THE ELLAND AFFAIR by MIKE WARD
PROGRAMME NOTES
The Elland Feud
The play “The Elland Affair” (pronounced ‘ee-land’) is based on The Elland Feud of the early 14th Century. Many details of the story are lost in the mists of time, and the few remaining reports of the events vary. Nevertheless, accounts of the main facts of this sorry affair are consistent. Sir John Elland, the High Sheriff of York, had a grudge against Sir Robert Beaumont of Crosland Hall, near Huddersfield as a result of an earlier feud between their respective allies. One outcome of the earlier feud was the death of Sir John Elland’s nephew at the hand of Exley, a kinsman of Sir Robert Beaumont.
Sir John Elland’s appalling murder of Sir Robert Beaumont and several of his neighbours, friends and relations defies description by a gentle author of programme notes. We’ll leave it to the playwright (through the mouths of his characters) to describe the butchery. Suffice it to say that Elland’s murderous attack is an historical fact. Those murders probably took place in 1317 or shortly thereafter. “The Elland Affair”, mercifully, is not the story of Sir John Elland’s rampage, rather it is the story of its consequences.
Lady Beaumont (Sir Robert’s widow) fled to Lancashire with her young sons together with several sons of Elland’s other victims and enemies. These boys trained themselves in the arts of fighting and swore to avenge the blood of their fathers once they reached manhood. “The Elland Affair”, set in 1327, covers these young men’s last few days in Lancashire and their return to West Yorkshire in search of vengeance.
Government
England was still a feudal society in the early 14th century; the monarch held absolute power. Regionally, the nobility and gentry could do pretty much as they pleased, subject to Royal Command. Edward II was on the throne at the start of the Elland Feud and met his uncomfortable demise in 1327, the year in which “The Elland Affair” takes place. There are several references to the new King in the play, so clearly Edward III had just succeeded the throne. Edward II was a weak King who probably exercised little control over his barons, hence failing to prevent ugly incidents like the Elland Feud. By contrast, Edward III was to achieve a long (50 years), profligate (England was nearly bankrupt) but relatively stable reign. By the time Edward III died, in 1377, the Plantagenet line had thinned somewhat (he was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II), rival houses of Lancaster and York felt they had valid claims to the succession and the Wars of the Roses resulted.
The theatrical world has made earlier in-roads into this patchy period of English history. Christopher Marlowe wrote a play about Edward II and his unseemly end. William Shakespeare wrote a Richard II and plays about the subsequent “Wars of the Roses” monarchs. Poor old Edward III, despite (or possibly because of) his 50 stable years of power, has tended to be confined to bit parts or passing mentions in plays about others. “The Elland Affair” perpetuates this great tradition of English drama. The characters of “The Elland Affair” weren’t to know, of course, that relative political stability had just arrived. They were to some extent the victims of Edward II’s political weakness and lived in hope of better government under the new King.
Famine
Prior to the early 14th century, local food shortages and resulting starvation were relatively common, sporadic occurrences in Europe. At any one location, however, famine was rare. On the whole, food production had increased in line with the population growth. Standards of living increased steadily in the five hundred years leading up to 1300. As a result, there was a “baby boom” in the early part of the 14th Century. Tragically, climatic changes caused several successive disastrous harvests: 1315, 1316 and 1317. The crop failures, together with the larger population to feed, resulted in the Great Famine of early 14th Century Europe. The famine was far worse in mainland Europe than in Great Britain, but there still were widespread food shortages and starvation in Britain during the famine. All classes suffered, although the working classes took the brunt of the misfortune. The Elland Feud itself might, in part, be explained by the shortages and the Barons’ attempts to maintain their standards of living in difficult times.
Under the prevailing economic circumstances, the Abbot’s generosity towards the Beaumont family and the other young men was immense. When the Abbot asks Adam and his entourage to leave for good, he might have made the request in part for fear of reprisal, but he probably mainly sought relief from the burden of feeding so many additional mouths.
When one of the young fighters tosses some bread to one of the servants, this is a significant act of generosity, which is accepted greedily. When Betsy resists the young men’s requests on the grounds that she might lose her job, she is not being a “jobsworth” in the modern sense; she literally fears for her very livelihood. A servant losing their job in such difficult times might have struggled to survive the loss. When Ozzie says “half the world is starving”, he shows laudable concern for the world around him. In fact, by 1327, Europe’s food supply had more or less recovered, but it had taken some ten years to do so and the characters of the play would not have known the extent of the recovery beyond their locality. The famine changed society and attitudes in the long term.
Dirt and Plague
One consequence of poverty caused by the famine was a diminution in hygiene. Although we tend to think of the Middle Ages as an unwashed era, in fact personal hygiene was relatively advanced at the start of the 14th Century. Public bath houses were common in England until the time of the Great Famine. Cleanliness was one of the first things to go in the poverty which followed the famine. “The Elland Affair” characters probably all needed a good bath and little understood the benefits of personal hygiene.
The unwashed era unhappily coincided with, and almost certainly exacerbated, the Black Death, the plague which swept Western Europe (including England) some 30 years after the Elland affair. In fact, 1327, the year in which “The Elland Affair” is set, was the year in which the Black Death was first reported, thousands of miles from Elland, somewhere in the Gobi Desert region. No-one in “The Elland Affair” says “a plague on both your houses”, which is probably just as well. The line would not only be horribly derivative (see “Romeo & Juliet”) but also painfully ironic. Very few of the young characters in the play would have made it past the age of fifty, even in the absence of the Elland Feud and the late Crusades.
Festering Vengeance
The Elland Feud preceded the Wars of the Roses by some 100 years, but many of the characteristics of that war were already in place; territorial rivalry across the Pennines, long standing feuds and festering vengeance. Before we tut-tut too loudly about these primitive medieval people, let us not forget that similar bloody situations still subsist. The six counties of Northern Island and the various Balkan crises are relatively recent, local examples. In Central Asia and Africa there are many more examples; Afghanistan and Rwanda are well-known examples, Nagorno-Karabach and Eritrea are two of the many less well-known but long-running examples.
The long-festering “need” for revenge so evident in the Elland Feud and these more global examples is baffling to many of us. Seeking vengeance is relatively common, so seems to form part of “the human condition”, yet many humans seem equally capable of contrary characteristics; forgiveness, “letting bygones be bygones” and not bearing grudges. Many of us, if we are honest with ourselves, are easily confused by the moral dilemmas we face if we are irrevocably wronged. Should we try to “put matters right” (seek vengeance) or uphold our principles by abstaining from behaviour we believe to be wrong. Our response of course depends on many factors; the circumstances, our individual morality and our psychology being just three of the factors.
In the play, “The Elland Affair”, the complexity and diversity of human responses to being wronged is especially evident in the characters of the Beaumont brothers. Edgar, the elder brother, has gone into the church and has opted to “turn the other cheek”. Adam, the younger brother, has his heart set on unmitigated vengeance against Sir John Elland. The church might be seen as a dampening influence on the human desire for revenge, but this seems overly simplistic. In the era of the play, the crusades were, to a large part, vengeance wars, fought in the name of and with the blessing of organised religion. The Knights Templar, who coincidentally had been routed shortly before the events of “The Elland affair”, were in effect monk-knights. Also consider modern examples; one only has to think of the Reverend Ian Paisley and his supporters to realise that the church can still be equivocal on this issue. In the play, Edgar’s cheek turning is equivocal. On several occasions, Edgar acts to assist his brother’s campaign, despite Edgar’s persistent use of the language of reconciliation. The Abbot, although comparatively disinterested, also behaves equivocally on this matter. Their responses are all-too human.
Weaponry
One of the best historical accounts of “The Elland Feud” is contained in the early 19th Century book, The Book of Archery, in the section entitled “Juvenile Bowmen”. The years the young heroes the play spent learning to fight are cited in that account:
“they laboured to acquire dexterity in such martial exercises as were calculated to render them dextrous in the anticipated game of death; namely riding, tilting, the sword, and shooting in the long bow, then England’s most famous and redoubtable artillery”.
The young men’s obsession with their improved arrows and the quantity of arrows they would have to hand is quite understandable in the context. Firstly, these factors were likely to be matters of life and death in the venture they were pursuing. Secondly, their mastery of their weaponry would have been their main preoccupation for the years leading up to the revenge.
Living for Today
The young men in “The Elland Affair” live life for today. Their irresponsible attitude towards women and the consequences of their sexual activity is extreme by modern standards in our society, even for young Yorkshiremen hanging around in Lancashire. These were young men from “good families” who had been raised in a religious community. Their behaviour at times seems very immature and reckless to us. Consider, however, the circumstances of these particular young men. They lived in uncertain times and would not have anticipated living long lives in the way we half expect to do so today. If the feud didn’t get you, the famine might. If not the famine, perhaps disease. If not disease, perhaps the Crusading.
The protagonists in “The Elland Affair” had little to lose. Younger brothers did not expect to inherit. Any inheritances that might have been in the offing in these particular families had probably been seriously dented as a result of the feud and the untimely deaths of the fathers. Even within modern society today, we can observe this “living for today” attitude more often amongst those who have little to lose. We observe it in Britain; consider high levels of drug use and extreme promiscuity in economically deprived, urban areas. Consider also the even more extreme behaviours in Sub-Saharan Africa where apparent sexual recklessness causes severe economic, social and medical problems, not least through AIDS and high birth rates.
In “The Elland Affair”, despite their upbringing in the religious community, the young men are secular in attitude. Medieval society had a strangely extreme divide between celibate sacred society and bawdy secular society. “The Elland Affair” protagonists had clearly plugged for bawdy secular and were making the most of it while they could.
Friendship & Loyalty
The friendships between the main co-conspirators of “The Elland Affair” (Adam, Harry, Robert and Huck) are intense. Indeed, their unity transcends what most of us achieve and seek in friendship. After all, these young men share a common trauma, upbringing and purpose beyond most of our experience.
The other friends and supporters of the co-conspirators are not so intensely linked with each other or with the main protagonists, although they are what most of us would consider friends. They are also loyal, apart from the one traitorous exception in the plot.
When it becomes apparent that one of the party is a traitor, there is little suspicion amongst the main co-conspirators, as their bond is so tight. However, they are unable to identify the traitor, as they believe the whole party to be good and/or old friends.
The characters in this play raise many fundamental questions about friendship and loyalty; here is a small sample: What is the difference between friendship and kinship? Can bonding transcend “mere” friendship, and what is that experience beyond friendship? Does friendship presuppose loyalty? How does one earn friendship and loyalty? Can friendship and loyalty be bought, or does the existence of price indicate that the friendship or loyalty were never there?
Adam Beaumont is a charismatic character. Although a (self-confessed) flawed leader, he inspires friendship and loyalty. Indeed, Adam’s followers at times seem like disciples in a biblical sense. Of course, neither the audience nor the characters learn the answers to all the questions about friendship and loyalty raised by the play. But most of us (who survive the experience) end up a little wiser and a lot more thoughtful.
Passion
“The Elland Affair” is in many ways a Passion play. The young men are passionate in their amours, albeit in a somewhat immature and offhand way. More importantly, they believe passionately in their cause and are willing to follow their cause to the death, if need be. There are also many parallels with Christ’s Passion. The plot and ending vary in several material ways from Christ’s Passion. Nevertheless the play contains similar inevitabilities; the return to confront one’s fate, the blind faith of followers, the anticipated betrayal for money, ideals which transcend logic. Whether you agree with the young men’s actions or not, their passion is admirable. Despite the fact that the main characters followed a secular rather than a sacred path in life, several Elland Feud survivors are reputed to have “kept their fighting arms in” by going crusading after the feud. Some people never learn. Or perhaps they felt the need to perpetuate the intensity and passion of their friendships in adversity.
