I wrote about Joan and William Canynges in Forgotten Women of the Wars of the Roses and I think of them whenever I'm in Bristol. 

William Canynges was a fifteenth-century Mayor of Bristol and a wealthy merchant. He contributed to the building and upkeep of St Mary Redcliffe Church, and had a house nearby, across today's roundabout just outside the main gate. But while William is commemorated around the city in stained glass and paintings, his wife Joan is usually completely forgotten. In fact there would be no visible trace of her in the city at all if it were not for the couple's joint effigy inside St Mary Redcliffe church.

William was well known in Bristol among the merchant community and local government officials, and was granted a special shipping licence by Henry VI. Shortly after Edward IV's accession he greeted the teenage king at Bristol and was reported to have entertained him at his home for the night. Joan then, was present during this important event and would have had a key role in the household arrangements ensuring everything was in place for the new king's comfort and acting as an ambassador to her family and Bristol.

Their home was crammed into the streets near Bristol's harbour, but it was also palatial, as you'd expect for such an influential and wealthy couple. It had a private chapel, a viewing tower and was decorated with gold on the walls and ceilings and painted with frescoes. Their extravagant tomb at St Mary's Redcliffe also remains as a reminder of their wealth, richly carved and painted. The Canynges also contributed towards the upkeep and building of the church, which is beautifully carved and decorated and well worth a visit.

The close resemblance between William's effigy here and that of his later one also supports the argument that it probably resembles how the mayor would once have looked in life. Similarly, Joan's features are far from generic and may also represent how she would have looked as she flitted through Bristol's fifteenth-century streets running household errands and assisting in her husband's business. Thanks to surviving letters written by families who lived during the Wars of the Roses period (the Pastons, Celys, Stonors, for example) we know women often met with their husband's business associates and acted as unofficial personal assistants while the husband was away on royal or economic business.

A wooden board above William's later effigy states that he was 'the richest merchant of the town of Bristol', was elected mayor five times and contributed to the city's wealth and fortune. After his political career, he became Dean of Westbury where he also had a college built, sustaining over 800 craftsmen's livelihoods for eight years. It also states that he paid Edward IV 3,000 marks, in return for a shipping agreement of 2470 tonnes, an astonishing amount of money for the period. Among the ships he personally owned were The Mary Canynges, The Mary Redcliffe, The Little Nicholas and The Margaret. There is no doubt that the Canynges' enjoyed comfortable, wealthy and busy lives and if you could go back to medieval Bristol you would easily find their trace in their friends and contacts, buildings and business. I also found links between the Canynges' and other influential mercantile families in Bristol of the fifteenth century, showing how well connected they were. Joan died in 1467, and William on 7 November 1474. For a more detailed discussion of Joan and William and their combined and individual influence in medieval Bristol, check out Forgotten Women of the Wars of the Roses where a number of other Bristol women are also mentioned in the context of the war.

In 1809 English men and women flocked to see a celebrity: a 'spotted boy' who had been brought to Bristol from the island of St Vincent in the Caribbean. He had been born on a plantation owned by a man named Mr Alexander to African parents in around June 1808 and was named George. George immediately began to attract attention, having black skin with white markings, something considered unusual for the time. Surviving portraits of the boy show that he had vitiligo, a long-term condition resulting in pale or white patches of skin that can sometimes appear symmetrically on the body. To his contemporaries though, the baby's appearance was a mystery and the writer Abel Bowen in 1840 stated that people visited him on the island, each charged a dollar to see him. Bowen wrote that there was some concern over the baby boy's safety, due, he said, to superstition about the colouring of his skin, and so his passage was arranged to England. However he also pointed out that the decision may also have been made with 'the prospect of a profitable disposal'. 

George Alexander (Gratton), Wellcome Collection, Public Domain

Bristol Harbour today

We all know about the Great Fire of London in 1666, but fires continued to be a pretty regular occurrence in London, even into the next century. Looking through Georgian records, there are reports of a fire in the city every few months, something that is unsurprising when we consider that despite the rebuilding of London after 1666, there was still a large quantity of wooden buildings huddled together in the capital during the eighteenth century. Post-fire building overseen by Charles II and his queen, Catherine of Braganza, was also concentrated most urgently on the areas directly affected, and so surrounding areas were still filled with medieval and Tudor buildings that could cause serious damage if accidentally set alight.

Joseph Highmore, 1692–1780, Figures in a Tavern or Coffee House, ca. 1725 or after 1750, Oil on panel, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B2001.2.86. Public Domain

In Sweeting's Alley in central London in 1759 a fire broke out at around 5am one morning at Hamlin's Coffee House, near the Royal Exchange. Hamlin's, like other coffee houses of the time, would have been a fashionable place not only to sip a hot bowl of black coffee but to do business, chat with likeminded people and attend the odd auction of goods or property. Next door was another coffee house, The New York Coffee House, and in the immediate community, other shops such as one run by a fan maker named Mr Vaughan, a print-seller's by Mr Withy and a woollen draper's run by Mr Fleatham. There were others, too. Mr Hunt was a linen-draper, Mr Legg a woollen draper and Mr Bakewell a print seller, situated at the front of Cornhill. Nearby was a lawyer's office, another coffee house (The Virginia Coffee House), a barber and a broker. 

All these businesses would suffer on the morning of the fire at Hamlin's, showing how quickly fire could take hold of a small community. The Annual Register noted that thirteen houses stood in smouldering ruins, and two small shops - a shoemaker's and a watch-maker's - had completely burned down. The following day, at 3pm, the fire was said to have broken out again, now consuming the Red Lion and Sun alehouse in Sweeting's Alley. The culprit of the fire was believed to have been a lodger at Hamlin's, a musician who 'played music upon glasses' and who sadly died in the flames. Others died, too, unable to escape the smoke-filled buildings or tragically buried in the ashen rubble as the upper floors and walls crumbled around them. 

The devastating fire at Hamlin's tells us so much about Georgian London. First, the report in The Annual Register details the many businesses that traded here, and although the area is known to have been the centre of London's trading community, barbers, shoemakers and woollen drapers had also set up businesses here. These, and the many coffee shops that emerged in the area were no doubt supported by fashionable merchants, bankers and lawyers who had offices near the Royal Exchange. The report not only describes the premises that were damaged but where they stood, what they offered and who ran them, giving us a fascinating glimpse into the Cornhill area of central London in the mid-1700s. 

The report also underlines the severe fire risk that was still very real after 1666. We tend to focus on the Great Fire during the reign of Charles II and his rebuilding of London in stone and the city's reorganisation into wider public squares and other spaces. But there were still frequent fires all over London during the eighteenth century. Closely-huddled buildings, flammable materials and a reliance on flame for light, cooking and warmth all combined to make London's narrow streets a potential hazard to live or do business in. It's worth adding that it wasn't just London that suffered with fires - Portsmouth Dockyard was damaged by fire in 1770 and 1776, and there are other mentions of devastating blazes in other towns around the country during the period.

Liked this? You might also like What Was it Like During the Great Fire of London and The Old White Hart Inn, Southwark. 

Source: The Annual Register, 1759, via archive.org

While many of you were enjoying the bank holiday weekend sunshine, and lighting up the BBQ, I was peering at seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts to try to unravel a Restoration-era ghost story. 

'Haunting', Redon. Met Museum, Public Domain.

The story, told in various sources in the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, concerns a man named Sir Charles Lee. His first wife had died in childbirth, but the newborn lived. A daughter, she was brought up by her mother’s sister the Lady Everard. A marriage was arranged for her with a Sir William Perkins, but until the couple were wed, the young woman lived with her aunt in Waltham in Essex while her father remained at his base in Warwickshire. One night she noticed a glow from her chamber, and called a maid to check whether she had left a lit candle in her room. The maid told her all the candles were out, and so she went to her room and settled to sleep. At 2am she woke, seeing the ‘apparition of a little woman between her curtain and her pillow, who told her she was her mother, that she was happy, and that by twelve of the clock that day she should be with her’. 

She got up, went to her closet and wrote a letter, not emerging until 9am, sealing it and giving it to the Lady Everard. She told her aunt that she was convinced that she was going to die that day, and asked her to send the sealed letter to her father once she was dead. Thinking her niece had gone ‘mad’, Everard called for a physician and a surgeon to come from Chelmsford. Neither could figure out what was wrong, and, to be on the safe side, carried out a bloodletting. The young woman then called for the chaplain, and prayers were said for her. She spent the morning listening to music and singing while the bemused household watched over her, and just before twelve midday, the young woman sat down in a chair, ‘presently fetching a strong breathing or two, immediately expired, and was suddenly cold, as much wondered at by the physician and surgeon’. Sir Charles was immediately informed, and was sent the letter his daughter had written. Inside, it stated that she wished to be buried with her mother at Edmonton. It was said that her father was so upset and affected at the news that he didn’t arrive at Waltham until after his daughter had been buried. He had her body removed from its burial place and taken to Edmonton to fulfil the wishes in the letter. 

The story was told to the Bishop of Gloucester by Sir Charles himself and was said to have happened in around 1662. But is there any trace of this in the historical record? As it turns out, Sir Charles Lee was a prominent man of administration and local justice during the reign of Charles II. 

His father was Sir Robert Lee, from Billesley in Warwickshire. With his wife, Anne Lowe, he had a large family. They had married on 10 November 1600, during the reign of Elizabeth I, at St Peter le Poor church in London, the same year that Robert purchased the manor of Billesley for £5,000. Robert served as Lord Mayor in 1602-3 as well as Alderman of London and the couple had four daughters and four sons, although two of their sons died young. Charles was baptised on 30 June 1620 at the church his parents had married in twenty years before. At the age of 22 he was knighted by Charles I at Oxford on 28 December 1645. In 1637 his father died, and his eldest brother Robert inherited the family estates. However, in 1659 Robert died without issue, and Charles inherited the Lee estates. 

Charles married four times. His first wife was Elizabeth Elwes, who died in 1652, the genealogist George Cokayne stating that she left ‘issue’, but doesn’t mention any sister, only a brother named John, who lived at Barton Court in Berkshire. Another wife was Catherine, the daughter of Sir Lionel Tollemache, and widow of Sir Charles Mordaunt, who had died in 1648. Charles was Catherine's second husband and we can assume the marriage took place fairly soon after both partners became widowed, within four years of one another. Charles married again in December 1679, to Sarah, Viscountess Corbet of Edmonton. She died in 1682. Finally, he married Letitia (or Lettice) Fisher, who was born on 20 July 1659. She is mentioned as Charles’ widow on her later marriage to Bishop John Hough in 1702. He was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry at the time, and Hough referred to her as the ‘dear companion of my life’. She died of an illness which began in 1722, when doctors were called. Her health improved a little and she died at the end of the year, 12 November 1722. Letitia was buried in Worcester Cathedral, the bishop choosing to be buried alongside her after his death. On 28 April 1719 she wrote her will, and remembered Charles. Bequeathing diamond rings, ruby rings, diamond earrings, a diamond buckle and pearl necklace to various relatives, she wrote, ‘and in token of the respect I bear to the memory of my former husband, Sir Charles Lee, I give to his unfortunate grandchild, Mrs R. Bradshaw, one hundred pounds’.

Charles served Charles II after his Restoration to the Crown, primarily as a juror in criminal cases, such as that of Edward Coleman in 1678, who was charged with an attempt on the king’s life. He was part of the jury again at the trial, on charges of treason, of William Ireland, Thomas Pickering and John Grove in December 1678. In 1680 he appears in a list of the king’s justices at Southampton, alongside George, Duke of Buckingham. In 1689 he sold the family manor of Billesley to Bernard Whalley, a Leicestershire man, who subsequently rebuilt the parish church in 1692. Sir Charles died in the autumn of 1700 and was buried on 18 October of that year at Edmonton in Middlesex. It’s believed that one daughter survived him, named Elizabeth, who married James Mundy. They had a daughter called Catherine, who sold Sir Charles’ lands and properties in Edmonton in 1711. 

It's not clear which of Sir Charles’ wives was the mother referred to in the ghost story that has become so well associated with him. Considering that the story was said to have happened in 1662, it’s possible that it was Charles’ first wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1652. His marriage to Catherine Tollemache could not have occurred earlier than 1652, and so makes it unlikely that it was her. If her mother was Elizabeth, the young girl - who was not named in the Bishop of Gloucester's account - would have been around the age of ten when she was visited by her mother’s spirit. This is also supported by the account stating that she was living with a relative, being too young to consummate an arranged marriage. It’s also possible that the vision that she experienced wasn’t a spirit at all, but neurological or medical symptoms related to the circumstances of her death, occurring so soon after the sighting. With so much still unknown about Sir Charles, and the lives of his wives and children, it is difficult to pin down the source of the legend further, until more secure evidence arises. 

Do you know about the legend of the Lee ghost? Let me know in the comments below... 

You might also like 7 Historic Events That Happened at Hampton Court and Catherine of Braganza's Women.

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Sources consulted

A catalogue of the names of all His Majesties justices ... 1680, archive.org

'Parishes: Billesley', in A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 3, Barlichway Hundred, ed. Philip Styles (London, 1945), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol3/pp58-61 [accessed 3 May 2025].

John Eardley-Wilmot, The life of the Rev. John Hough, D.D., successively bishop of Oxford, Lichfield and Coventry, and Worcester: formerly president of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford, in the reign of King James II. Containing many of his letters, and biographical notices of several persons with whom he was connected, 1812, archive.org

The tryals of William Ireland, Thomas Pickering,... 1678, archive.org

Augusta Elizabeth Brickdale Corbet, The family of Corbet; its life and times. 1914. Archive.org

William Robinson, The history and antiquities of the parish of Edmonton, in the county of Middlesex. Comprising an account of the manors, the church, and Southgate chapel ... 1819. Via archive.org

Edward Coleman, 1888. The tryal of Edward Coleman, gent., for conspiring the death of the King, and the subversion of the government of England, archive.org

George E. Cokayne, Some account of the Lord Mayors and Sheriffs of the city of London, during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, 1601-1625. 1897, archive.org

Richard Boulton, A compleat history of magick, sorcery, and witchcraft; ... 1715: Vol 1, archive.org

On 16 July 1556 a martyr named Julius Palmer was executed in Newbury, Berkshire. Born in Coventry to a father who served as mayor at one time there, and later worked as an upholsterer, he was provided with a good education. A fellow of Magdalen College in Oxford, he was said to have had ‘a very prompt and ready memory, a wit sharp and pregnant’. He studied philosophy and languages, and could speak Latin and Greek. A hard worker, he entered Oxford University in 1550 during the reign of Edward VI, spending his days waking at 4am and eventually settling in his bed after 10pm. In 1552 the Protestant King Edward died, and after a brief tussle for the crown, Mary I came to power. The Catholic daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon, she was resolved to bring England back under the authority of the pope. Her father had begun the move away from Papal Authority in the 1530s, when the pope ruled that his marriage to Katherine of Aragon was legal. He had been trying to divorce her to marry his new love, Anne Boleyn, and his reaction to the papal decision was to sever England’s reliance on papal authority. England was still very much a Catholic country when Henry died in 1547, with some tweaks including a state-controlled edition of the Bible. Under Edward VI and his two Protectors, the dukes of Somerset and then Northumberland, England swung more towards a Protestant religion. Under Mary, and her Spanish Habsburg husband Philip of Spain, all that would change. 

In the early 1550s, ‘slanderous libels and railing verses’ were nailed to the doors of areas within Magdalen College, and Palmer, having argued with the president Dr Haddon, was quickly rumoured to have been the culprit. Palmer denied any involvement, but was still expelled from the university under suspicion of the offence. He then worked as a tutor to the children of Sir Francis Knollys, and later taught at Reading Grammar School, which would have been near the site of today’s Town Hall and St Laurence's Church. Palmer’s thoughts on religion now became not only public but treasonous, according to the words of one John Bullingham. Bullingham wrote that Palmer once walked with him to St James’ Palace in London, where he ‘leaned at the great gate of that place’, and spoke of the ‘misery and calamities we are fallen for the pope and his religion’. He told Bullingham to ‘consider what hangeth over our heads’, and stated that ‘rather than I will yield unto them, I will beg my bread’. 

In another meeting, he met Palmer at St Paul’s Cathedral, which then had its medieval pre-1666 spire. Palmer told Bullingham that an image of God was ‘an idol, and that the pope is antichrist, and his clergy the filthy stink-hole of hell’. 

A man tied to a burning stake, Wellcome Collection, Public Domain.

In the early years of Mary and Philip’s reign, the burnings of those who refused to adopt the Catholic religion began. Everyone from bishops to tradesmen were tied to stakes and consumed by flames, protesting their faith as they died. Palmer, it was said, became interested in these events, gathering information about the deaths of Bishop John Hooper in Gloucester and of Bishops Ridley and Latimer in Oxford. Palmer tried to keep his Protestant views, which were inspired by the writings of John Calvin, private. However it soon became clear that he did not adhere to the state religion, storming out of a lecture on Catholicism because of ‘the friar’s blasphemous talk’ and failing to adhere to Tudor customs of respect when dealing with Catholic priests. 

By 1555 Palmer was employed as a schoolmaster at Reading Grammar School, and lived within the town. However on learning that he was being investigated for his Protestant beliefs, he planned an escape. Leaving his job and his home, he went to his mother who disowned him, saying that his father had ‘bequeathed nought for heretics’. It was then, in 1556, that he managed to obtain a job as tutor in a school in Gloucestershire. Remembering how quickly he had left Reading, he made the decision to revisit the town quietly and pick up the cash and belongings he had left in his chamber. 

He came to the town and lodged at an inn called The Cardinal’s Hat, ‘desiring his hostess to assign him a close chamber, where he might be alone from all resort of company’. However the friends he had relied on to help him gather his things turned on him. One man, Hampton, visited him at the inn and gathered information about his future plans, the men ending their conversation in an argument. After he left, Palmer called for his evening meal and went to bed, but officials came bursting in, ‘with lanterns and bills, requiring him in the king and queen’s name to make ready himself, and quietly to depart by them’. Palmer was clapped into a dungeon – according to John Foxe, he was suspended by his wrists – and prepared for his trial in Reading.

Palmer was outspoken and pragmatic at his examination, saying that ‘the queen's sword was not put in her hand to execute tyranny, and to kill and murder the true servants of God’. It was decided that he would travel to Newbury and face the rest of the judicial process there. A Protestant sympathiser and resident of Reading, Master Rider, sent a servant to Palmer secretly the night before his departure, saying that he would provide anything he needed that evening. Palmer replied warmly that he ‘lacked nothing’ and thanked Rider for his concern. Palmer faced another examination on 16 July 1556 at Newbury by a council that had assembled in the choir of the parish church, St Nicholas. He was interrogated about his writings and his religious opinions but stood firm, replying that he ‘forsook the pope’. 

Julius Palmer was committed back to prison in Newbury and was burned on the same day as his trial, at around 5pm on 16 July 1556. He visibly comforted the others who were also to be burned, telling them to trust Christ and ‘rejoice and be martyrs, glad, for great is your reward in heaven’. Although they could kill the body, he said, men were ‘not able to touch the soul’. After he was tied to the stake, he prayed loudly, despite one Newbury man throwing a bundle of firewood at his face so hard Palmer bled. As the attacker was admonished by the sheriff, the flames flickered around Palmer, who held up his hands and beat his chest praying for Jesus to receive his soul. 

But Palmer’s story was not yet over. It was noted that, when the fires had died down and the three men were believed to be dead, Palmer, ‘as a man waked out of sleep, moved his tongue and jaws, and was heard to pronounce this word "Jesus !"’. This was viewed by Foxe and other sympathisers as a miracle, writing, ‘God grant us all to be moved with the like spirit, working in our hearts constantly to stand in defence and confession of Mary’. 

You might also like: 10 Everyday Objects from Tudor Times, Following the Tudors in Plymouth and A Tudor Breakfast.

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Source: 

The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: A New and Complete Edition with a Preliminary Dissertation by the Rev. George Townsend. R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside. London. 1837. p201-219, Volume 8.