I’d give a great deal to see you drinking beer in the ballroom in front of the Duchess of Cole,” she said, nodding towards Lydia’s mama who was holding court in the chaperons’ corner, surrounded by her cronies. Faye Cole had managed to ride out the scandal of her daughter’s pregnancy by virtue of being the first and loudest to condemn Lydia and she remained an arbiter of county society. Alice could not abide her. Neither could Mrs Lister, who quite rightly blamed the Duchess for being the architect of her social exclusion. Every so often the two of them would eye each other like prize fighters.
“The Duchess will be distraught that mama’s feathers are higher than hers tonight,” Lowell continued. “Could you not prevent her from buying such a monstrous headpiece, Allie? She looks like a cockatoo with such a high crest!”
Alice gave him a speaking look. “I would not dream of spoiling mama’s fun, Lowell. If she wishes to wear pearls and feathers and artificial roses, that is her choice.”
“She’s wearing them all together tonight,” Lowell said gloomily. “Looks like an accident in a flower cart.”
“I did not think you would care about it,” Alice said, slipping her hand through her brother’s arm. “You never bother about what people say.”
Lowell shrugged moodily. The morose expression sat oddly on his fair, open features. Normally he was the most equable of characters but Alice sensed there was something troubling him tonight.
“Lowell?” She prompted. “You do not really have a tendre for Lady Elizabeth, do you?”
Lowell’s grim expression was banished as he gave her his flashing smile. “Good God, no! Did you think I was sulking because she prefers some sprig of the nobility to me? Lady Elizabeth is far above my touch. Besides, we would not suit.”
“No,” Alice agreed. “She needs someone less tolerant than you are.”
“She needs to grow up,” Lowell said brutally. “She’s spoilt.”
“She’s been a good friend to me,” Alice said, whilst not exactly contradicting him.
“I appreciate that,” her brother said. He shot her a look. “You’re not happy though, are you, Allie?”
Alice was startled at his perspicacity. “What do you mean? Of course I am-”
“No you are not. Neither am I, and mama is the unhappiest of all. She hates to be slighted like this.” Lowell’s gesture encompassed the ballroom with its neat rows of dancers, their reflections repeated endlessly in the long series of mirrors that adorned the walls. “Strange, is it not, that when you are hungry and exhausted from working all the hours there are you think that to have money will cure all your woes?”
“It cures a great many of them,” Alice said feelingly.“But not the sense that somehow you have wandered into the wrong party,” Lowell said, his eyes still on the shifting patterns of the dance. “I am coming to detest the way in which we are patronised. This isn’t our world, is it, Allie? If it was you would be dancing rather than standing here like a wallflower.”

Nicola Cornick